50 Shades of Green: An Examination of Sustainability Policy on Canadian Campuses

Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, asserts that education is one of the most effective instruments that society can employ in the effort to adopt sustainable development. This paper is a first effort to explore the degree to which Canadian institutions of higher education, including colleges and universities, have embraced this assertion. It includes the first census of the existing environment/sustainability policies and/or plans of Canadian postsecondary institutions (n = 220), and an examination of the relationships between the existence of an environment/sustainability policy/plan and the presence of other sustainability initiatives on campus. The focus on policies and plans is timely because in public institutions like colleges and universities, actions and practices are determined by policy. The results reveal a number of patterns and insights, including, for example, the influence of provincial legislation on the uptake of policies.  Koichiro Matsuura, directeur général de l’UNESCO, affirme que l’éducation est l’un des instruments les plus puissants que la société puisse utiliser dans un effort de développement durable. Ce document constitue un premier effort pour explorer à quel point les institutions canadiennes d’enseignement supérieur ont mis cette affirmation en pratique. Cet effort comprend le premier recensement des politiques actuelles sur l’environnement et le développement durable, et des plans des établissements canadiens d’enseignement postsecondaire (n = 220), ainsi qu’un examen des relations entre l’existence d’un plan/d’une politique sur l’environnement/de développement durable et la présence d’autres initiatives de développement durable sur le campus. L’accent sur les politiques et les plans se fait à point nommé parce que dans les établissements publics, tels que les collèges et les universités, les actions et les pratiques sont déterminées par la politique. Les résultats révèlent un certain nombre de motifs et de découvertes incluant, par exemple, l’influence des lois provinciales sur l’adoption des politiques

Conflicting Climate Change Frames in a Global Field of Media Discourse

Reducing global emissions will require a global cosmopolitan culture built from detailed attention to conflicting national climate change frames (interpretations) in media discourse. The authors analyze the global field of media climate change discourse using 17 diverse cases and 131 frames. They find four main conflicting dimensions of difference: validity of climate science, scale of ecological risk, scale of climate politics, and support for mitigation policy. These dimensions yield four clusters of cases producing a fractured global field. Positive values on the dimensions show modest association with emissions reductions. Data-mining media research is needed to determine trends in this global field.Peer reviewe

Gender Mainstreaming in Waste Education Programs: A Conceptual Framework

Gender issues are present in waste management, from daily handling activities through to decision-making processes. In waste education programs, the disregard for views of and contribution by women has resulted in strategies that do not comprehensively address the waste issue, preventing long-standing and sustainable outcomes, while increasing existing gender inequities. Three critical waste matters on education and gender were identified: (1) lack of meaningful involvement and participation of women (and other vulnerable groups) throughout the decision-making processes; (2) lack of inclusion of gender-specific designs and gender-sensitive approaches in the information and education materials; and (3) tendency to devise strategies directed to women only, while exempting the other stakeholders from their responsibilities. This paper presents a closer look into the relationship between waste education and gender, with a proposal of a participatory framework for gender mainstreaming in waste education programs. It includes components to assess the promoting entity of the waste education program and all stages of the program. The framework represents a novel theory and practice contribution for waste education development, to support academics, practitioners, and policymakers, in the quest of achieving equitable and sustainable waste management systems for all

Generational Local Ecological Knowledge on the Benefits of an Agroforestry Landscape in Mindanao, Philippines

Agroforestry landscapes in the Philippines provide benefits or ecosystem services that have traditionally and sustainably supported food production for rural communities and the protection of natural resources. However, the very continuity and sustainability of agroforestry is in question because of the rise of new generations of landscape users that can ascribe different values toward these benefits. Thus, this study highlights age-based local ecological knowledge (LEK) on these agroforestry-based ecosystem services to understand differences in the generational persistence and sources of their LEK. A structured survey was conducted with 36 youth, 36 middle-aged, and 36 elderly users of an agroforestry landscape in Libungan-Alamada Watershed in Mindanao, Philippines. This survey focused on the presence of LEK on seven provisioning and five regulating ecosystem services previously identified through multiple participatory exercises in the agroforestry landscape. Results indicated high LEK (more than 50% of knowledgeable respondents in all age groups) across all the ecosystem services, highlighting strong social-ecological interdependence on the agroforestry landscape. While generational persistence of local knowledge was observed, the knowledge sources varied depending on the age group or the ecosystem service. Intergenerational transfer of knowledge was prominent for provisioning ecosystem services. However, institution-based learning was essential for regulating services (e.g. climate change mitigation), especially for the youth. Experiential learning was the primary mode of knowledge acquisition for regulating services (e.g., biodiversity conservation) for the older generations. These results provide strong evidence to help guide policy actors, decision makers, and program managers as they promote, conserve, and restore agroforestry practices, especially in production-protection landscapes such as the Libungan-Alamada Watershed. The revised policy should be based on age-targeted interventions and proper learning entry points that have been found effective in this study