New Conversations – The latest edition of Elephant Times is now available. This shares the experience and some of the ideas from a conference that brought students and teachers together from a variety of schools in South Wales. Recent Tide~ work has focused on the educational implications of the climate crisis and the conference evolved from that work. The challenge now is to stimulate new conversations about those implications, in the education community and with organisations engaged with climate change issues.
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Abstract Aspects like Climate Change – On November 14th1330 to 1500, EAUC (Scotland) will explore integrating environmental sustainability into learning and teaching. They say:
“While sustainability is all about the interconnections between the social, economic, and environmental, we have heard some of you say that specifically integrating complex environmental topics into teaching is tricky. While there is some great stuff happening, for example around tangible issues such as waste and recycling, addressing more abstract-feeling aspects like climate change or biodiversity can feel daunting when we don’t feel like we are experts in these fields. In this, we want to explore ways you can build confidence to integrate these topics into your teaching – both through gaining knowledge as well as through using teaching methods that allow you to feel comfortable with not knowing everything. We’ll have speakers from university and college contexts talking about their work as well as facilitated discussions with your peers.”
But is climate change really “more abstract”?
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School Emissions – Zellar is a sustainability platform that helps organisations to take climate action which has just launched a new programme for UK schools. The programme enables schools to measure their emissions, build a sustainability plan, track progress and engage pupils around it.
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Building Soul – Paul Heatherwick’s podcast, Building Soul: How to Ditch Boring and Humanise Our Cities, is available on BBC Sounds. The programme says: “Heatherwick puts forward his manifesto for a future where places are built around the idea of emotion as a function – full of character, built to last, and designed to serve the passers-by. This isn’t romantic thinking. It’s a practical vision for a better future that benefits everyone. A call to humanise our world”. This links to recent blogs by David Dixon and Ellie Cole.
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Environmental Progress – Michael Shellenberger is a Time Magazine Hero of the Environment, and founder and president of Environmental Progress, an independent non-profit research organization. In a TEDx talk labelled “provocative”, he asks whether, although environmentalists have long promoted renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind farms to save the climate, might they actually be technologies that destroy the environment?
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Citizens Assemble –Murder in the Citizen’s Jury is a 25 minutes long one-actor [Jack Klaff] play which explores the ethical dilemma of a Director of Public Prosecutions who must decide whether to prosecute the murder. Drawing upon the tradition of ‘theatre-in -education’, the objective is to use the play to raise awareness of citizen’s assemblies which are often touted as useful forums for exploring environmental issues. The event will be live-streamed from 3pm on 11th November. You will be able to view the performance and Q&A and participate in the Q&A via the chat. For those able to attend in person at the University of Southampton, it is free but registration is required. This is part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science.
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Plastics and Wisdom – earthday.org has a range of features and stories about environmental issues; a topical Halloween issue is the environmental wisdom of witches, and there’s a special focus on plastics. The section dealing with climate education has an international perspective.
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Contrasting Natures – A Nature Notebook entry in last week’s Times recorded a few conservation success stories. These included:
“Great bustards join an impressive list of birds that were once extinct and are now returning to our countryside. Spoonbills had their best breeding year ever at Holkham in Norfolk, fledging 90 chicks, and are expanding elsewhere. Great white, little, and cattle egrets are now widespread. The winter roost of cattle egrets at Shapwick Heath in Somerset now numbers an incredible 600 birds. Glossy ibis and cranes now breed in East Anglia and birds of prey that were rare in my youth such as peregrine, marsh harrier, red kite, sparrowhawk and buzzard are now much more widespread.”
It also noted the “bleaker story” set out in the recent State of Nature report.
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More or Fewer? – Participants of the Big Butterfly Count saw more butterflies this year than in the previous four summers. In total, over 1.5 million butterflies and day-flying moths were recorded from 14 July to 6 August. After an all-time low in 2022 of just nine individual butterflies spotted per count, this year saw an increase to 12 butterflies recorded on average count. However, this is in contrast with what long-term trends which show that since the Big Butterfly Count started 13 years ago, many species have significantly decreased. Butterfly Conservation says that this is a further warning sign that nature everywhere is in crisis – butterflies, as well as forming a vital part of the food chain, are considered significant indicators of the health of the environment.
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Birds and Glass – Paul Dobraszczyk, UCL, writing in The Conservation says that by adding stickers to glass walls, and dimming lights, cities can be safer places for migrating birds.
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202,000,000 – This is the average number of chickens that get slaughtered every day across the world for food. Our World in Data has other daily slaughter data (2021 figures) including for ducks (11.8m), pigs (3.8m), sheep (1.7m).
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Disease Imports – The Woodland Trust says:
“The number of tree pests and diseases entering the UK from other parts of the world has increased dramatically in recent decades. Since 2013, the Observatree project has established itself as an early warning system for tree health, creating a network of specialist volunteers from across the UK who are trained to identify and report tree pests and diseases of concern. Volunteers remain an integral part of Observatree. Since the project launched 10 years ago, more than 20,000 tree health reports have been submitted and 30,000 volunteer hours logged.”
There’s more here from the Trust.
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Nature Markets – The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB, Woodland Trust and National Trust have today published a set of principles for ensuring nature markets truly deliver for nature, climate and people. Nature markets are based on the sale of environmental credits such as carbon credits, biodiversity units, nutrient credits, and natural flood management payments. They are generated by nature-based solutions that have the capacity to deliver multiple benefits for society and the environment, as well as opening up new income streams for rural communities and farmers. The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB, Woodland Trust and National Trust say that the current lack of regulation for these emerging markets has led to concerns that poor quality or low ambition schemes could create a wild west that allows certain industries or businesses to greenwash, while also missing out on opportunities to maximise benefits for nature and people.