Environmental Sustainability Education in the Anthropocene

Dear Colleagues,

Exploring possibilities for sustainability education within the Anthropocene means to trace how humans became such a potent environmental force that a signature of all our doings, for good or ill, will be measurable in the layered rock for millions of years to come. By altering climate, landscapes, and seascapes, as well as flows of species, genes, energy, and materials, we have damaged our planet, many say beyond redemption. The impact of pollution, toxins, climate change, habitat destruction, overpopulation and human consumption means the sixth mass extinction in Earth’s history is under way, and it is thought to be more severe than previously feared. In realization of the damaged planet we have inherited, this Special Issue seeks to open up possibilities both theoretically and philosophically in order that we the Anthopoceneans are prepared for a future that lies ahead.

In Malone’s (2019) final chapter of her recent book Children in the Anthropocene, she argues there are many challenges (and limitations) of ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ as a means for addressing the impending ecological crisis: “Simple (or even complex) sustainability models fall short of explaining the complexities of messy entangled worlds” (p.254). Latour (2015) argues this story of sustainability is written “as if humans were still alone on stage, the only being who out of its own free will is in charge of apportioning space, land, money and value to the old Mother Nature” (p.6).

The work of reconfiguring sustainability education in the Anthropocene means going beyond a view of the political as confined to ‘humans’. Instead, geophysical forces, the non-living, the human, and more-than-human can all be actors contributing to a transition between two epochs. Recent literature in environmental sustainability/education has identified the naming of the Anthropocene, providing new possibilities for noticing and attending unknown worlds. Reconfiguring these possibilities as being in relatio -with the planet is compelling educators to acknowledge that our human fate is determined by the collective fate of a host of more-than-human entities we share the planet with. The argument posited by recent posthuman theoretical approaches to sustainability builds on a history of thought extending from deep ecology and eco/feminist/philosphical approaches that posit we have never been separate from nature. It raises the question of whether a history of emerging from anthropocentrism has thwarted the many attempts for sustainability education to move beyond its current focus.  Education plays a critical role in bringing attention to possibilities that articulate a collective relational response that does not perpetuate or transmit the cartograpies of humanism. To be effective, new theoretical and pedagogical approaches are needed that take into account the complex relations that exist between humans and more-than-human worlds. This Special Issue provides the space to explore the potenial and limitations of current approaches to environmental sustainability education in how it addresses the naming of the Anthropocene and will provide the opportunity for researchers to propose a rethinking of environmental sustainability education for the future.

Key areas for potential exploration in this Special Issue include:

• Re-theorising sustainability education in the Anthropocene;
• Philosophical approaches to climate change;
• Multispecies relations as responses to educational change;
• Speculative imaginaries to consider post-anthropocentric sustainable futures;
• Disrupting anthropocentrism, by applying post-anthropocentric pedagogical approaches to sustainability education;
• Rethinking environmental sustainability education and its relevance to blasted landscapes;
• Rewilding environmental sustainability education with non-human others;
• Reconfiguring environmental sustainability education as cartographies of Indigenous cosmopolitics.

References

Latour, B. Fifty Shades of Green. Presentation to the Panel on Modernism at the Breakthrough Dialog, Sausalito. 2015. Available online: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/downloads/00-BREAKTHROUGH-06-15_0.pdf (accessed on 12 November 2020).

Malone, K. Children in the Anthropocene: Rethinking Sustainability and Child Friendliness in Cities; Palgrave Macmillian: London, UK, 2019

Prof. Karen Malone
Dr. Tracy Young
Guest Editors

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• environmental sustainability education
• re-theorizing sustainability education in the Anthropocene
• philosophical approaches to climate change education
• speculating sustainable futures
• post-anthropocentric approaches to sustainability education
• multispecies relations and educational change
• Cartographies of Indigenous cosmopolitics