6000 Young People –The Lord Mayor of Birmingham, Councillor Muhammad Afzal, will be visiting Martineau Community Gardens in Birmingham on March 21st to celebrate over 6,000 school children who’ve taken part in environment education visits in the city. Councillor Afzal will meet children from St Catherine of Siena School on a trip funded throlugh the Hugh Kenrick Days Bursary scheme which is run by the National Association for Environmental Education. Juliette Green, who teaches in the gardens and is part of NAEE, said: “These trips are a wonderful way of bringing children into new environments and encouraging them to take part in all kinds of activities, from pond dipping to plant identification. The natural environment links with every aspect of the school curriculum, from science and geography to art and literacy and helps children expand their horizons beyond the classroom.”
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A Different Lens – The latest in Monash University’s exploratory series, a different lens, looks at the climate crisis, education and what we need to do to learn our way out of it. Lead author, Alan Reid, says: “There are things we need to unlearn, learn and relearn about conditions for living together on this planet in just, equitable and sustainable ways.” The introduction notes that the climate crisis exemplifies two big tasks for climate literacy: [i] to ensure that culturally-relevant climate change education helps us all understand this problem from wherever we may start in facing the climate crisis; and [ii] that any talk of climate change education needs both careful design and concrete support to ensure it resonates, is rigorous and broad-based,and is of the highest quality to do justice to the degree of existential threat the episode illustrates.
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One School at a Time – Leadership For Sustainability: Saving the Planet One School At a Time, is the new book by Dr David Dixon, a primary head for twenty years. The book is an account of David’s journey, from being trained in environmental education in the 1970s, through the development and regression of support for this agenda in the education system. He describes how school leaders can grasp the challenge and use sustainability to achieve the traditional educational aim of school improvement while fulfilling their role as advocates of a healthy future for their pupils, who deserve it. Here’s a sample chapter. David will be discussing his book at the University of Gloucestershire on April 7th. Details here.
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Carbon Colonialism – Laurie Parsons (Royal Holloway University of London) writes in The Conversation about our T-shirts which might have travelled one-and-a-half times round the world to reach us. She says: “Producing a single T-shirt relies on coordinating an array of interconnected supply chains, usually spanning multiple nations. This globalised system is a marvel of human ingenuity and logistics. But it also can obscure the true carbon emissions of the products we use, raising serious questions about their sustainability. And it enables wealthier countries to effectively outsource their emissions to less wealthy ones via “carbon colonialism”. Let’s say your T-shirt’s label reads: “Cambodia”. It’s fair to assume that this clearly indicates its origin. But that’s not the whole story. …”
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Geographers Rising – The Royal Geographical Society has a report on who is (and is not) studying geography at GCSE, A Level and university in England. It was published in 2020 but we missed it first time around. Headline findings include that entries into geography GCSE increased strongly since from (169,000 in 2010 to 239,000 in 2018). This increase in entries came predominantly from groups who had been less likely to take geography GCSE previously – notably, disadvantaged pupils, minority ethnic bacground students, and those with lower prior attainment. Increasing entries in the state sector more than offset declining GCSE entries in the independent sector between 2010 and 2017.
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Andrew Stables – As we noted a few weeks ago, January saw the untimely death of Professor Andy Stables. Andy’s obituaryhas now been published by the University of Bath. It provided insights into his great contribution of our understanding of the human – nature relationship.
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Another Beacon at Bath – Here’s an update from the Bath Beacon which is a network of academics and students from across the University. It has three main research activities that participatory methods. Each activity has a research team which meets every two/ three weeks. Two are adopting a novel Living Labs methodology which fosters dialogue, engagement and action through interdisciplinary, intergenerational community and cross stakeholder participation. In Living Labs users map challenges and opportunities and co-create novel solutions for a just transition to Living Well Now and by 2050.
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The Earth Turns – This year the vernal equinox fell on March 20th around mid-afternoon. Explaining Science has more on this complex and highly symbolic phenomenon.
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Earth Hour – This year, Earth Hour falls on March 26th. It was started in 2007 by WWF and partners as a symbolic lights-out event in Sydney to raise awareness of climate change. It is held every year on the last Saturday of March, and has suppoprters in more than 190 countries to become.
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Largest Lesson – The world’s largest lesson says imagine what we could do if we all learnt about the climate and environmental crisis and our education taught us how to be changemakers. Make a difference by joining our campaign! Write a 100 word message explaining why climate education matters to you. Details here.
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Currency, Security and Climate – Juni Learning has a new module in its Future of Curriculum series. This is focused on climate change, cryptocurrency, and cybersecurity and is aimed at students aged 12-14 and 15-18 – to give them the foundation skills and understanding they’ll need for these budding industries of the future.
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More from IIED – The International Institute for Environment and Development’s latest newsletter is here. There’s a focus on research to assess the effectiveness of child-centred community-based adaptation: What works where, why – and what needs to be done differently? – and a feature on the UK in relation to the Paris Agreement.
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An Ecological Goldmine – A 2018 report found that the Isle of Purbeck had the most mammal diversity in Britain, and a feature in the latest Inkcap Journal describes it as an “ecological goldmine”. In February 2020 seven landowners joined their plots into a connected area of 3,331 hectares to be managed as a single nature reserve. The National Trust, Natural England, Dorset Wildlife Trust, RSPB, Forestry Commission, Amphibian and Reptile Conservation and the privately-owned Rempstone Estate continue to manage their respective areas, but now have a common vision.
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Natur am Byth – Nature Forever is a new project in Wales funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and the Welsh government. It’s aim is to deliver the country’s largest natural heritage and outreach programme to save species from extinction and reconnect people to nature. The BBC has further details together with a profile of the Snowdonia Hawkweed.