Planning education to care for the earth - IUCN Knowledge Network

Planning education to care for the earthPartnerships for general environmental literacyEnvironmental education is by no means the sole preserve of the formalschool system. A study by the Canadian Adult Education Associationshows that the major providers of education to adults are (in descendingorder): employers, community colleges, voluntary organizations, schoolboards, private schools, universities, unions and professional associations.Partnerships among these groups are needed.The Association of Community Colleges of Canada (ACCC) is using theenvironmental citizenship primers as the basis for programmes that could beimplemented at more than 700 campuses.A project focusing on ozone depletion is under way with the KEY(Knowledge of the Environment for Youth) Foundation. In this project,Transport Canada contributed two-thirds of the cost of a special printing ofthe primer on ozone depletion which has been distributed to teachers acrossCanada, along with a set of “Keynotes” on the subject. Other partners inthis project are Du Pont Canada, the Heating, Refrigerating and AirConditioning Institute of Canada (HRAI), and Friends of the Earth.The education programme has created partnerships with the Canadian NatureFoundation (a special edition of its newsletter on spaces and species) and theCanadian Parks Partnership, which now has environmental education in itsmission statement and is working in this field with Parks Canada.Since February 1993 environmental citizenship messages have beendisseminated through Environment Canada’s network of weather offices tomore than 250 media outlets. Through the Environmental CitizenshipMessages Program, media access the messages by contacting their localweather office or through subscriptions to national and regional newsagency services. The weather service offers a cost-effective and powerfulmass communication opportunity to promote environmental citizenship, andthe goal is to see whether the messages will become something Canadianslook for on a regular basis, just as they do weather reports. The messagesare also disseminated by national parks and national historic sites, throughthe Canadian Environmental Network and other channels.A sample environmental citizenship message:Tropical rainforests occupy only 6 percent of the Earth’ssurface, yet contain more than half the world’s species. Atpresent deforestation rates, up to one quarter of these speciesmay disappear by 2025. An environmental citizenshipmessage from Environment Canada.Partnerships for specialist trainingAs businesses are the leading providers of education to adult Canadians,100