Quick couple of ideas and resources

We are lucky in that we receive all sorts of interesting resources and materials through the post from our members and colleagues in education sites around the world. A couple that have been sent through this season are...

The Nezahat Gökyiğit Botanic Garden in Istanbul, Turkey have been really busy with their education programmes and provision. They have a super colourful new leaflet about he activities on offer and a fabulous activity book for their younger visitors

Qui a sauve Beni le petit bonobo? - a beautifully illustrated children's book telling the story of the capture and rescue of Beni, a bonobo chimpanzee whose mother is a victim of the bushmeat trade in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Produced to support the ape sanctuary, Lola ya Bonobo (paradise for bonobos in Lingala, the language of Kinshasa) and funded by Awely, an international organisation working to reduce human-animal conflicts in South America, Asia and Africa. The book has also had support from Appenheul Zoo and WAZA.

ISBN 978-2-9528827-0-5

Chicago Botanic Garden's Autumn Bingo is a nice example of a simply-designed, bilingual, fun activity sheet for children visiting the garden. There are stickers attached to the back of each sheet for children to stick on the squares when they find the subjects.

Climate Change on the Living Earth

Professor James Lovelock introduced us to the Gaia hypothesis back in the 1960s, where he postulated that the Earth functions as a kind of superorganism. Almost 50 years on, this extraordinary octogenarian is still making waves - and big ones at that! A thought provoking and terrifying lecture he gave to the Royal Society in October has recently been posted on the Society's website.

Professor Lovelock claims that the International Panel on Climate Change has considerably underestimated the rate at which Climate Change is taking place and talks about the devastating impact it will have on natural systems. He takes an apocalyptic view of the future seeing up to eight billions of humans faced with ever diminishing supplies of food and water in an increasingly intolerable climate. As you can imagine, most people left the lecture dumb struck!

Nevertheless, I believe we can't and musn't give up! Even if there's is nothing we can do to stop the earth warming because of the carbon already deposited (and continuing to be deposited) into the atmosphere, we still need to adapt our lifestyles to be more in tune with the earth. This of course requires a fundamental shift in the way we think about and relate to the planet - we have to see ourselves as part of it, not separate to it - which brings us back to Gaia.

education for sustainable development - its not just a catchy title

So, we're off to China, to learn, discuss, inspire and gossip....at the 3rd Global Botanic Gardens Congress.

Of course the congress is going to be more than gossiping with friends - the education dept have been set to work! We're running a day long session on education for sustainable development. Hopefully it will be interesting, as its such a varied subject, that some people find very hard to get their head around.

We've had the participants list through though, firstly, its a pretty big workshop, about 28 people, secondly, they are all amazing educators themselves who run some of the best botanic garden education programmes in the world. In fact, lets face it, a decent proportion of them, we were going to use their programmes as case studies for good ESD....

Nevertheless, we shall not be intimidated, we have a few tricks up our collective sleeves. What I find interesting about ESD is just how varied it is - taking in aspects of development education, environmental education, feminism, peace education, ecology , systems thinking, economics and design. It is so much more than learning to appreciate nature - although that is certainly a major part of it. It is recognising oneself within nature, as a portion of the ecosystem, as a biotic part of Gaia, interconnected with all others. Once we can see that our actions, our daily lives have an effect on everything else - we are the butterfly that flaps its wings in Brazil causing a monsoon in India, we can live in a way that reflects this.

So much of ESD is also about critical thinking - is this the best way to live my life, considering I am within this huge system?, is my government making the policy choices that I want them to?, does my botanic garden really contribute to sustainability or is it just lip service?; followed by empowerment - as a citizen of the world I am an individual but I can also make decisions that are important and will make a difference. These skills are also key to the democratic process as a whole, being able to question and also take action, and so are vital for everyone, any age, to have and use.

Our workshop will be looking at the different aspects of ESD, personal meanings, values and beliefs, but also the practical ways that garden education programmes can communicate with their audiences about some of the more abstract concepts. As with any part of CEPA (communication, education and public awareness) programmes, it is all about making it provocative, relevant and revealing new meaning to the audience.

Once we've run it, we will put the workshop on the BGCI website - I want to develop a larger area on the education website focused on ESD, so if you have any ideas or thoughts on the subject, please let me know!

Oh, and if you are interested, the BGCI publication on Education for Sustainable Development: Guidelines for action in Botanic Gardens, is available to download.