Climate Education – Following the DfE’s publication of its draft sustainability and climate change strategy for the education and children’s service systems, it is seeking further engagement and feedback before final publication in April 2022. DfE has also produced a video overview of its longer-term strategy plans and longer-term vision. This engagement will be through a User Group, a Youth Panel, and 5 Working Groups: climate education; green skills; education estates; operations and supply chains; and data and research. The Working Group on climate education is to meet for the first time on Wednesday December 9th. We’re pleased to say that NAEE President, Justin Dillon, is a member of the groupas is one of our NAEE Fellows.
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A Cautious Welcome – NAEE Vice President Mick Waters has an article in the latest edition of Schools Week. It begins: “Nadhim Zahawi’s launch of the DfE Sustainability and Climate Change Strategy at COP26 is surely welcome. Education is a vital vehicle for addressing climate change and the security of the future of life on the planet. It is, however, an announcement full of ironies. …”
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World-leading Education – Click here to read a summary of the response from Teach the Future to the DfE’s draft climate and sustainability strategy whose vision is that the UK will be the world-leading education sector in sustainability and climate change by 2030. Teach the Future says that although it’s positive to see that the DfE is making some substantive progress on climate education and reducing the carbon footprint of education, the strategy falls short of what is needed in three key areas:
–1– a commitment to integrating climate and ecology into non-STEM subjects at secondary level, and plans for doing this in further or higher education.
–2– a commitment to provide funding for the establishment of, and support for, youth voice climate boards in education providers, and the establishment of a Youth Climate Endowment Fund to fund youth-led climate and environmental social action
–3– a commitment to retrofitting the ~27,000 existing schools to net zero much earlier than 2050, which is the legal minimum.
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Climate Change Communication and Education – The Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) project is seeking to fund case studies of innovative climate change communication and education. MECCE is a partnership of over 80 academics and agencies, including the IPCC, UNFCCC, and UNESCO working to tackle the challenge of quickly advancing climate change communication and education globally. Funding is available for the development of the case study. More details here.
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A Flowing Tide~ The latest issue of The Elephant Times is now available from Tide~ on-line. It has a focus on the global pandemic. This edition of is the first of a new series contributing to the Connecting Dialogues project. This is a new Tide~ network initiative that seeks to support learning about the global dynamic of pandemic issues. See Page 3 for more details and to see how to get involved. And click hereto get free access to all of Tide~’s long list of publications.
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Education Pledges – The Our Shared World coalition are running a series of online events to discuss policies and commitments arising from COP26. The next is on December 13th [ 5 to 6pm ] and will focus on education pledges. Speakers to be announced. Registration details will appear here.
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EE US HE – This is the part of the abstract of a newly published paper in Environmental Education Research: “As the COVID-19 pandemic surged and resurged across the world, members of a higher education professional group associated with the North American Association of Environmental Education met online to discuss challenges and strategies to cope with the sudden shifts to remote learning. Six environmental education instructors, from public universities across the USA, compiled and analyzed their teaching experiences, considering impacts on pedagogical strategies common to environmental education. The analysis revealed positive, negative, and mixed impacts on content mastery, skills development, group work, place-based learning, teaching observations, student teaching experiences, and professional development. …” To read the whole paper, click here.
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PhD Opportunity – How does engaging with nature impact on the health and wellbeing of children from disadvantaged communities? Click here to find out this PhD opportunity at Cardiff which forms part of the evaluation of WWT’s Generation Wild project.
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Climate Kick-Start – A week of activities took place during COP26 and gave students in London schools the chance to get involved. There was a range of hands-on free events, and highlights included tree planting with the Conservation Volunteers, a sustainable fashion workshop with London College of Fashion, a clean tech careers taster with the Royal Institution, and a pedal powered day with Sustrans. The week concluded with a Climate Kick-Start Prizegiving hosted with Bloomberg at the Barbican Centre.
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Forest News – You can find the latest from the Forest School Association here, and from Our Bright Future here.
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Population Matters – Our World in Data has handy cartograms to help us think about how global populations are changing.
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Red Listing – Swifts, ptarmigan, house martins, greenfinches, purple sandpipers and Bewick’s swans have been added to the red list of birds that are of highest conservation concern. More than a quarter of the UK’s regularly seen 245 bird species are now red-listed. The number of species on the list has risen over 25 years from 36 to 70. There are more details on the BTO website and Juliet Vickery BTO’s Chief Executive, and Honorary Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia, explores the issues in The Conversation.
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Weasels v. Voles – There have been calls to protect the weasel after a Sussex University study (reported by the Mammal Society) indicated a 50% decline in numbers since the 1970s. A letter in the Times from the Environment and Sustainability Institute at the University of Exeter said that the study indicates “a levelling off in weasel populations since the 1990s. Weasel abundance is driven by food availability and is affected only locally and temporarily by trapping. To increase the number of weasels, increasing the availability of voles would contribute much more than species protection. A case for protection of weasels from trapping can be made but this is based on ethics and welfare, and not on the grounds of conservation.”
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Communicating – On January 19th Communicate will be bringing communication professionals together for a series of roundtable conversations on 6 key topics: [i] Putting nature at the heart of climate change communication; [ii] Learning from COP26 about better partnerships with young people; [iii] Engaging people with trees, woodlands and deforestation; [iv] Transparency, accountability, and avoiding greenwashing; [v] Breakthrough communication techniques and campaigns from COP; and [vi] From international declarations to local action. These will be recorded and shared with the Communicate community in a series of papers, audio resources and toolkits. If you’d like to nominate someone to take part in these conversations, contact savita@bnhc.org.uk as soon as possible.