Cecilia Lundholm

Learning for resilience? Exploring learning opportunities in biosphere reserves

The interdependence of society and nature, the inherent complexity of social–ecological systems, and the global deterioration of ecosystem services provide the rationale for a growing body of literature focusing on social–ecological resilience – the capacity to cope with, adapt to and shape change – for sustainable development. Processes of learning‐by‐doing and multiple‐loop social learning across knowledge systems and different levels of decision‐making are envisioned to strengthen this capacity, combined in the concept of adaptive governance. This study explores how learning for resilience is stimulated in practice; investigating learning opportunities provided in UNESCO‐designated biosphere reserves (BRs). A global survey (N = 148) and qualitative interviews with key informants of selected BRs (N = 10) reveal that a subset (79) of the BRs serve as ‘potential learning sites’ and: (1) provide platforms for mutual and collective learning through face‐to‐face interactions; (2) coordinate and support the generation of new social–ecological knowledge through research, monitoring and experimentation; and (3) frame information and education to local stewards, resource‐based businesses, policy‐makers, disadvantaged groups, students and the public. We identify three BRs that seem to combine, in practice, the theoretically parallel research areas of environmental education and adaptive governance. We conclude that BRs have the potential to provide insights on the practical dimension of nurturing learning for social–ecological resilience. However, for their full potential as learning sites for sustainability to be realized, both capacity and incentives for evaluation and communication of lessons learned need to be strengthened.

Resilience and learning: a conspectus for environmental education

There has been an increasing interest in how environmental education contributes to sustainability dating from the 1977 UNESCO conference in Tbilisi to the current Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, which in 2009, reached mid term. There is also a growing interest and concern in the complexity, uncertainty and changing nature of social–ecological systems and how sustainability is understood. Learning and resilience figure dominantly in both these trends. This contribution to the collection provides a conceptual overview of environmental learning, resilience in ecology and resilience in human development. The manners in which these conceptual areas are beginning to coalesce are discussed and their intersection in environmental education is illustrated in the context of formal schooling, organisations and society. Key research questions for environmental education emerge about its critical role in enhancing adaptive capacity and contributing to the resilience of social–ecological systems.

Resilience in social–ecological systems: the roles of learning and education

Resilience thinking challenges us to reconsider the meaning of sustainability in a world that must constantly adapt in the face of gradual and at times catastrophic change. This volume further asks ...

Environmental Education, Resilience, and Learning: Reflection and Moving Forward.

Social–ecological resilience, a rapidly expanding area of scholarship internationally, seeks to understand how society and ecosystems mediate, adapt, and learn from change. This special issue is a pioneering attempt to explore the overlap of resilience, learning, and environmental education, in which four broad perspectives have emerged: (1) environmental education and learning may foster attributes of resilient social–ecological systems (e.g., biological diversity, participatory forms of governance, short feedback loops); (2) environmental education should not be viewed as an isolated means to address environmental issues, but rather as a complex and multifaceted part of a larger system of interacting structures and processes; (3) resilience thinking at multiple levels suggests a ‘way out’ of the instrumental/intrinsic split in environmental education; and (4) parallels among concepts used in learning theory and social–ecological systems resilience may contribute to discussions of transferability of ideas across disciplines. Whereas the authors are overwhelmingly positive about the potential contributions of environmental education and learning to resilience, in this endpiece to the special issue we offer cautions in suggesting the need to look for counter examples and to be concise in the use of terminology. Finally, we pose several research questions that might guide further work in this area, including: What are the outcomes of different approaches to environmental education relative to resilience attributes, such as social capital and ecosystem services? How do environmental education programs situated in management practice impact learning and values at the level of individuals and organizations? What role do different types of environmental education play in governance?

Case studies—exploring students' meanings and elaborating learning theories

In this article the use of case studies for investigating undergraduate students’ and Ph.D. students’ interpretations of environmental course content and environmental research is critically examined. The case studies were carried out with the intention of exploring students’ meanings, as well as elaborating learning theories. The qualitative data were analysed and described from an intentional perspective, in that we ascribed meaning to the students’ actions and utterances in terms of intent. Generalizations on the results are discussed from a theoretical perspective and interest.

Learning about environmental issues in engineering programmes: A case study of first‐year civil engineering students’ contextualisation of an ecology course

Describes how first‐year civil engineering students interpreted the content and structure of an ecology course. Students’ learning processes were analysed from an intentional perspective, i.e. a perspective that takes into account the students’ educational aims and conceptions of the study situation. Interviews were carried out with six civil engineering students who had taken the ecology course. Classroom observations were carried out and the dialogue between the lecturers and the students recorded. Interviews were transcribed and analysed from an intentional perspective, i.e. meaning is ascribed to the students’ actions and utterances in terms of intent. Students contextualised the content of the ecology course in different ways – within natural science, cultural, social and political, applied and professional, and existential contexts. Students found the content of the ecology course to be a question of value judgement. Also, among the students there were feelings of accusation on behalf of engineers as professionals. Learning processes among the students were analysed in terms of contextual awareness and contextual inconsistency. Students mainly enhanced their knowledge in the sense that they tended to elaborate concepts solely on an empirical level and learned more facts. Suggests that environmental issues can be seen and dealt with from natural science, social science and philosophical perspectives, and that it is important that these different perspectives are explicitly addressed on a meta‐level. The tendency to enhance the amount of content matter to be taught without considering the meta‐level issues can cause the students problems in their efforts to learn. Suggested that the premises for teaching certain content should be made explicit by the teacher. To know why certain content has been included in the teaching may be of considerable help for the students in formulating relevant learning projects.

What Is Environmental Learning

In this chapter we present a brief discussion of how the term ‘environmental learning’ has been defined and explained in the literature, and the complex range of activities, interests, contexts and purposes that it can encompass. We then detail what we mean and how we engage with the term, by discussing the who, what, where, how, and why of environmental learning. For each of these we illustrate how the focus of this book (which arises from the empirical contexts upon which it is based) in some ways reflects the diversity of environmental education (as with the areas of content addressed), but in others is quite narrowly focused on specific aspects (as with our emphasis on formal settings).

Climate change and costs: investigating students’ reasoning on nature and economic development

The tensions between environmental protection and economic growth are critical to future well-being, and it is therefore important to understand how young people conceptualize these tensions. The aim of the present study is to explore students’ solutions to the dilemma of economic development and mitigating climate change, with regard to societal responses to the challenge of climate change. The study was conducted in China’s Green Schools. Green School is an international long-term programme with the aim of increasing students’ knowledge of environmental issues, and transferring this knowledge into positive actions to affect the wider community. The data were obtained through semi-structured pre- and post-interviews with 15–16-year-old students in three groups (12 students) from Green Schools in the Beijing area. The results show that students’ discussions focused exclusively on economic growth and social welfare. Students seem to believe that environmental problems are inevitable, nature is a ‘box’ of resources, and economic development is necessary in order to sustain and even improve nature. Therefore, there is no dilemma between economic development and environmental protection. The paper ends with a discussion on research and implications for teaching climate change.

Stakeholder participation and sustainable fisheries: an integrative framework for assessing adaptive comanagement processes

Adaptive comanagement (ACM) has been suggested as the way to successfully achieve sustainable environmental governance. Despite excellent research, the field still suffers from underdeveloped frameworks of causality. To address this issue, we suggest a framework that integrates the structural frame of Plummer and Fitzgibbons’ “adaptive comanagement” with the specific process characteristics of Senecah’s “Trinity of Voice.” The resulting conceptual hybrid is used to guide the comparison of two cases of stakeholder participation in fisheries management—the Swedish Co-management Initiative and the Polish Fisheries Roundtable. We examine how different components of preconditions and the process led to the observed outcomes. The analysis shows that despite the different cultural and ecological contexts, the cases developed similar results. Triggered by a crisis, the participating stakeholders were successful in developing trust and better communication and enhanced learning. This can be traced back to a combination of respected leadership, skilled mediation, and a strong focus on deliberative approaches and the creation of respectful dialogue. We also discuss the difficulties of integrating outcomes of the work of such initiatives into the actual decision-making process. Finally, we specify the lessons learned for the cases and the benefits of applying our integrated framework.

Urban Landscapes as Learning Arenas for Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Management

Using examples from Asia, Africa, and North America, we demonstrate how restoration and stewardship projects, including those with significant community engagement, provide opportunities for environmental and biodiversity learning in cities. Although research on such programs is in its initial stages, several studies show positive impacts of urban environmental education and related field science inquiry experiences on participant environmental attitudes, awareness of urban nature, science understanding, and self-efficacy, with greater effects correlated with degree of involvement in hands-on, field-based experiences. In addition, programs that actively engage participants in restoration and inquiry reflect social equity, participatory, and environmental principles central to global initiatives in environmental education and sustainability. Such projects also reflect current theories of learning including those focusing on the ways children construct understanding of phenomena they encounter in everyday life (constructivism) and those that describe learning as an outcome of interaction with the socio-cultural and bio-physical environment (social learning). While recognizing the importance of school-based learning, our case examples illustrate the myriad of out-of-school learning arenas connected to projects in which civil society groups, government, and volunteers collaboratively engage in environmental stewardship, such as pond restoration to create dragonfly habitat in Japanese cities, indigenous species restoration at the Edith Stephens Wetland Park in Cape Flats, South Africa, and urban community gardening in vacant lots and other degraded spaces in the USA. More formal restoration projects, such as the daylighting of the Cheonggye-cheon River in Seoul, South Korea, as well as botanic gardens that feature biological and cultural diversity, also integrate nature-based, cultural, historical, and science inquiry learning opportunities. Given that many urban environmental education projects are local in scope, partnerships with global initiatives such as the UN Education for Sustainable Development and the Convention for Biological Diversity Communication, Education and Public Awareness, and with NGOs, governments, and business, are needed to leverage these learning arenas to effect broader regional, national, and even global systemic change.