7 Ways to Take your Climate and Nature Action to New Levels
By Michèle Andrews, Co-Founder & Executive Director at DoorNumberOne.org
Here we are, less than 5 years until 2030 – a year to which some lofty goals are attached. With the pressures of the climate and biodiversity crisis ever-present in our news, and our 8th graders set to graduate in 2030, how should schools be meeting this moment? How prepared will our 8th graders be, along with the rest of our students, for the next phase in the escalating climate and biodiversity crises?
There is no way around it: the situation is urgent. What we do now, and before 2030, matters most. Every fraction of a degree of warming has devastating consequences, so every fraction of a degree we can avoid, matters. Humans and countless other living organisms are already suffering from the consequences of the climate and biodiversity crises at home and around the world. Later is too late.
Global Goals for 2030
In 2012 the UN Sustainable Development Goals were born – also named “the 2030 Agenda“. The SDGs have become a focal point for education in many schools around the world in the years since.
The 2015 Paris Agreement, involving 196 countries, created the targets of peaking greenhouse gas emissions before 2025 at the latest, and decline 43% by 2030. Check out the targets, progress, and other climate action news.
In December 2022, 188 governments convened at the United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15) in Montréal, the output of which was the Kunming-Montréal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF). The GBF includes specific measures to halt and reverse nature loss, including putting 30 percent of the planet and 30 percent of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030. There are 23 specific targets ranging from halving global food waste to restoring 30% of terrestrial and marine ecosystems, to mobilizing at least $200 billion per year for biodiversity-related funding.
Schools have a unique opportunity to contribute, now and for the long term. Schools can lead their communities in taking intergenerational action to address the climate and nature crises. Here are 7 ways to take your climate and nature action to new levels.
1. Set Bold New Goals: Aspire for Regeneration
We need leaders willing to aim beyond “green” and “sustainable” – which typically represent practices that are “less bad” for life on Earth – towards being regenerative. Being regenerative is defined as creating and nurturing the conditions that enable all forms of life to thrive, in balance with Earth systems. We need to change our mindset from less bad to thriving! In our work with schools, we ask the question, what if each choice you made and each action you took contributed to a thriving life for all people and the more-than-human world?
Reframing our Relationship with the More-Than-Human World
One crucial paradigm shift we must make is to recognize our interdependencies with our kin in the natural world. We are one species amongst millions. The culture of human dominance that has evolved in modern times has led to this moment of crisis we face. In order to restore balance to our Earth systems – to our only home – we need to bring about a fundamental re-balancing in our relationship with other living organisms. Robin Wall Kimmerer, Indigenous author and botanist, writes about rebuilding a relationship of reciprocity with other species in her books Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants and The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. This 2012 article by cultural ecologist and geophilosopher David Abram explores what it is to be human in a more-than-human world. We need to adopt a mindset of humility, kinship and reciprocity if we are going to build a thriving future for all. Schools are the perfect place to seed this new paradigm.
Introducing regeneration creates the opportunity to heal, restore and create a beautiful, thriving future for all. It sparks the imagination in a new way, and brings hope and inspiration to our ongoing efforts to address the intersecting crises we face. The climate and biodiversity crises are “threat multipliers” – people already facing social inequities are disproportionately impacted by the extreme weather events, wildfires, desertification, rising sea levels and other consequences we are already experiencing. Thinking about communities and all the people in them, as well as our kin in the more-than-human world, as whole, interconnected living systems can bring together new solutions that integrate the often siloed streams of DEIJ (diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice), wellness, civic engagement, service and citizenship, environmental and conservation work, energy and carbon management, waste diversion and others into one coordinated community-wide effort.
2. Make a Public, Whole-School Commitment
There are many ways to make your climate and nature commitments public, including embedding them in your strategic plan and in your communications. You can step it up by taking our Climate & Nature Leadership Pledge. This free pledge publicly places you amongst peer schools taking a bold leadership stance and signals to your community your commitment to the future.
Whole-School Climate & Nature Action
In our work with schools, whole-school action involves all aspects of school governance, operations, the curricular and co-curricular programs, buildings and grounds, and perhaps most importantly, school culture. When you create a team of people from all parts of your school, including students, teachers, operations staff, administrators, parents, and alumni, and support them to create an integrated action plan based on bold, aspirational, regenerative climate and nature goals, you will be amazed at the results.
DoorNumberOne.org has a Strategic Framework for High Impact Whole-School Climate and Nature Action, first published in 2022 as the core resource for our Climate Action Accelerator Program. We have recently updated it to reflect our learning from the last 3 years working with over 25 schools. We invite you to use it, and related resources, to guide your work. Find them here, free to access. And check out our Inspiration page to see examples of schools leading in climate and nature action.
3. Treat This Crisis As The Wellness Issue It Is
The many social justice crises we face are intersecting at this moment with the climate and biodiversity crises. There are also physical and mental health impacts resulting from global warming, putting added pressure on so many of us, especially those already suffering. Whether it is the increasing rates of asthma from deteriorating air quality, more tick-borne diseases as regional temperatures become more conducive to tick populations, or the increasing prevalence of climate grief and depression, there is no question human health and wellness is suffering. School wellness strategies and programs need to factor in the physical and emotional toll that the climate and biodiversity crises are having on your school community.
4. Choose to Practice and Model Hope
We are also facing a crisis of hope. A global study of youth in 10 countries published in The Lancet in 2021 and another in Canada in 2022 reported alarming but not unsurprising levels of concerns among our youth. Almost half of the young Canadians surveyed believe humanity is doomed. In both studies, over 40% of respondents reported that their feelings about climate change negatively affect their daily lives. Eco-anxiety, a term coined by the American Psychological Association in 2017, is a growing part of the picture of the mental health struggles for all ages.
Elin Kelsey, a renowned scientist, author and self-proclaimed “hope activist”, makes the compelling case that hope is essential to taking productive action to address the climate crisis. The vast majority of news focuses on the problems, rarely on the solutions. Kelsey joins many others in recommending a regular practice of informing ourselves and sharing stories about how people are making a difference and achieving positive results in their communities. It is when we believe we have the power to make a difference, when we believe that our actions can have an impact, that we will bother to take action at all.
Take on the practice of hope as a school. Share your own stories of impact with each other, and more broadly in your community. Point people to key resources highlighting the good news, the solutions happening locally and globally. Use your social platforms to promote hope. Follow and tag @DoorNumberOneNFP and we’ll amplify your messages of hope.
5. Prepare The Adults: To Lead, and To Prepare The Students to Lead
We are all learning about these evolving, intersecting crises, and their solutions, in real time. Faculty in all disciplines need the time to learn for themselves, and time to collaborate to determine how to bring climate and nature into their programs. Operations staff need to learn new policies, practices, tools, equipment and building systems. Your Leadership Team and Board need to discuss and determine how they can bring a climate and nature lens to all their work. Everyone in the school needs to be part of preparing and supporting the students to step into leadership whenever they feel ready – which could be as soon as right now! You will need to allocate time and professional learning budgets to this work, like any other significant priority. You can also reach out to your associations to ensure they are bringing experts and workshop opportunities to their conference and professional learning programs.
6. Give Everyone A Pathway To Contribute Together, In Community
You can safely assume that the majority of your faculty and staff have concerns about the crisis we are in, right alongside your students. Most people feel helpless, and need some direction to determine how they can contribute, in a meaningful way, to solutions. When you create cross-departmental and intergenerational teams focused on big goals and give them some time and support, they will create exciting, innovative recommendations, initiatives, and pathways forward. Whether it is how to integrate your campus climate and nature initiatives in the math program or how to create and track a procurement carbon management program, students, faculty, staff, parents, community partners can all have a vital role to play.
Action is a crucial antidote to despair. When people have an opportunity to contribute, working alongside peers as well as folks from different ages and different parts of your school community, it can be a meaningful, positive contribution to their mental wellness.
7. Rise to your School’s Potential for Impact
With a bold, whole-school approach, consider your potential for impact. Studies show what educators already know – young people have tremendous influence on their families. DoorNumberOne.org thinks about potential impact in terms of kitchen tables. How many kitchen tables are in your community, where your students share their excitement, inspiration, and homework each day? Inspiration can also travel home with staff, parents, administrators, community partners, and board members – add those tables to the tally. Then consider who sits at those tables. What influence do they have in their business, government, community organizations and social settings?
Imagine what your potential impact could be if your school became engaged in bold, exciting, hope-filled goals towards a just, healthy, thriving future for all. Your school’s potential for impact is incalculable.
It is time for elementary and secondary schools to step into a new level of meaningful, practical work in healing and regenerating our communities. Leading schools can help chart the path forward for the sector. If not us, who? If not now, when? These timeless questions have never been more relevant. We hope you will join us in leading the K-12 sector to build a movement too exciting to resist, and too powerful to ignore.
#buildingamovement