The assessment of environmental policies and sustainability in socio-ecological systems (SES) should be tackled from a holistic perspective, using methodologies such as dynamic system models. However, the integral assessment of SES generally suffers from high levels of uncertainty. In this work, the potential of sensitivity analysis (SA) to assess uncertainty and its implications in SES models, specifically in the Fuerteventura sustainability model, has been explored. An extensive SA was applied in different stages of model development and application. The different SA techniques applied allowed, besides a detailed assessment of robustness, the identification of leverage points and their application to define environmental policies and management measures intended to improve sustainability. The results suggest that measures based on leverage points identified by the SA in the model are more effective than others proposed so far by different agents. Furthermore, the assessment of uncertainty of measures thought to contribute to sustainability shows that, when uncertainty ranges are considered, the thresholds of some sustainability indicators might be exceeded, whereas mean values would not. Therefore, the surpassing of some sustainability thresholds might go unnoticed if uncertainties are not considered in the policy analysis. This work shows SA to be a powerful tool that provides important insights to policy makers and end users, with regard to improving environmental policies for sustainability.

Getting pupils closer to nature seems essential, even more, after the pandemic. Therefore, schools and teachers have to take active part in this process trying to hold as many outdoor classes as possible. The implementation of this methodology requires well prepared teachers, which depends on teacher training institutions. In this regard, 551 trainee teachers from Serbia, Croatia, Hungary, Spain and Norway were surveyed in order to analyse their perceptions about outdoor education (OE), filling out a questionnaire composed of 11 questions, most of them were Likert-scale. The aim was to determine whether the students considered OE effective and important, and whether they are satisfied with the knowledge they get during their studies. The results were analysed separately by countries and were compared among the five countries. They show that trainee teachers find OE important and effective to get pupils familiar with nature. Trainee teachers are planning to use this method; however, they are not satisfied with the knowledge received during their studies. There are significant differences on trainee teachers’ perceptions depending on which country they study in. These findings give a good basis for further research, and help universities to prepare their students more effectively for using this method.