Justice Analysis: sustainability education

(w.c.-600)

Climate Change (CC) is increasingly understood as consisting of many intergenerational, racial, and economic injustices (Capelli, 2023). Consequently, Climate Justice (CJ) strives to ensure that the burdens and benefits of climate action are distributed equitably across space and time (Svarstad, 2021). This definition of CJ clarifies the importance of ‘distributional justice’ (Walker and Day, 2012). However, it cannot be ignored that distributionally just outcomes are tied to procedural justice (Adger et al., 2003). Indeed, legacies of extractive colonialism have placed disadvantaged communities at the greatest risk of environmental harm today (Kinol et al., 2023). The same communities are most often excluded from spaces of decision-making and action (Fitzgerald, 2022). Consequently, this critical analysis will explore the implications of Critical Climate Education (CCE), where learners/citizens are equipped with knowledge and skills to respond to the climate crisis with responsible action (Svarstad, 2021), through a CJ lens and focus on procedural justice.

Education is a powerful means for increasing public awareness and engagement with complex CC realities and possible solutions (Reid, 2019). However, prevailing framings of CC as a scientific, technical and environmental issue have prevented systemic societal changes (Eaton and Day, 2020). Consequently, traditional spaces of education fail to deliver their potential on what Trott and colleagues (2020) call ‘critical, collective and constructive engagement with CC’. For instance, a systematic review of K-16 curricula found a heavy emphasis on the science and mechanisms behind CC and relatively no attention on social justice dimensions (Bhattacharya et al., 2020). Similarly, longstanding racial and gendered economic injustices govern access to the sciences and engineering disciplines (Valentine and Collins, 2015).

Such framings have serious implications for procedural justice from a CJ viewpoint. Firstly, when social justice considerations are not included in education, a powerful means of engaging youth and creating a sense of urgency to overcome climate injustices is lost (Stapleton, 2019).  Secondly, procedural exclusion of vulnerable groups makes their lived realities unaccounted for in decision-making, when arguably they are in greatest need for CCE (Fitzgerald, 2022). These are violations of procedural justice because it denies people access to information and participation in decision-making (Sovacool and Dworkin, 2014 from Newell et al., 2021). It curtails their involvement in climate action by presenting the issue as ‘not their responsibility’ or not providing them the space and skills to act. Consequently, the outcomes of such processes are divorced from the social context, with their legitimacy questioned as they are often seen as unacceptable and harmful to vulnerable groups (Adger et al., 2003). Thus, lack of CCE obstructs procedural justice by restricting disadvantaged groups and access to information in traditional education spaces, compromising the just distribution of benefits and harms that CJ principles aspire to.

Conversely, the rise of youth-led CJ Movements (CJMs) globally has enabled CJ. These are decentralised, global networks that advocate for systemic policy and societal change (Crosse, 2019). CJMs are heterogeneous, encompassing an array of disadvantaged communities and parallel land-based movements in the Global South (Tokar, 2019). Essentially, procedural justice has been improved by building alternative education spaces for learning and skill-sharing; social movements have no curriculum, but learning occurs over time via dynamic interactions in a process called ‘cognitive praxis’ (Eyerman and Jameson, 1991 from McGregor and Cristie, 2021). The discussions that emerge can gradually bring changes to curriculum (Zald, 2000) and open climate policy and politics to a more diverse range of stakeholders (Newell et al., 2021). Hence, it is important to consider what ‘activist-oriented approaches’ (Bond, 2010) to CCE can contribute to achieving CJ and how traditional learning spaces as can be improved to build the critical capacity of its learners.

 

 

REFERENCES

 

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