Search Results (22)

As the climate continues to warm, and municipal leaders look for cost-effective and timely approaches to urban sustainability, one increasingly sought-out approach is the use of tree canopy to cool neighborhoods. Despite widespread efforts to expand tree canopy in cities, an overwhelming body of evidence suggests that urban green space is declining across the U.S., yet little is known about the factors that propel these changes. Understanding the institutional and governance systems can help identify the opportunities for slow consistent declines. Using social network analysis (SNA) metrics, we examined stakeholder roles in power structures and decision-making processes within Portland, Oregon’s urban forest management. Our results reveal a highly decentralized urban forestry network (density = 0.0079), with weak cohesion (5.4%) among 162 stakeholders. Moving forward, while network governance may face obstacles from conflicting interests among community and interagency groups, transforming governance models at all levels will require developing periodic, collaborative urban forestry management plans to address nature-based planning challenges. These planning documents should strongly emphasize not only the prioritization of tree equity-related ordinances but also the optimization of eco-literacy and awareness through virtual reality (VR) technology. As a novel approach, immersive simulations demonstrate practical potential for showcasing urban forestry benefits in network governance outreach and consensus-building. Full article

To effectively mitigate the health impacts of climate change, future nurses must be equipped with the requisite knowledge and competencies. Knowing their levels of eco-literacy would help to make them more effective. Background/Objectives: This descriptive study will use a three-round, multicentre, modified e-Delphi survey to establish an expert panel’s consensus on the Climate, Health, and Nursing Tool’s (CHANT) item-level and scale-level content validity indices. It will also examine potential associations between the expert panel members’ sociodemographic and professional characteristics and their content validity index assessments of the CHANT. Methods: The study will be conducted in the French-speaking regions of Switzerland, running its three-round e-Delphi survey between January and April 2025. After each round, the CHANT’s overall scale-level and individual item-level content validity indices will be computed. Comparisons between different types of healthcare professionals’ profiles will also be conducted. Results: The three-round modified e-Delphi survey should allow the expert panel to reach a consensus on the CHANT’s overall content validity index. The tool should then be considered suitable for pilot testing. The first round brought together 16 experts from different regions, namely French-speaking Switzerland, France, and Belgium. Conclusions: To ensure that the nursing discipline is well positioned to meet future challenges, the development of eco-literacy must be integrated into nursing education. Ensuring the CHANT’s conceptual and psychometric validity will be essential in strengthening nursing competencies in and knowledge about planetary health and in implementing future educational interventions. Full article

Research on climate activism has predominantly focused on affluent regions of the Global North, often emphasizing public participation and protest while overlooking the experiences of youth in other contexts. This study addresses this gap by exploring everyday environmental activism and eco-literacy among young people in Bulgaria, a post-communist society. It challenges the prevailing top-down political frameworks that marginalize diverse forms of political participation. This study argues that young people’s environmental awareness, shaped by their lived experiences, reflects their engagement with consumerism and climate change and is expressed through various modes of participation, including the victim, voter, rejecter, and interpreter forms of agency. Drawing on ethnographic data from interviews, mapping activities, and short essays, this research examines how environmental identities are enacted in mundane ways that reflect young people’s levels of eco-literacy, focusing on a cohort from diverse socioeconomic backgrounds in both urban and rural contexts. The findings reveal the performances of everyday environmental activism and shed light on the liminal political positions youth navigate in their daily lives. This research contributes to education studies by offering insights into how young people’s everyday environmental activism and eco-literacy, rooted in their subjectivities, transcend traditional educational frameworks and provide a deeper understanding of how they learn to become environmental subjects in under-represented contexts. Full article

Eco-literacy, the ability to understand and apply ecological knowledge to foster sustainable living, is increasingly recognized as an essential educational objective. Traditionally linked to disciplines such as science and social studies, eco-literacy is now gaining traction in English language teaching (ELT) to align language instruction with global sustainability goals. While previous research has highlighted the importance of sustainability in education, there is a scarcity of studies on how eco-literacy can be effectively integrated into language learning. To address this gap, this study aims to explore ELT students’ perceptions of the impact of eco-literacy-focused writing activities on their language development and awareness of environmental issues. Employing a mixed-methods design, data were collected through pre-and post-tests on changes in students’ perceptions of eco-literacy-focused writing activities. Semi-structured interviews with a subset of participants offered qualitative insights into their experiences. The findings revealed significant changes in students’ perceptions, particularly in their understanding of environmental vocabulary and critical thinking related to eco-literacy. Writing tasks and discussions on ecological themes enhanced their engagement and understanding of global sustainability issues. However, challenges such as limited prior knowledge of environmental topics and the need for further training were identified. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on sustainable language education by demonstrating the pivotal role of integrating eco-literacy into ELT classrooms. It also provides practical recommendations for teacher training programs to develop pedagogical strategies promoting linguistic and environmental learning outcomes, ultimately preparing educators to address global issues in diverse teaching contexts. Full article

Background: As early as 1995, the Institute of Medicine suggested that nurses were inadequately prepared for and educated about climate change and its health consequences. The aim of this systematic review is to identify the most reliable, robust, and valid instruments for measuring nurses’ knowledge and awareness of climate change and climate-associated diseases. Methods: Included studies were appraised using the Mixed-Methods Appraisal Tool and the Appraisal tool for Cross-Sectional Studies. The psychometrics and clinimetrics of the instruments were evaluated using the COSMIN Risk of Bias checklist and the COSMIN methodology for assessing content validity. Results: Medline, PubMed, Embase, CINAHL Ebesco, Cochrane Library Wiley, Web of Science Core Collection, Trip Database, JBI OVID SP, GreenFILE EBSCO, Google Scholar, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global, and DART-EU were consulted. The 14 studies retained identified eight different instruments evaluating attitudes, perceptions, environmental awareness, environmental sensitivity, environmental attitudes, behaviours, motivation, concern, optimism, and experience. This review is reported according to the PRISMA guidelines. Conclusions: The New Ecological Paradigm Scale (NEPS) and the Climate, Health, and Nursing Tool (CHANT) are the most reliable, robust, and valid instruments for measuring nurses’ knowledge and awareness of climate change and climate-associated diseases. Full article

This paper aims to explore how liturgical celebration can serve as a transformative response to the contemporary ecological crisis and its consequences. This is inextricably bound to the importance of addressing the pastoral needs of individuals who are hurting due to their interactions or lack thereof with the cosmos and the erosion of their relationship with nature in a technocratic consumerist society. Ritual, as a vehicle for personal and communal transformation, takes on heightened significance in a world wounded by ecological devastation. Rituals, often deeply embedded in cultural, religious, or personal practices, indeed have the capacity to facilitate personal transformation. They provide a framework for individuals to navigate life transitions, foster a sense of belonging, and connect with the overarching narrative. However, in an ecologically wounded world, where environmental degradation, climate change, and biodiversity loss are pressing concerns, the ramifications of ritual take on added significance and complexity. This paper seeks to address the urgency of the need to respond to this multifaceted crisis by paying attention to the pastoral needs of the individual and the community at large by redressing the real meaning of worship and reflecting on how, within a Christian tradition, this reconfiguration of worship can be provocative enough to instil change. However, this endeavour is not without inherent challenges and enduring questions. The pervasive influence of a technocratic worldview poses a significant threat not only to our relationship with the earth but also to the very essence of ritual itself. Can the liturgical experience, reaching its climax in the Eucharistic celebration, be truly a catalyst in asserting a proper relationship of humanity on various levels, which are concentric and, thus, dependant on each other, with humanity itself, with the cosmos, and with God? Full article

Background: Climate change is a health emergency. Each year, it is estimated to cost more than 230 million years of life expectancy, with 4–9 million premature deaths associated with air pollution, and 9 million excess deaths due to non-optimal temperatures, representing 7% more temperature-related deaths since 2015 and 66% more since 2000. Objective: Identify and evaluate the reliability, fidelity, and validity of instruments measuring nurses’ knowledge and awareness of climate change and climate-associated diseases. Methods: A systematic literature review will retrieve and assess studies examining instruments measuring nurses’ knowledge and awareness of climate change and climate-associated diseases. Using predefined search terms for nurses, climate change, literacy and scales or tools, we will search for published articles recorded in the following electronic databases, with no language or date restrictions, from their inception until 31 October 2023: Medline Ovid SP (from 1946), PubMed (NOT Medline[sb], from 1996), Embase.com (from 1947), CINAHL Ebesco (from 1937), the Cochrane Library Wiley (from 1992), Web of Science Core Collection (from 1900), the Trip Database (from 1997), JBI OVID SP (from 1998), and the GreenFILE EBSCO. We will also hand-search relevant articles’ bibliographies and search for unpublished studies using Google Scholar, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global, and DART-EUrope.eu. This will be completed by exploring the gray literature in OpenGrey and the Grey Literature Report, from inception until 31 October 2023, in collaboration with a librarian. Twelve bibliographic databases will be searched for publications up to 31 October 2023. The papers selected will be assessed for their quality. Results: The electronic database searches were completed in May 2023. Retrieved articles are being screened, and the study will be completed by October 2023. After removing duplicates, our search strategy has retrieved 3449 references. Conclusions: This systematic review will provide specific knowledge about instruments to measure nurses’ knowledge, awareness, motivation, attitudes, behaviors, beliefs, skills, and competencies regarding climate change and climate-associated diseases. Full article

The evolving tourism industry and increasing number of travelers are not only raising environmental concerns about tourism sites, but also posing challenges for local communities. In this scenario, the notion and agenda for sustainable tourism are widely criticized due to their limited scope and emphasis on creating a balance between economic and adverse environmental and communal benefits. In response, the call for a necessary paradigm transformation has become intense. Consequently, a new approach—regenerative tourism—has been developed to create awareness about pro-environmental behavior to satisfy the primary needs of the community. Regenerative tourism supports the quality of life of local people. Therefore, there is a great need to promote eco-literacy through innovative and better audience experience-laden communication strategies, such as immersive journalism and metaverse-based promotional content. However, little is known about how these future technologies interplay with psychological and social mechanisms to enhance regenerative tourism intention. Drawing an analogy from pro-environmental theory and media richness theory, this research intends to identify whether virtual, augmented reality merger (i.e., immersive journalism), and metaverse-based environmental delineations may contribute to educating tourists and lead to regenerative tourism intention. This research was carried out using a cross-sectional online survey that collected data from 776 digital media users from Pakistan who plan to visit a destination or have done so previously. The results from the data, based on structural equation modeling, suggested that immersive journalism and metaverse-based regenerative tourism promotion are communication strategies that effectively enhance eco-literacy and lead to pro-environmental behavior. However, dispositional empathy has critical moderating implications; the greater the extent of the empathy concerns that individuals uphold, the stronger the eco-literacy and pro-environmental behavior. Finally, regenerative tourism intention can be predicted by these antecedents effectively. Therefore, these pioneer results confirmed that innovative technology-driven media content can augment awareness of regenerative tourism activities and transform travelers’ intention to adopt regenerative practices during destination visits. This research suggests strategic guidelines for organizations and governments to implement practical, innovative, and communicative tools that support adopting regenerative practices among prospective travelers. Full article

Ecological literacy (ecoliteracy) is an interdisciplinary concept that spans ecology and linguistics. This concept is particularly important given today’s increasingly severe ecological environmental problems. In the discipline of linguistic ecology, ecoliteracy can include five aspects: ecological knowledge literacy, ecological awareness literacy, ecological ethics literacy, ecological emotional literacy, and ecological behavioral literacy. We advocate for a quantitative assessment of the level of ecoliteracy from those five dimensions. However, in the evaluation process, the difference in the specific sociodemographic characteristics (SDCs) of the participants is a factor that cannot be ignored. Therefore, this article starts from SDCs and takes the inhabitants of Guiyang City, a top-ten ecologically advanced city in China, as the study population. The main purpose of the study was to identify the differences in the levels of ecoliteracy shown by inhabitants of this city who have different SDCs. The results indicated that there were significant differences in the levels of ecoliteracy among the inhabitants of Guiyang City with regards to gender, age group, ethnicity, type of living area, educational background, and current main identity. The highest overall score among the participants, that is, the most ecoliterate inhabitants, were found to be males, middle-aged groups, Buyi ethnic groups, those who live in urban areas, the most highly educated, and those who work for the Chinese government. To address the specific five-dimensional levels, this article also analyzed the nuances among inhabitants regarding each aspect. Based on this analysis, the reasons for the differences among inhabitants with different SDCs are discussed. In addition, after discovering the specific characteristics of inhabitants with high-level ecoliteracy, we also propose ways to improve low-level ecoliteracy among inhabitants. Our ultimate goal is to make contributions to the advancement of harmonious coexistence between humans and the natural environment. Full article

Agritourism has been promoted primarily as a way to mitigate economic challenges faced by small-scale family farmers, but it may also foster land stewardship and promote agricultural literacy. There has been very little research on these relationships. We employed a primarily qualitative approach to assess how farmers’ involvement in agritourism microentrepreneurship shapes their stewardship of small-scale farmlands in southeastern North Carolina. Furthermore, we examined how farmers’ involvement in social structures, summarized in measures of collective action, supported or hindered this relationship. We find that reasons for participation in agritourism differed greatly between conventional farmers and alternative farmers. While both groups expressed a desire to reduce agricultural illiteracy among the public through agritourism, conventional farmers were motivated primarily by sociocultural reasons (e.g., community and youth development) while alternative farmers wanted to educate visitors about land stewardship and environmentally sustainable food production. Involvement in agritourism microentrepreneurship did not directly influence land stewardship by either group of farmers. Alternative farmers expressed that collective action was important in helping them promote land stewardship, but they felt restricted by sociocultural and geographic barriers preventing them from developing trust within their community. Conversely, conventional farmers reported deeper cultural roots in the community. Thus, participation in agritourism does not have a generalizable impact on farmers’ land stewardship; instead, agritourism becomes a stage through which farmers try to demonstrate their pre-existing land ethics. Full article

This paper articulates a paradigm shift in the adoption of a critical ecopedagogy focused on substantive and systemic change within nature sports. In analyzing the unifying concept of nature sports, we propose an ontological shift towards genuine sustainability, a communion among people and with nature. These activities comprise a group of physical practices that have the potential to challenge participants in novel ways that provide an alternative to traditional sports and the ideological values associated with these dominant sports, such as competition and personal gain. Nature sports inscribe meaning on bodies in motion, with a blurring or erasure of boundaries, as participants become one with nature rather than seeking to exploit or conquer it. These novel and countercultural practices promise the possibility of systemic sustainability, as participants redefine sport in terms of relational equity and ecoliteracy. As a utopian project, this systems approach recognizes the nature-sport nexus as a living framework to honor culturally appropriate practices and traditions in building an ecological movement centered on environmental justice. In this way, nature sports offer an opportunity to reimagine sustainable development through the promotion of a circular, rather than linear, economy—an economy based on re-creation rather than exploitation and waste. Full article

The Diani-Ukunda area on the Kenyan coast is one of the main tourism centers of the country. Over time, individuals who originally visited the area as tourists have started sustainability initiatives that are in part funded through donor networks from abroad (drawing on individuals who visited the country initially as tourists). This essay explores select German initiatives in the educational sector that have emerged in the context of the area’s tourism industry. Diani Maendeleo Academy (a secondary school for girls) and the six primary and secondary schools known as Mekaela Academies collectively serve a significant portion of the population of the larger Diani-Ukunda area, including the hinterland extending widely into Kwale County. The study was designed to assess the schools’ approach toward sustainability and ecoliteracy, and centered on the following questions: 1. What kinds of sustainable practices are promoted in the select schools? 2. In what ways do students who attend these schools display environmental literacy? 3. Do these initiatives address UN SDGs, known as Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)? The study follows an interdisciplinary mixed method approach and is based on interviews, survey instruments, research on ecoliteracy and educational policy, and fieldwork data from previous stays. Findings reveal a lesser-known dimension of tourism: namely, the successful pursuit of ESD in schools thriving in the context of tourism through an integrated approach towards teaching ecoliteracy. Full article

This research applies an extended theory of planned behavior (TPB) to empirically investigate consumers’ intentions in Pakistan to purchase energy-efficient appliances (EEAs). Most developing countries face energy crises. As a result, many countries consider EEAs to be part of the solution to energy-related problems and teach sustainable consumption behavior to consumers. Previous studies have neglected developing countries in this context, yet developing markets have great potential for EEA adoption. To understand EEA adoption, we incorporated such variables as warm glow benefits, utilitarian environmental benefits, normative beliefs, and moral obligations as antecedents to TPB variables. The moderating effect of eco-literacy between attitude, subjective norms, perceived behavioral control (PBC), and purchase intention toward EEAs are also examined. Data was gathered through a survey questionnaire from 673 Pakistani consumers to empirically test the proposed hypotheses. The results reveal that utilitarian environmental benefits and warm glow benefits significantly influence attitudes toward EEAs. The findings also show a positive effect of normative beliefs on subjective norms. The interaction effect of eco-literacy positively influences the relationship between attitude and purchase intention, with similar results for subjective norms and purchase intention. However, no significant moderating effect of eco-literacy is found between PBC and purchase intention. Furthermore, we performed multi-group analysis to explore significant group differences by utilizing socio-demographic variables such as gender, age, education, and income. The results show significant group differences, with females’ purchasing behavior, younger consumers, and educated consumers being more readily influenced. Finally, insights for policymakers, suggestions and future directions are discussed. Full article

The purpose of the study is to predict the intention and behavior towards environmentally friendly businesses (EFB) among low-income families in rural Peninsular Malaysia within the framework of the theory of planned behavior (TPB). Data were collected from 420 low-income household heads through structured interviews. The results reveal a significant impact of environmental concern (EC) and eco-literacy (EL) on the attitude towards the environment (ATE); normative belief (NB) and motivation (MO) on subjective norms (SUN); and skills and knowledge (SK) on perceived behavioral control (PBC). Additionally, there was a positive and statistically significant effect of ATE, SUN, and PBC on the intention towards environmentally friendly business (ITEFB) and the ITEFB on environmentally friendly business adoption behavior (EFBAB). This study provides empirical evidence with a proposed research model to address the environmental issues through improving the socioeconomic condition of low-earner families. The Malaysian government and relevant agencies should focus on improving EL, EC, MO towards EFB, and the SK regarding EFB among the low-income households. Full article

In acknowledging the significant role of forestry on the environmental, social, and economic sustainability of local communities, this study focused on examining how different factors affect the intentional behavior towards community forestry among the poor households in Malaysia. Employing theory of planned behavior (TPB) in an expanded model, this study collected data from 420 underprivileged households from 10 states in Malaysia using a survey questionnaire. Final analysis is performed using two methods, one being the well-established, conventional way of partial least square–structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM); the other being a frontier technology of computing using artificial neural network (ANN), which is generated through a deep learning algorithm to achieve the maximum possible accuracy for each of the five scenarios aforementioned. The study found that perceived benefits (PB) and eco-literacy (EL) have a significant positive effect on the attitude towards environment (ATE) while normative belief (NB) and motivation (MO) have a significant positive effect on subjective norms (SUN). Perceived control (PC) has a significant positive effect on perceived behavioral control (PBC). ATE, SUN, and PBC have a significant positive effect on the intention towards community forestry (ITCF), whereas the ITCF has a significant positive effect on community forestry adoption behavior (CFAB). When formulating and enforcing carbon reduction and poverty elevating programs through community forestry, the Malaysian government should consider the perceptions of poor families and the prerogative from their special reference groups to enhance the perceived ability of the vulnerable groups for positive and effective pro-environmental behavior that can lead to sustainable forestry management. Full article