EXPLORING BIODIVERSITY: A Guide for Educators Around the World

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There are thousands of examples of individuals,
schools, and communities working together to
solve biodiversity problems. They’re working to try
new agricultural techniques that conserve biodiversity,
forming citizen groups to restore habitats,
writing letters to elected officials, educating their
communities, and forming community stewardship
committees. By identifying issues in your
community and region, and working with others,
you can start to make a difference at a local level.
Learning the Three C’s
Conserving biodiversity and finding solutions to
the intricately connected problems of environmental
degradation, social decline, and economic
instability will mean feeling about, thinking
about, and doing things differently than we have
before. It will mean fostering more compassion for
other species and a kind of reverence for living
systems too complex for us ever to understand
fully. It will mean educating ourselves about the
connections among all elements of biodiversity
and between a healthy natural environment and a
healthy human society. It will mean coming to
terms with the consequences of our behaviour for
other people and other species. Conserving biodiversity
will also require us to incorporate the
concepts of social equity and ecological integrity
into how we do business. It will challenge us, in
every aspect of our lives, to work toward creating
a more sustainable society—one in which human
needs are in balance with the needs of other
living things. Above all, it will mean developing
not only a conservation ethic but also an entire
belief system that honours the integrity of the
Earth and of ourselves.
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