Recently, I was honoured to write an article on why ecoliteracy matters for the creative sector for Green Foundation Ireland. This was a good opportunity to explain ecoliteracy as it is a relatively new term. Ecoliteracy, ecological literacy, is the education we need to understand the enormous and urgent cultural shift, that is needed to advance a deeply sustainable and just era.
The invitation came from Nuala Aherne, who is on my current Haumea Ecoliteracy course for Creatives and Art Professionals (bookings open for next course 10 Mar here). Nuala was the first Chair of Green Foundation Ireland (2012 to 2014). She is a former Green Member of the European Parliament (1994 to 2004) and has co-edited Green Values, Religion and Secularism, which was published by Green European Foundation in 2015.
Thank you Nuala for this opportunity to summarise what ecoliteracy is and why it is so important, in the creative sector and for education in general.
“ECOLITERACY – IS THE URGENTLY NEEDED ABILITY TO UNDERSTAND THE PROFOUND CULTURAL CHALLENGES AN ECOLOGICAL WORLDVIEW ADVANCES.”
Cathy Fitzgerald, for Green Foundation Ireland, 2021
Read my article on ecoliteracy on the Green Foundation website here
Green Foundation Ireland hosts seminars, workshops and conferences which aim to demonstrate how practical action can bring about positive change towards sustainability. Dealing with the biodiversity and climate change crisis is a cultural as well as a political challenge that depends on shifting values, education and active citizenship.
GFI aims to create an ecologically literate Ireland which would be a sustainable society that does not destroy the natural environment on which they depend and understand how nature sustains life. Meeting the biodiversity and climate change crisis is not only an environmental challenge, but also a cultural and political one that requires environmental education and active citizenship. GFI advocates for policy change that would create a sustainable society in Ireland, and we also engage with public consultations on the environment.
ECOLITERACY
Literacy is the ‘taken for granted’ background of our civilisation. Today it has become equally vital for everyone to acquire environmental literacy, and this is as yet far from taken for granted, indeed most people are blind to the dependence we have on the natural world. With the planetary crisis of climate change upon us and the grave loss of biodiversity consequent on human activity, It is important to change this and allow people to experience how dependant we all are on a living planet. An ecologically literate society would be a sustainable one which did not destroy the natural environment on which they depend.
References:
“Eco Literacy”, Fritjof Capra; David Orr;
“Environmental Literacy and New Digital Audiences”, Pat Brereton
from Green Foundation Ireland