We begin with some good news amid the virus gloom. The results from the 2019 Butterfly Conservation UK butterfly monitoring scheme show that butterflies bounced back last summer with their best year since 1997. Further, just over half of UK butterfly species showed higher population levels in 2019 compared with 2018. click here for the full results. Butterfly Conservation also has…
Today’s post is by Ben Ballin and Richard Dawson and takes the form of a dialogue about the nature of a green curriculum. “It is interesting when you get quoted in someone else’s article. This happened to Ben, when he was approached by a curious journalist who was writing an article on ‘green schools’, having read a…
“When things get back to normal, we’ll …”. How many times have you heard that recently? It’s a fervent wish of countless millions of people, and yet, what will it look like? Will every closed small business re-open? Will every job still exist? Will all charities survive the virus? The financial health of the charity sector (which contains…
This is a link to a long article on the Ensia website by John Vidal, its environment editor. It’s not about COVID-19 specifically, but about the increasing risks of pathogens crossing species boundaries to humans. Here are a few extracts to give a sense of what the article covers: “Mayibout 2 is not a healthy place. The 150…
A week on and the country is in many ways barely recognisable as the changes to our lives because of COVID-19 take effect. Schools are mostly shut, but are supporting students learning at home, and universities are teaching on-line. Teach the Future has suspended its campaign, acknowledging that now is not the time to be trying…
A recently-published report by Natural England concludes that supporting human and environmental health, needs both contact and connection with nature. Furthermore, a new national measure of nature connectedness shows connection to nature is good for people’s psychological wellbeing and pro-environmental behaviours. Natural England says that nature connectedness is a relatively new and measurable psychological construct that describes…
Deep into March, there seems little room in the press or on TV to think of anything other than the effects of COVID-19, and we wish all our readers and their families and colleagues well in the coming weeks (and probably months). Although NAEE is a very small part of the complexity of the UK economy,…
A new paper from the Christina Kwauk at the Brookings Institute – Roadblocks to quality education in an era of climate change – has four goals. – First, it sets out to illustrate why more attention to, and investment in, education as a means of reducing risk and increasing informed action about climate change is needed, “lest the technofixes of…
Teach the Future is a joint campaign run by UKSCN and SOS-UK students to repurpose the education system around the climate emergency and ecological crisis. Are you interested in joining the project team as a volunteer? There are currently about 50 students involved, aged 13-25, and the group is run via Slack technology. They are running 3…
This is another update from Natural England this time in relation to Nature Connectedness. . Human-nature relationships in context. Experiential, psychological, and contextual dimensions that shape children’s desire to protect nature M Giusti – PLoS ONE, 2019 What relationship with nature shapes children’s desire to protect the environment? This study crosses conventional disciplinary boundaries to explore this question.…
Students from Teach the Future are meeting Secretary of State Gavin Williamson at 0830 this morning to press their case for a government-commissioned inquiry into how the whole of the English formal education system is preparing students for the climate emergency and ecological crisis. We’ll bring you updates when possible. ∫∫∫ Tuesday update: The meeting was cancelled owing…
The secret life of Flies is a very enjoyable read. McAlister shows her love of this group of insects and, through her chatty style, opens up a secret world to us. Her factual information is punctuated with many anecdotes, often amusing, on the behaviour and role of detrivores and cophrages, necrophages and vegetarians, fungivores, predators…