Letters to the UN – Manchester University’s School of Arts, Languages and Cultures (in collaboration with Save the Children UK and UK-Med) ran a competition for UK school children to write a speech or letter, addressed to the UN, on the climate emergency.  They were asked to focus on:

  • How is climate change affecting you and what actions, initiatives, and policies should the UN prioritise?
  • What are your hopes for the shape of our future world?
  • What concrete changes need to be implemented to protect the climate and increase social equity?

You can see something of what young people wrote here.

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Dangerous Ignorance – Children are dangerously ignorant about plants say researchers at Leeds University who argue in a paper published in the journal Ecology and Evolution that nature literacy must become a core skill for planners, engineers, architects and teachers as well as farmers and foresters.  They say that schools and universities are not teaching enough about the “basics” of plant science including how to identify various species.  They say the problem has been exacerbated by schools and universities reducing their teaching of basic plant science, including plant identification and ecology, describing a self-accelerating cycle which risks “the extinction of botanical education,” where biology is taught predominantly by people with research interests in animal science.  A commentator close to OCR said that this showed that the new GCSE in natural history could not come soon enough.

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Transforming Education – UNESCO says that Mission 4.7 is an initiative that brings together leaders from government, academia, civil society, and business to accelerate the implementation of Transformative Education around the world. Transformative Education, UNESCO says, is “an umbrella term that encompasses the common objectives and methodologies of the types of education outlined in SDG Target 4.7, including education for sustainable development, global citizenship education, environmental education, climate education, peace and human rights education, and others. [It] delivers not only the knowledge, but also the competencies, values, and skills necessary for current and future generations to achieve the goals outlined in the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Climate Agreement.”  You can become a Friend of Mission 4.7 here.

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ESD for 2030 – To help ensure all learners acquire knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes to tackle climate change, UNESCO plans to work with young people to co-develop guidelines to support policymakers to integrate climate education into education policies and curricula.  The result of this process will be published at COP 27 in November and will contribute to the development of the UNESCO greening curriculum guidelines to be launched for COP 28.  There is a youth (age 12 to 25) greening curriculum survey in English and in Spanish that closes on August 8th

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Long Term Challenges – The Foundation for Educational Development’s National Education Consultation Report 2022 and its technical annex are now available.  These examine how long-term planning in England’s education system can benefit learners and the country, and how such an approach could solve the bigger challenges that we never seem to resolve.  The report covers the second year of the FED’s National Education Consultation.  The FED says that it outlines the progress made running the largest ever qualitative consultation on education in England: “working with partners from across the education sector and beyond, it has built an understanding of how some of the intractable economic and social issues of our time are posing significant challenges to our education system.”

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Future Foresters – The Royal Forestry Society (RFS) is supporting the Young People in European Forests competition. This is being held in the UK this year for the first time.  The award aims to encourage future foresters to show their passion for their country’s trees and woodlands. It is open to teams of three young people aged 15 – 18 supported by an adult from their education institution.  Teams are invited to submit a media project which showcases their knowledge and understanding of forestry in their part of the United Kingdom. This year’s theme is Forestry and the Future.  Entries will be open from 1 September 2022 – 7 November 2022. Full details on how to enter here.

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46 Empirical Studies – Christina Wolf, Patrick Kunz & Nicolas Robin report in The Journal of Environmental Education a literature review of emerging themes of research into outdoor teaching in initial formal teacher training from early childhood to secondary education.  It is freely available, and the Abstract says that the present review aims to summarize and structure the variety of topics in the literature regarding outdoor teaching in initial formal schoolteacher training: “We analyzed the general characteristics of 46 empirical studies from different regions that investigate skills, content areas, and pedagogical strategies to prepare pre-service teachers from early childhood to secondary education for teaching outdoors [and] identified eight themes in the reviewed studies, of which we detail and discuss the four most frequently mentioned: collaboration, creativity, strategies for outdoor learning and sustainability.”

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A Compass to Nature – The US Fish and Wildlife Service has produced a teaching guide to the use of the outdoors to help facilitate environmental and climate change education.  It says: The Compass to Nature is a group of four components for building relationships with nature. As a navigational compass enables us to guide our way outside, the four points of the Compass to Nature provide unfailing direction for all who seek to lead others in the development of a connected, caring relationship with the world we live in. Unifying the four components is the sense of wonder promoted by Rachel Carson in her book, The Sense of Wonder. The authors argue that wonder or awe is the primary means by which the human heart is connected to nature, and the glue which holds the other four compass components together. Their conclusion is that if you leave out wonder, then relationship building with nature is ineffective.

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July Deadline – The OVO Foundation is looking for applications for its Climate Changers programme.  It is on the lookout for projects that will help it deliver its vision: to give every child and young person a greener, fairer world to grow up in.  This is underpinned by two goals: [i] equip less advantaged children and young people with improved skills, knowledge, and confidence to take action on sustainability issues and contribute to building sustainable communities; and [ii] ensure less advantaged children and young people live in a sustainable community with increased access to green spaces and opportunities.  The deadline for applications is July 22nd.  More detail here.

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Either Ore –  The mordern world (batteries, phones, laptops, electric cars …) depends on the metal cobalt, and about 70% of the world’s supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo.  Our consumption of this (now vital) metal is expected by the International Monetary Fund to go up 6-fold by 2050.  Most (~85%) of the Congo cobalt comes from large copper mines but the rest comes from so-called artisanal mining where individuals dig for the stuff often in terrible conditions.  The Economist has an article that explores artisanal mining demonstrating the intimate connection between environmental education and global learning.

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Avoid Shift Improve – Max Callaghan, University of Leeds, argues in The Conversation that his university’s research shows the best changes families can make to cut carbon emissions and reduce the effects of climate change.  He writes: “… many people aren’t aware of the most effective ways to do this.  Thankfully, the latest report by the UN climate change panel IPCC devotes a chapter to all the ways in which changes in people’s behaviour can accelerate the transition to net zero.”  The Leeds report grouped actions into three areas: avoiding consumption, shifting consumption and improving consumption.  Many of these argument applies to schools as well as homes.

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Tyger Tyger ­ WWF shines a spotlight on the tiger.  The largest of all Asian cats, tigers can weigh several hundred pounds.  As a large predator feeding on plant eaters such as deer, the tiger plays a key role in maintaining healthy ecosystems. In the last 100 years, poaching and habitat destruction has caused tiger populations to decline dramatically with today, there being just a few thousand tigers in the wild.  Tyger Tyger, burning bright, / In the forests of the night; / What immortal hand or eye, / Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

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Bay Watch – July 14th was Shark Awareness Day.  This was not another alert to swimmers, but an unashamed celebration of sharks.  From being killed because humans are sharkaphobic, to being harvested for their meat and fins, sharks are on the list of endangered species, which is bad for them as well as for the marine environment.  To search for your inner shark, you might take the Shark Personality Quiz

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Happy Birthday – November 15 2020 is the day the world population will rise over 8 billion, according to the UN.  António Guterres, UN secretary-general, said “This is an occasion to celebrate our diversity, recognise our common humanity, and marvel at advancements in health that have extended lifespans and dramatically reduced maternal and child mortality rates.”  The UN’s Population Prospects 2022 report says that India will overtake China as the world’s most populous nation in 2023, reaching 1429 billion people.  China will then have a mere 1.426 billion.  The global population growth is now at its lowest rate since 1950 with women having an average of 2.3 children, down from five 70 years earlier. The figure is expected to fall to 2.1 by 2050.  

1 Comment

  1. Good day
    I would like to introduce myself. I write and illustrate scientific literature. I have self-published two books. My books:
    1. Aura in the sky is a story about air pollution and how it impacts our lives.
    2. The secret life of poop illustrates what happens when we flush the toilet until the water reaches the waste water plant.

    I have also developed a website http://www.2cscienceart.co.za where I publish scientific articles. I am based in St Helena Bay on the West coast of South Africa.

    Kind regards
    René Toesie
    cell number: +27794545911

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