Reflections on Two Decades of Sustainability Education
From Ecofootprints to UNDRIP and Beyond
In the early 2000’s I started working with a gang of unstoppable outdoor educators, determined to change the world one school group at a time. Spiriting city kids away to an emerald island in Howe Sound, BC, we sang, we hiked, we invented and taught cutting edge curriculum to allow students to gain ‘wonder, wisdom and the will to work for a better future’. We confronted serious issues like species extinction and global inequality with our signature playful, drama-infused morality, all while spending every moment outside; in the rain, reaching into tidepools, surfing edge-of-your-seat waves in big canoes, looking over the edge of a lookout peak, and sitting in sunny solitude reflectively writing about big questions in tiny logbooks.
Three pieces of curriculum we cherished, that hold up today in classrooms as well as in academic literature are ‘The Big Picture’, ‘Circles of Care’ and ‘Ecological Footprints’. The Big Picture is a model of planet earth’s systems that demonstrates the ‘life preserver’ qualities of the biosphere (note the green life ring, below) and looks at human-nature interactions over time, and into the future. It was developed by Sea to Sky Outdoor School educators, in collaboration with an artist and scientist, using concepts outlined in the Sustainability Principles developed by The Natural Step (Robert, 2002).
Showing these images one at a time to students and discussing their interpretations is always illuminating, and never fails to bring a group to a near-consensus on what sustainability is and what needs to happen to get us there.
Circles of care (Self/Others/Nature), is a simple yet powerful way to orient our thinking from ourselves, outward. As another form of the prevailing three sector model (Economic/Social/Environmental), and the social ecology model (Personal/Social, Environmental)(Mulligan, 2014), the circles of care is a visual representation of our expanding interest in and responsibility toward larger and larger spheres beyond ourselves. The progression from caring about Me to Us to All mirrors our developmental stages as individual humans but also as a society at large.
Ecological Footprinting is a sustainability concept pioneered by William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel in 1996, with the publication of their book Our Ecological Footprint. Educators at Sea to Sky Outdoor School latched on to this tool as a personal accountability mechanism that takes global inequity into account to encourage us all to live ‘one planet lifestyles’. The actual calculator sheet evolved over the years, reflecting a pedagogical tension between focusing on ‘shrinking bad habits’ vs. ‘growing good habits’ (below). Online calculators now keep data current and optimize personal relevance.
Although my time at Outdoor School was formative in my journey as an educator, I am able to look at our work through a critical lens. Movements that have come forcefully into being in recent years such as Idle No More, #MeToo and Black Lives Matter have influenced sustainability education to include fields like Indigenous land rights, ecofeminism and climate justice. Just like the novel movements that inspired us years ago, new big ideas inspire me to learn and then translate large concepts into engaging ‘bite-sized’ morsels for classrooms.
One such big idea, as explored in Returning to Netukulimk (2011) is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). A document that should be as important to all Canadians as the celebrated Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982), UNDRIP could be used to facilitate sustainable reconciliation in the classroom, towards the decolonization of all humans and more-than-humans. Below are some documents and videos that begin to fill the educator’s toolkit.
Through new lenses we see the world more fully, as a place that needs healing for human and more-than human people and places. Building layers of meaning and understanding with students allows us to contribute our gifts toward more sustainable classrooms, ecosystems and societies.
Sources
Blackstock, C., UNICEF, the Secretariat of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, Global Indigenous Youth Caucus (2013). UNDRIP for Indigenous Adolescents. Retrieved from: https://files.unicef.org/policyanalysis/rights/files/HRBAP_UN_Rights_Indig_Peoples.pdf
Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (1982). Retrieved from: https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/Const/page-15.html
Insight Share (2014). UNDRIP Animation. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yot6n8W8sik
Littlechild, W. (2020) Truth and Reconciliation Lessons. Retrieved from: https://sttpcanada.ctf-fce.ca/lessons/wilton-littlechild/activities/
Mulligan, M. (2014). An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives. New York: Routledge.
Prosper, K. , McMillan, L. J. , Davis, A. A. , Moffitt, M. (2011). Returning to Netukulimk: Mi’kmaq cultural and spiritual connections with resource stewardship and self-governance. The International Indigenous Policy Journal, 2(4) . Retrieved from: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/iipj/vol2/iss4/7
Robert, K-H. (2002). The Natural Step Story: Seeding a Quiet Revolution. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers
Rees, B. & Wackernagel, M. (1996). Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers