December 16th 2019

David Bellamy, who was NAEE President for many years, died last Wednesday.  He was a good fit with NAEE because of his interest in promoting environmental issues and educating (in the broadest sense) people about them, including through television (particularly ITV beginning in the late 1970s).  He was ahead of his time in this given that…

The latest from Natural England

Here’s a recent round up from Natural England of recent evidence and reports, policy agenda developments, large scale delivery sector initiatives, resources and news items from the UK and abroad.  This supports the Strategic Research Network for People and Nature to develop better coherence and collaboration in research and to improve links between research, policy and…

December 9th 2019

NAEE’s latest journal is now on the members’ page of the website.  Vol 122 was published in conjunction with the London Environmental Educators’ Forum [ LEEF ] with a focus on urban environmental & sustainability education.  In addition to the usual features, its contents included: Urban environmental & sustainability education as a space for social connections…

Resurrection Trust

Resurrection Trust is a book of “funny, dark, mad, bad, upbeat, downbeat and fantastical short stories about living sustainably”. They arose from the University of Southampton’s Green Stories writing competition.   The editor, Amanda Saint, says that the stories “showcase a myriad of different ideas about how humans can live more harmoniously with nature, and each…

COP 25 in Madrid

As we noted last week, The Economist has a new fortnightly summary of climate change issues.  Its first edition focused on the annual UN climate talks now being in Madrid. These are a prelude to next year’s COP26 in Glasgow when the nearly 200 countries that signed up to the Paris agreement in 2015 are expected to commit…

December 2nd 2019

Teach the Future has done an analysis of the election manifestos published so far.  Although there are few surprises, it would be an interesting exercise for older students to compare TTF’s analysis with their own readings of the huge number of promises being made.  ∫∫∫ . Meanwhile the European Parliament has declared a climate emergency and called…

November 25th 2019

The winners of the Bayer-LEAF Education Awards were announced last week. The Primary School Partnership award went to Non­ing­ton Farms Ltd “For a farm that has built and con­tin­ues to build a suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ship with pri­ma­ry schools and makes a valu­able and sus­tained con­tri­bu­tion to school life, both on and away from the farm.” The Secondary School Partnership award went…

Our leaders have been badly educated …

So said Zamzam Ibrahim, the NUS and SOS_UK President in her address to the recent NUS sustainability summit.   More fully, she said: “Our leaders are making bad decisions because they have been badly educated.”  This is how her talk begins: “SOS-UK is NUS’s brand new sustainability charity, created so we can go further and faster with our sustainability…

The waterside classroom

Emily Dyer is Education Services Coordinator at the Canal & River Trust.  She co-ordinates the Trust’s education programme ‘Explorers’, developing learning resources and working with schools and groups across England and Wales.  In this article, first published in Volume 119 of our journal, Environmental Education, Emily explores the work that the Trust does with local schools. The Canal &…

November 18th 2019

NAEE is now, along with a growing number of others, is a formal supporter of Teach the Future.  ∫∫∫   The UKSCN has a page of helpful advice for students planning action on November 29th.  It says: The UK Student Climate Network draws a lot of inspiration from the ideas and campaigning of Swedish 16 year old…