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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 19 December 2024
This paper arose from an invitation from the Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education in the USA to contribute to a special journal issue on sustainability competencies in sustainability education. Much valuable work has been done on this topic area in recent years. However, in this paper, rather than outline what I consider important competencies, I wanted to take a deeper dive and suggest a frame of reference that might help nurture a more participative consciousness essential for our times. This is (what I later named) the Triang model of “Seeing, Knowing and Doing”, which implies that three interrelated shifts are required to generate an ecological paradigm. This framework – touched on elsewhere in this book – is elaborated in more detail here. Incidentally, it is somewhat reassuring to note that recognition of climate change has shifted – if still not sufficiently – since this piece was written. What follows is a slightly edited version of the original. Chapter 12 takes the discussion further with the theme of how to think ecologically.
At the time of writing, Britain is being subject to “the worst storms for 200 years”, an extraordinary battering with virtually endless rainfall, and widespread flooding and travel disruption, including the severing of the rail link to the South West where I live. It echoes extreme weather events in other parts of the world. Here, amidst the extensive news coverage of lakes and rivers (where there should be fields and roads) and of people flooded out their homes, there is only the most marginal acceptance by media and politicians that it “might be” related to climate change. Rather, there is a sense of shock and anger: how could this happen?
To many of us working long in the fields of environmental and sustainability education, there are no surprises here. The long-predicted signs of climate change have been evident for some years now – although the sudden onset, severity, and duration of the storms, which have been racing in from the Atlantic for nearly three months now, could not have been foreseen. However, the general reluctance in the country to acknowledge and accept that this weather pattern is in all probability a manifestation of climate change, is perhaps predictable.
However, it is clear to many that we are entering a different age, and a different world.
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