Children, Citizenship and Environment

#SchoolStrike Edition

Bronwyn Hayward

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000191172
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Desarrollo sostenible

In this significantly revised second edition of Bronwyn Hayward's acclaimed book Children Citizenship and Environment, she examines how students, with teachers, parents, and other activists, can learn to take effective action to confront the complex drivers of the current climate crisis including: economic and social injustice, colonialism and racism. The global school strikes demand adults, governments, and businesses take far-reaching action in response to our climate crisis. The school strikes also remind us why this important youthful activism urgently needs the support of all generations.

The #SchoolStrike edition of Children Citizenship and Environment includes all new contributions by youth, indigenous and disability activists, researchers and educators: Raven Cretney, Mehedi Hasan, Sylvia Nissen, Jocelyn Papprill, Kate Prendergast, Kera Sherwood O' Regan, Mia Sutherland, Amanda Thomas, Sara Tolbert, Sarah Thomson, Josiah Tualamali'i, and Amelia Woods.

As controversial, yet ultimately hopeful, as it was when first published, Bronwyn Hayward develops her 'SEEDS' model of 'strong ecological citizenship' for a school strike generation. The SEEDS of citizenship education encourage students to develop skills for; Social agency, Environmental education, Embedded justice, Decentred deliberation and Self-transcendence. This approach to citizenship supports young citizens' democratic imagination and develops their 'handprint' for social justice.

This ground-breaking book will be of interest to a wide audience, in particular teachers and professionals who work in Environmental Citizenship Education, as well as students and community activists with an interest in environmental change, democracy and intergenerational justice.

1 Supporting the #SchoolStrike generation

[While] I was shocked that a young person like myself could bring thousands of young people together, in the back of my mind I thought, ‘this is who we are, this is who we have always been’.

(Okirano Tilaia, 17 years, Christchurch, March 2019)¹

On 15 March 2019, I had just finished speaking as the ‘token adult’ for a school strike for climate organised in Christchurch, New Zealand. A student stepped up to lead a large youthful crowd in singing the Sara Bareilles song, Brave; ‘Say what you wanna say/And let the words fall out/Honestly I wanna see you be brave’. As an adult bystander, it was hard not to feel deeply moved by the courage and determination of so many young citizens crowded into Christchurch’s Cathedral Square to protest inaction on climate. In the moments that followed, however, this youthful expression of courage and hope was abruptly curtailed as student strikers were hastily ushered out of the square amid emerging news reports of a horrific terror attack on two nearby Christchurch mosques, resulting in the murder of 51 people. Three days later, 17-year-old Okirano Tilaia, a student leader from a local high school where six extended community members lost their lives or were critically injured in the attacks, led a vigil for thousands of students. Writing later, Tilaia quoted Martin Luther King Jnr, ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can’, and spoke about why the ‘Students Uniting In Love’ vigil had involved large numbers of youth who demonstrated their support for affected families and rejection of racism through a range of actions including a spontaneous mass haka (performative dance used here to express solidarity, care and grief), waiata (song), karakia (prayers/incantations), candle lighting and laying messages and flowers outside the local mosques.²

The collision of these events, a youthful climate protest and student vigil, juxtaposed against the horror of a racially motivated terror attack, are not simply chances of historical moment. There is increasing recognition that the values of ecological care, compassion, intergenerational justice and social responsibility, which inform movements like, School Strike 4 Climate, Fridays for the Future. Students Uniting In Love and Black Lives Matter, stand in stark opposition to values of authoritarianism, white supremacy and other forces of oppression and hate.³

For students like Okirano Tilaia, the links between the struggle against climate change and the need for far-reaching social and economic transformation for a more just and sustainable future are obvious. When interviewed about the issues his generation faces he said, ‘(c)limate change is so important because we can’t think about the future if there is no future’, but he also identified other serious challenges including youth mental health:

New Zealand has one of the highest suicide rates in the world and if you think about it, it doesn’t make sense. In a country so beautiful and diverse, how do we have one of the highest suicide rates? I know that Pasifika young males have high suicide rates in New Zealand and it really just breaks my heart to see that. We’ve passed the point where we just talk about it and raise awareness, now it’s time to take action.⁴

Figure 1.1 Students Uniting In Love vigil, Christchurch, 19 March 2019

Credit: The Press/Stuff.co.nz

In this new and revised edition of, Children, Citizenship and Environment, we consider ways to support a diverse school strike generation as they learn the skills of democratic citizenship for troubled times. How can we support the capability of young citizens who must confront not only the risks of chaotic climate change but also work to transform the diverse social and economic drivers of injustice and suffering? In 2020 a Commission on Children’s Futures, supported by the World Health Organization and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) published a report in the Lancet with a grim message: despite significant improvements in infant survival, child nutrition and education over recent decades, today’s children face an ‘uncertain future’.⁵ Severe climate risks are interacting with ecological degradation, migration, growing inequality, conflict and ‘predatory commercial practices’ to ‘threaten the health and future of children in every country’.⁶ The Commission also expressed frustration that there has been little progress to advance the 2015 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to help children flourish in a liveable planet and called for the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to be ‘widely used to advocate for children’ in the context of the SDGs and to address the impacts of climate change and marketing on children/s health and wellbeing.⁷

In recent years, millions of school students in over 150 countries have followed in the footsteps of Swedish teenager, Greta Thunberg, by walking out of classrooms to protest climate inaction. Other young citizens have brought high-profile legal challenges against governments or begun new political movements.⁸ Indigenous Native American student activists have joined the campaigns for youth mental wellbeing with sustained protests against loss of land for oil pipeline pathways.⁹ A group of Māori and Pasifika rangatahi/youth, Te Ara Whatu, advocate for Indigenous community interests at UN climate talks,¹⁰ while thousands of Dhaka high school students have taken to the streets in dramatic protests over public transport.¹¹

Globally, public awareness about environmental degradation and climate change is at an all-time high and this awareness is particularly acute amongst young people living in urban communities. Increased public understanding of climate change is essential. The 2015 Paris Climate Agreement was a voluntary agreement signed by 197 governments that aims to hold the increase in global average temperatures to well below 2 °C and address poverty and inequality.¹² Rather than rely on international sanctions, however, the Paris Agreement requires domestic public pressure together with international scrutiny of emissions to ensure governments continue to increase their national commitments to reduce emissions over time.¹³ In this context, the world is relying on citizens who are aware of climate and environmental degradation to press for more action. But how can we support young citizens as they embark on a life time of initiating the kind of far-reaching social and economic change which the 2018 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Special Report on 1.5 °C, identified as being essential to hold global mean temperatures to just 2 °C, let alone 1.5 °C above the 1850s–1880s?¹⁴

Figure 1.2 School Strike 4 Climate protest, Dunedin, New Zealand, 2019

Credit: Paul Le Comte

In the course of my politics and climate policy research, I have been struck by the way young climate activists have widened public debate in recent years. Building on the legacy of protests by Indigenous communities, civil rights and environmental movements, the school strikes are helping to shift global public opinion away from a technical discussion amongst a relatively small community of activists, policy experts, industry leaders and scientists, towards a broader, moral debate about our individual and collective roles and responsibilities for a more sustainable future.¹⁵ We have known for a decade or more that we are now gambling with the futures of our children. By the time today’s 13 year olds are 40, in about 2050, if we continue the current trajectories of greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures are likely to be on average 2 °C warmer, and perhaps 4 or more degrees warmer overall by the time today’s teens are 80 years old. These temperatures are global averages compared to the 1850s and 1880s, and on the land where most people live, it will be far warmer with markedly increased frequency of deadly heat stress days.¹⁶ The amount of energy associated with raising the world’s temperature is also driving more severe, chaotic weather events with wide-ranging consequences, from damage to our coasts and cities, to food insecurity, the spread of disease and sea level rise.¹⁷ Rising carbon dioxide (CO₂) levels also has other complex effects, for example, as its dissolves into the ocean, it is rapidly changing the chemistry of seawater, lowering the water’s pH, making the ocean more acidic and in turn impacting marine ecology.¹⁸

However not everyone agrees that ‘skipping school’ is the best way to bring action to address the climate-related crises we face or that children should even be involved in the debates.¹⁹ Environmental educator David Sobel famously argues for ‘no (environmental) tragedies before fourth grade’.²⁰ He fears that many children lack the ‘cognitive skills and emotional maturity’ to help them cope with the daunting prospect of melting glaciers, storms, sea level rise, and the destruction of homes and habitats. In reality, this ecological grief is hard enough for adults, Sobel argues, let alone burdening children before they have developed a love of their local community and natural world. While I agree with Sobel in principle, today many children are either experiencing the impacts of climate change already or seeing climate disasters and related social and economic injustices nightly on news media. Our challenge is now to support young people as citizens who are already struggling with the burdens of eco-anxiety and the impact of a climate crisis.

As adults, we created or exacerbated these problems. We have to take action to address these issues. As youth allies, we also need to be more proactive and more engaged with the particularly complex pressures young citizens face. Young climate campaigners have defied the stereotypes that often portray children and youth as innocent, passive victims or apathetic individualists in a changing world. As school strikers march out onto city streets, they are also confronting some of the most significant forms of financial and political power in our world today. Their calls for action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions challenge those whose economic wealth has been built on material growth based on fossil fuels.²¹ They are also learning to face a challenging reality that many of the symptoms of chaotic climate change we are witnessing now have roots in processes and patterns of colonisation and domination of resources people and non-human nature.²² This is confronting even for adult environmentalists in the global North who are often privileged: highly educated, white, aging and middle class.²³ In many respects youth environmental activists groups face similar challenges of ensuring their membership is diverse and i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Endorsements
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Foreword by Roger Hart
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction by Tim Jackson
• 1. Supporting the #SchoolStrike generation
• 2. Neoliberalism and children’s everyday citizenship: ‘bowling with a sponsor’ or ‘DIY activism’?
• 3. Growing greener citizens? FEARS, SMART or SEEDS citizenship?
• 4. Social agency: learning how to make a difference with others
• 5. Environmental education for a chaotic climate
• 6. Embedded justice: learning about ecological rights and responsibilities
• 7. Decentred deliberation: can we strengthen democratic listening?
• 8. The social handprint, self-transcendence and critical hope
• Appendix
• Bibliography
• Index