Environmental pedagogies: defining ecopedagogy

The definitions and specific constructions of environmental pedagogies are fluid and contextual. In this paper, I will use the broad term “environmental pedagogies” to mean education focused on increasing environmental wellbeing, including Environmental Education (EE), Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and ecopedagogy. Although the practice and structures of these pedagogies have the same goal, debates on the effectiveness of each pedagogical model are numerous (Gadotti 2008; Jucker 2004; Kopnina 2011; Misiaszek 2015). Examples of the kind of questions being asked in this pedagogical debate include: (1) How is “development” defined and how does this determine what should be “sustained” in ESD? and (2) Does EE ignore the practicalities of human needs too often?

In ESD, education which focuses on progress-driven development is inherently good. However, the determination of what “progress” is and who (e.g. individuals, societies, humanity as a whole) benefits from it and who is negatively impacted by it are necessary albeit complex questions to answer. It is essential to analyse who defines the end goal of development. For many models of EE, one key question is whether this “who” should extend to non-human beings and also include a “what” which signifies all non-organic entities and earth’s formations (e.g. landscapes, oceans).

This article focuses on an environmental pedagogy known as ecopedagogy, which is much less known than EE and ESD, especially outside of Latin America. Rooted in critical theories and originating from Latin American popular education models, ecopedagogy is centred on understanding struggles of and the connections between human acts which are environmentally harmful and human acts which are rooted in social conflict (socio-environmental issues). Ecopedagogical scholars have multiple definitions for ecopedagogy, but all are grounded in critical theories and centred on constructing praxis Footnote 1 within transformative social-environmental justice models (Gadotti 2000, 2008; Gadotti and Gutiérrez Pérez 1993; Gadotti and Torres 2009; Gutiérrez and Prado 2008; Kahn 2010; Perez 1995). An essential principle of ecopedagogy is the impossibility of separating the social from the environmental.

In this article and the research it is based on, acknowledging or labelling an environmental pedagogy as ecopedagogy is not seen as essential. Rather, it is the use of ecopedagogical teaching practices and goals within environmental pedagogies which is accorded importance. In short, an ecopedagogue is not determined as such by measuring his/her knowledge of ecopedagogy but rather by exploring how their teaching and/or research adheres to ecopedagogical practices and goals. The key dialectic, problem-posingFootnote 2 aspects of education within critical theory models (denoted in this article by the adjective “critical”) and teaching (denoted as “critical pedagogy”) form the basis of ecopedagogy, which aims for the inherent goal of transforming our world into a better one.

Ecopedagogy was founded within critical pedagogies – democratic bottom-up approaches centred on teaching for transformative action to end oppression by problem-posing the social structures oppressing those who struggle the most (Apple and Au 2009; Apple et al. 2009; Gadotti 1996). As such, ecopedagogy centres on exposing socio-environmental connections to more deeply understand them, thus enabling students and teachers to determine environmental action through critical reflection. As explained in footnote 1, this iterative relationship is known as praxis.

Ecopedagogues aim for their teaching to lead to action from learners; this is similar to other environmental pedagogical goals of encouraging learners to engage in environmentally good actions. However, reflection about which actions need to be taken often leads to re/questioning how to define the deeper structures of society (e.g. socio-political-economic systems and ideologies) which need to be transformed in order to lead to this better world. In other words, ecopedagogues regard all current social structures as possible spaces in need of transformation, which differs from many other environmental pedagogies which propose what changes are needed within current socio-political-economic structures. All environmental pedagogies advocate environmental change, but ecopedagogical models, through a problem-posing method, focus on the politics behind environmentally harmful actions, the normative systems and structures of society guiding these actions, and the deeper, transformative steps needed to end these actions.

In this political analysis, so fundamental to ecopedagogy, it is necessary to determine and critique the benefits of environmentally harmful actions (Misiaszek 2015). Within this somewhat counterintuitive statement, the understanding that all environmentally harmful actions are likely to have some human benefit for someone (specific group[s]), because otherwise the human action would not be initiated, allows for the necessary political analysis to emerge through problem-posing. A central goal of ecopedagogues is to have deeper, more contextual understandings of positive and negative outcomes; through problem-posing. They ask students questions about who is benefiting and who is being negatively affected. Ecopedagogical research focuses on how individuals learn about these imbalances between benefits and negative effects, how they don’t learn about them, and the politics behind why or why not such learning takes place.

Because of the problem-posing method inherent to ecopedagogy, ecopedagogical research must be a pedagogical tool within ecopedagogical teaching (Misiaszek 2015). Learning spaces must be developed to arouse students’ curiosity as initial point of research, in which they can see why something is unjust or erroneous and then construct possible solutions to the identified issue. Paulo Freire noted that human curiosity is “a phenomenon present to all vital experience, [and] a permanent process of social and historical construction and reconstruction” (Freire 1998, p. 37). This research–education connection means that research is viewed as being initiated by arousing a person’s curiosity, using their ingenuous knowledge; this “common sense knowing … extracted from pure experience” (ibid., p. 37) which then develops into something which is “more methodologically rigorous, progress[ing] from ingenuity to epistemological curiosity” (ibid., p. 35).

Critical analysis should not only be applied to education models which are outwardly anti-environmental, but also to environmental pedagogies which have environmentally beneficial goals. I have argued elsewhere (Misiaszek 2011, 2015) that environmental pedagogies are often just as damaging as anti-environmental ones, because their perceived neutrality and/or expected environmental objective inherently reduce student questions which counter their educators’ lessons toward this objective.

Two research projects: ecopedagogy and citizenship

The participants in the two research projects guiding this article stressed the need for understanding and transforming how people determine which people make up their own specific groups – the “who” they are working with/for. Specifically, what are people’s inclusion and exclusion processes in self-determining which groups they belong to? And what are groups most concerned about when determining the effects of human environmental actions? To a large extent, participants understood these groupings within spheres of citizenship and noted that praxis should centre on the roles of citizenship.

This article was constructed from two comparative educational research projects on ecopedagogy in both of which the author was a principal investigator. The first was a qualitative, comparative/international study on ecopedagogical models in Argentina, Brazil and the Appalachian region of the United States conducted by the author (Misiaszek 2011). Thirty-one expert ecopedagogues from these three regions chosen through a snowball selection method,Footnote 3 were interviewed using a loose semi-structured method. The research centred on ecopedagogues’ perspectives on how successful ecopedagogy can be defined within the contexts in which they teach and conduct research. Research participants discussed not only their own pedagogical practices and theories, but also elaborated upon other ecopedagogy models and tools outside of their own practices. Although the term “successful” can often be problematic, these ecopedagogues were asked to define what it means to have “success” in ecopedagogy and to define the pedagogical tools for such effective ecopedagogy to emerge.

The second study analysed how expert scholars of citizenship and/or environmental pedagogies regard the ways in which citizenship intersects with environmental issues and the pedagogies of both in an increasingly globalised world (Misiaszek 2015; Misiaszek and Misiaszek 2016). The research, in which the author was the principal investigator, compared and contrasted responses from a diverse pool of international experts working in both fields on six continents to further understand con- and divergences among the participants’ self-defined goals in their respective field(s). The data were also compared with the canons (of research/publications) of Global Citizenship Education (GCE) and critical environmental pedagogies (e.g. ecopedagogy). Eighteen research participants were selected through a snowball sample utilising the structures and events of various international educational societies/associations such as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). The criteria of selection were international scholarship in globalisation and renowned expertise in citizenship and/or environmental pedagogies. The participants were asked eight open-ended questions focused on the following four topics: the framing of citizenship/citizenship education; essential aspects of environmental pedagogies; connections between citizenship and environmental pedagogies and how processes of globalisation affect these connections and disconnections; and their perceptions of the most-needed pedagogical changes in both fields.

This article provides some trends emerging from the two studies on the issues of environmental pedagogies as these relate to citizenship in an increasingly globalised world. To this end, and to simplify the text, the themes and the “participants” refer to themes emerging from and participants involved in both studies unless otherwise noted.

Spheres of citizenship: ecopedagogical considerations

Intensifying globalisation has made an individual’s citizenship increasingly complex in terms of how they define, beyond their own nation-state (i.e. traditional citizenship) what they are a citizen of and whom they consider to be their fellow citizens (Jorgenson and Shultz 2012; Pak 2013; Shultz 2007). The complexity of modern citizenship coincides with the world’s increasingly diverse societies – citizenship is both contextual and political.Footnote 4 The diversity of local contextualisations of citizenship contrasts with an increasingly homogeneous definition of citizenship centred on processes of “globalisation from above” which is often associated with such models of globalisation as Westernisation or Eurocentrism.Footnote 5 In this section, I deconstruct some key aspects of citizenship/education and ecopedagogy which focus on how students conceptualise their own citizenship(s), and how this relates to environmental understandings and actions affecting the environment (i.e. praxis). There are a number of definitions of citizenship; the one used in this article is mostly grounded within Western models of citizenship, particularly in terms of Western models’ emphasis on civil rights and responsibilities.

Participants in both studies emphasised critical analysis of the various citizenship spheres as being essential to ecopedagogical teaching and research because it seeks to determine how to connect individuals’ citizenship with environmental praxis. In both studies, most participants discussed the need for teachers and students to learn through discussions on how they perceive their own socio-environmental responsibilities, those of their society(ies) and those of others as they relate to their citizenship with or without others. I will return to this point later in this article, deconstructing such perceptions by considering various citizenship spheres such as local, national, global and planetary.

Below, I discuss some of the most prominent points of dialectical teaching (through problem-posing questioning) in ecopedagogy, reflecting on how individuals position themselves socio-environmentally within citizenship spheres. One insight which emerged from both research studies is that discussions within a single citizenship sphere are difficult, due to complex overlapping (which, in such problem-posing education, often leads to conflict between spheres). In the next few subsections, I will build a diagram which will help to illustrate some of the complex and overlapping social processes which increase and/or decrease socio-environmental conflict among citizenship spheres.

Individual and society(ies): neoliberalism vs. critical global citizenship education

The shaded overlapping area illustrated in Figure 1 indicates the relations between individual(s) and groups (i.e. societies). With other factors being equal, the basis of citizenship is that there are inherent bonds between citizens of the same civil groups which increase concern for each other’s wellbeing as compared to a scenario in which people are not fellow citizens.

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Spheres of citizenship

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Figure 2 indicates how neoliberalism and critical GCE affect the valuing of the public and private spheres which affects relations between individuals and societies. How neoliberalism affects the value individuals place upon the connections between their own self-defined society(ies) and outside spheres was an oft-discussed issue among research participants in my first research study and discussed within the context of GCE in the second research study. Neoliberalism is complex in definition and in its effects; most participants focused particularly on the concept of decision-making which relies solely on monetary profit, as it sustains hegemony. Participant concerns with intensifying neoliberalism coincided with Dirk Postma’s statement that an increased valuing of what is owned in an individual’s private sphere decreases the valuing of the public sphere, as

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Spheres of citizenship and neoliberalism/globalisation

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the private sphere is celebrated as the primary space where people are presumed to find ultimate life fulfilment by living according to their own device, taste, religion or view on life in “the pursuit of happiness” (Postma 2006, p. 24).

Overall, the public sphere is seen negatively as not being the valued private sphere. Currently, the public sphere is “the realm of common affairs in each modern society [and,] as such, in the established society … factually or potentially, the relevant sphere for everyone” (Capella 2000, p. 231). The connections and changes which neoliberalism has made to the differing constructions and valuing of the private and public spheres is historically complex, especially when considering transitions of citizenship/education. Populations who have been historically “othered” (e.g. women, Persons of Colour, Indigenous Peoples) have been confined to the private sphere – tending to the affairs of the family and home rather than engaging in activities in the public sphere. The public sphere was seen only as a place for socially constructed “worthy” citizens rather than emulating societal inclusion. Oppressed populations were, and in many respects still are, subjugated only to their private spheres.

The public sphere is largely devalued, with its (neoliberal) importance lying only in how it relates to gains in one’s private sphere while concern for equality or equity in societies (i.e. the public sphere) is minimal. The private sphere is subordinate to the public sphere because of its governance within the outer public sphere (Capella 2000). However, with systematic manipulation from a relatively powerful few, the public sphere becomes, in essence, the private sphere of the few. As the arrows in Figure 2 illustrate, this devaluing of the public sphere increases the separation between individuals and society.

For environmentalism and environmental pedagogies, the relationship between nature and the public and private spheres is complex. Neoliberal frameworks ignore all biocentric (holistically nature-centred) valuing of nature,Footnote 6 and are based on an anthropocentric (i.e. human-centred) perspective, unless there is a direct monetary value associated with nature to profit existing powerful interests. An example of existing powerful interests is that alternative energy can lead to similar and even increased economic prosperity, but economic losses would occur within long-standing powerful entities such as oil industries. The differences, commonalities and connections between anthropocentric and biocentrically focused pedagogies will be further explored below.

For ecopedagogues to oppose neoliberalism, citizenship education models which help guide democratic participation of individuals to transform societies to increase socio-environmentally justice are essential. This would effectively increase the shaded overlap area in Figures 1 and 2, as indicated by the arrows in Figure 2 moving the two circles closer together. With traditional forms of citizenship, this more direct participation is more evident, but as the world becomes increasingly globalised, a critical form of global citizenship is essential in cultivating respect for “thick” democracy of other societies and better mutual understanding and respect among diverse cultures.

Globalisation and citizenship: global citizenship education

Reflecting upon the classic definition of “globalization” by Anthony Giddens (1990) that global forces affect societies at great distances, the analysis of how globalisation affects democratic participation in a citizen’s decision-making must include an analysis of global effects on which, how and why socio-environmental issues are taught or not taught. Globalisation is a contested terrain and its processes are both empowering and disempowering (Torres 2009); this signifies the need for critical education about often conflicting global processes upon socio-environmental issues. Phenomena emerging from globalisation are inherently complex and frequently politically hidden; however, specific points of global influence in terms of systematic, similar social (including educational) changes can be observed and compared by way of macro-analysis in very different societies of the world (Schugurensky 2007; Stromquist 2002).

In Figure 3, the dotted arrows indicate the contested terrain of the processes of globalisation of influence “from above” upon local societies or “from below” which amplify local societies’ voices and impact. It is important to note that not everything which emerges from “the local” is inherently good and everything which emerges “from above” is negative, but rather that critical analysis of the processes affecting different populations is essential (Kellner 2002; Torres 2009). The space within the larger circle labelled Global Sphere indicates the various spheres of citizenship – a continuum from the very local to the global sphere. The largest of the circles is the Planetary Sphere of citizenship, which will be discussed in the next section.

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Spheres of citizenship and neoliberalism/globalisation

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Carlos Torres and Robert Rhoads have stated that to enable more inclusive decision making, citizenship must “center social analysis on advancing democratic possibilities” (Torres and Rhoads 2006, p. 8). In defining development and constructing education for development, as well as ESD, it is necessary to consider how “progress” has or has not spread and deepened democratic participation globally (Misiaszek, forthcoming). In other words, how has globalisation helped or hindered societies’ own contextual constructions of progress? Ecopedagogues teach students to deconstruct what “progress” means contextually both for local societies and globally, and how these constructions coincide and/or conflict with more linear paths of progress with Western-defined development endpoints (Arnove 2007; Cudworth 2003). Does globalisation increase local societies’ ability to decentre a single, Western framing of development or does it instead decrease local democracy, devaluing all local framings of development? Rooted in critical pedagogy’s goal of understanding the effects of oppressive actions/systems in education and how to interrupt these actions/systems (Apple et al. 2009), ecopedagogy focuses on being praxis-based in order to decentre education for development and ESD. It does this by analysing ways in which development is actually de-development (or oppressive progress) for local societies and ways to instead centre locally-defined development. Civil democratic participation is strengthened because of centring locally defined development which emerges from a reflection on what societies see as their self-defined “best” future rather than only a single globally defined future.

Similar to globalisation, global citizenship and GCE form contested terrains. For the purposes of this article, I will define one model of global citizenship as critical global citizenship (with accompanying critical GCE) whose goals include increased understanding of and respect for the world’s diverse cultures. A fundamental shift between traditional and global framings of citizenship is that traditional nation-state citizenship is largely based on a homogeneity of a global culture, while critical global citizenship is framed by cultural heterogeneity. The other opposing model of neoliberal global citizenship (neoliberal GCE) has the singular goal of students being able to better compete in a more Westernised world. Neoliberal GCE teaching models aim for students to become “entrepreneurial citizen[s] that navigat[e] an increasingly interconnected global community” (Camicia and Franklin 2011, p. 311) and who “are most efficiently related in this global community through technologies of standardization, surveillance and accountability” (ibid., p. 314).

Neoliberal GCE systematically normalises and intensifies individuals’ desires for money, commodities and associated economic power, in line with the ideology of neoliberalism and neoliberal measures of progress. This, in turn, intensifies the phenomena of schooling justifying consumerism and, in many cases, teaching consumption as a normative and defining progress – this directly conflicts with ecopedagogical and ESD goals. Madeleine Arnot (2009) terms this “liquid modernity”, which she describes as “young people [who] experience a world overflowing with a multitude of tempting and seductive possibilities and [who are] haunted by the excess of values worth pursuing” (Arnot 2009, p. 19).

With opposite goals, critical GCE models counter such neoliberal framings of citizenship within the deconstruction and reconstruction of “progress” both locally and globally (Misiaszek, forthcoming). What progress is and whom it benefits are central problem-posing questions in critical GCE, which demonstrate GCE’s inseparable connection with ecopedagogy (Misiaszek 2015). Once again, in such neoliberal framings of citizenship, the environmental realm and social cohesions are not considered; instead the goal of individual economic profit is centralised. Here a debate arises about whether democratic citizenship, within any sphere of citizenry, is inherently devalued when neoliberalism is centralised. This debate is illustrated in Figure 3, with the dotted line indicating possibilities of democratic citizenship, and critical GCE expressed as a continuum from local to global citizenship spheres.

The planetary sphere of citizenship: biocentric and anthropocentric framings

Since the key goal of ecopedagogy is to better understand socio-environmental connections, framing it anthropocentricitly seems to make sense because social effects are centred. However, I argue that ecopedagogy must be biocentricitly (or planetarily) framed. In the next few paragraphs, I will present three reasons why this is necessary.

First, teaching socio-environmental issues must include macro-level, planetary lenses through which environmental issues are viewed holistically so that Earth can be seen as a singular, large ecosystem which humans are a part of, not separate from. Ecopedagogy’s critical tenet of viewing socio-environmental phenomena holistically through multiple perspectives and disciplines enforces this need for biocentric viewpoints of teaching. Moacir Gadotti describes planetary citizenship as “an expression that was adopted to express a group of principles, values, attitudes and habits that reveal a new perception of the Earth as a single community” (Gadotti 2008, p. 23). Gadotti further explains that this planetary view of securing environmental wellbeing is also absolutely necessary within anthropocentric perspectives, in order to secure “our common humanity”, “unity in diversity”, “our common future”, and “our common nation” (ibid.). A central aspect of planetary citizenship is that Earth is a citizen and that it is, as Gadotti expressed in a personal conversation with me,Footnote 7 the most oppressed citizen. The notion of planetary citizenship, similar to critical GCE, complicates the relationships between citizenship spheres; they are positioned as overlapping. Connections exist among citizenship spheres – among local community to nation-state spheres, within a larger global sphere of citizenship which includes all other spheres of citizenship, and finally within an even larger, holistic sphere of citizenship of Earth (i.e. planetary citizenship). This thus complicates questions of citizenship and how citizenship pedagogies are constructed and taught.

Second, an anthropocentric framing considers the human impact of environmental issues, but this does not mean that how these issues affect humans is the only consideration within ecopedagogy. Rather, anthropocentric concerns are dependent on biocentric concerns, and vice versa. Why ecopedagogy is focused on human causes and effects is due to the fact that historically, humans are the only beings which can transform the world through reflection (Dewey 1963; Freire 2000). Ecopedagogues embrace the role of countering pedagogies which deny both the biocentric connection as well as the politics behind these pedagogies, which further widen socio-environmental imbalances, a topic which will be discussed below.

Third, conducting anthropocentric analysis within a wider biocentric aspect more deeply explores the politics of education, a concept which is inherently anthropocentric. Viewed through an anthropocentric lens, the foci are the politics of what is being taught, what is not being taught, or what is being mis-taught. Biocentric framings are not lost or devalued but rather humans’ actions and reasons for their actions are concentrated upon, largely through a process of unveiling and deconstructing hidden curricula.

Ecopedagogical reconstruction of ESD

As expressed earlier in this paper, ecopedagogy is an education striving for praxis for development in which students re/question who is benefiting and who is negatively affected by environmental actions, and in which they engage in a rigorous analysis of all societies in order to determine environmental actions which are empowering (Misiaszek, forthcoming). This analysis aims to answer the following questions: (1) what are the imbalances of development outcomes? and (2) what are the differences and similarities between the contextual framings of development across societies? It is essential for ESD models to problem-pose these questions – in pedagogical construction, teaching and research – for development to be more holistically understood. Through such ecopedagogical analysis, such ESD models counter environmental pedagogues who see economic “development” far outweighing the significance given to environmental or sustainable aspects in ESD.

While the research participants in both studies did not express having any issues with the essence of ESD, they did voice their concern about the imbalance of valuing economics associated with more neoliberal forms of ESD. It is not surprising that ecopedagogues express negativity towards neoliberal framings of ESD; the participants stated their view that such framings only serve as a tool for further socio-environmental oppression. Almost all of them stressed the importance of understanding and analysing economics; but they specified that this should be done within local–global economic justice models which counter neoliberal framings.

In the same respect, such critical questioning is also needed to define “sustainability”. First, deciding what should be sustained is essential for establishing what progress is and what the development goals should target. Simply put, sustainability and progress/development are inseparable. However, many participants commented that sustainable development is often an oxymoronic term or concept, since development is frequently defined by constant economic profit based on increased consumption, which directly opposes sustainability. Ecopedagogy and ecopedagogical framings of ESD are pedagogies which critically deconstruct “sustainable development” and question the way it is defined and taught in all forms of education. In addition, both anthropocentric and biocentric concerns were seen by the participants in both studies as being essential in teaching “sustainable development”. Beyond the critical anthropocentric analysis of what “sustainable development” means, they felt that there must be biocentric viewpoints of what needs to be sustained beyond mere human benefits. In essence, to avoid ESD’s path on increasingly over-focusing on economic development, ecopedagogy must be taught as something which leads beyond the narrow purpose of socio-environmental wellbeing; it needs to aim for environmental wellbeing.

Overwhelmingly, the participants centred the oppressive factors of globalisation on an over-promotion of a single framing of development, namely that of economic and cultural Westernisation. Carlos Alberto Torres has posed the following two questions about opposing goals of globalisation: (1) “Will globalization make human rights and democratic participation more universal?”, or (2) “Will globalization redefine human enterprise as market exchanges invulnerable to traditional civic forms of governance?” (Torres 2002, p. 364). In other words, how does globalisation decentre oppressive aspects of global Westernisation? Does it foster an increase in systematic dependencies of many nations on a select powerful few? Does it exacerbate biocentric oppression? Ecopedagogy is rooted in incorporating the two former questions at the beginning of the section and countering the latter two questions.

Constructs of citizenship

Figure 4 illustrates how the participants in both studies modelled citizenship and issues for dialectic teaching within ecopedagogical learning spaces. At the centre of the illustration is the interaction between individuals and societies. The two-circle representations conceptualised in Figures 1, 2 and 3 are expanded here to a more complex construct.

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Ecopedagogical constructs of citizenship

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The environmental element in citizenship: the ecopedagogical element in citizenship education

The outer part of Figure 4 represents, with dotted outlines, how many participants constructed citizenship using three elements of rights and responsibilities: civil, political and social (Marshall 1963; Torres 1998). As illustrated with four interlocking rectangles, a fourth element of citizenship – the environmental aspect – emerged from the first study (on ecopedagogy in the Americas), on conceptualising “successful” ecopedagogical models, More specifically, the outcome of this research indicates that environmental rights and responsibilities are an essential element of citizenship rather than being tangential to the other three element(s) (Misiaszek 2011, 2014). Furthermore, the second study, focusing on the dis/connection between GCE and ecopedagogy, revealed ecopedagogy to be an essential element of citizenship education. Ecopedagogy’s goal of critical (anthropocentric and biocentric) understandings of socio-environmental issues, as discussed earlier in this paper, is essential for authentic citizenship praxis (citizens’ democratic active roles within societies). In Figure 4, traditional anthropocentric framing of citizenship, along with planetary citizenship, is labelled, and Earth is included as a citizen. This coincides with the argument that citizenship education must be reconstructed to counter false socio-environmental ideologies in order to promote full participation in democratic practices. At the same time, citizenship education must be critical environmental education (Torres 2013).

In both research studies, it was found that ecopedagogical learning spaces need to prioritise giving teacher(s) and students opportunities to construct possible solutions and action designed for helping to end socio-environmental ills. Such learning was viewed by the participants as constituting essential citizenship education which often leads to active, authentic citizen engagement. “Authenticity” here indicates the increased autonomy of citizens (and their ability to make choices) within the public sphere as the politics of false environmental ideologies are unveiled to them. In effect, this defies oppressive systems such as neoliberalism by countering, in the words of Raymond Morrow,

the erosion of the capacity of political communities to democratically monitor and regulate the protections necessary for an inclusive notion of the public good undermines the framework of equity that is the necessary foundation of authentic individual choice (Morrow 2006, p. 30).

If a central role of citizenship is to foster active participation guided by a citizen’s best understanding as to how to improve their society and preserve their societies’ cultures, then a citizenship educator’s goal is to teach critical thinking skills to counter false environmental knowledge, and thus support students’ ability to acquire the most critical understandings of this false knowledge. Along with the critical social, political and civil pedagogies which are fundamental to citizenship education, the need for critical environmental pedagogy is essential within these three elements, as is the biocentric framing indicated earlier in this paper. By contrast, if citizenship is defined as controlling the masses (focusing on obedience instead of democratic empowerment), ecopedagogy is a powerful tool which counters this understanding of citizenship.

Future citizens

In Figure 4, the citizenship sphere of future citizens is located outside of the traditional constructs of citizenship (outside the “Traditional Citizenship” indicated by the two shaded circular areas labelled “Society” and “Individual”). The need to view humans in the future as fellow citizens, within the same previously discussed complex citizen relationships, increases the importance of education and citizenship education in preserving and defining cultural/traditional aspects of societies. This was one of the main issues participants in both studies recommended for inclusion in environmental pedagogies. This needs analysis for future generations is foundational in ESD when determining development, since this affects sustainability. In short, the question is: how do we keep and leave the planet to avoid oppressing future generations?

Postma discusses these concepts within the terms of citizenship education’s inherent need to ensure that “future generations will carry on our traditions and pursue our ideals in the future” (Postma 2006, p. 18) and to ensure that persons in the future are “hypothetical fellow citizens”; thus, our present actions should consider their “hypothetical consent” (ibid., p. 20). Derek Bell asks the following very poignant question, “If all citizens in a society have an interest in the future of that society, why should they not have a ‘say’ in the education of the next generation of citizens?” (Bell 2004, p. 41). This consent is one that aims to avoid oppressing them in the future. It needs to be noted that socio-environmental knowledge is an important requirement for understanding future oppressions – another significant reason why ecopedagogy is needed.

Considering sustainability of nature involves identifying strong direct and indirect connections to cultural sustainability and preservation. The considerable influence an individual’s environment has on their identity and sense of citizenship highlights the need for problem-posing ecopedagogical spaces, taking into account both local and global perspectives (Misiaszek, forthcoming). As stressed by participants in the research, these connections are severed with environmental loss caused by harmful actions. Anthropocentric decision-making about environmental issues – nature’s connections with traditions and cultures – must be read and re-read from diverse perspectives and viewed through a variety of theoretical lenses. The participants highlighted that dialectical analysis of identities and citizenship as constructed in relationship with the environment were needed in ecopedagogical spaces, as were discussions about the negative social aspects which arise from a lack of sustainability.

Planetary citizenship: earth as a citizen?

As stated earlier in this paper, planetary citizenship is biocentric. However, it is not independent from anthropocentric framing, since there are various layers of complex overlapping connections. Similar to the individual as a citizen, the central idea of Earth as a citizen is illustrated in Figure 4: the dotted circle indicates that Earth includes everything which makes up the planet – including humans and their groupings (i.e. societies).

The reason why environmental rights and responsibilities are integral elements of citizenship can be discerned by looking through anthropocentric or biocentric lenses. Anthropocentric reasoning is centred on the fact that environmental and social issues cannot be separated, thus environmentally harmful actions by humans inevitably lead to social injustice and infringements on people’s citizenship rights. From the participants’ point of view, biocentric reasoning centred on the following two aspects: (1) the reasoning that nature has the inherent right not to be destroyed beyond what is necessary for societal wellbeing and/or (2) if Earth is a citizen, as defined in planetary citizenship, then this should guarantee that Earth has the same citizenship rights as all citizens. It is the beyond the scope of this article to fully elaborate on this here; I will therefore confine myself to saying that many of the ecopedagogues participating in both studies discussed how teaching through societies’ local/indigenous knowledge and spirituality,Footnote 8 as well as feminist theoretical lenses, are essential in dialectically teaching the rights of nature beyond anthropocentric reasoning.

Planetary citizenship is based on nature’s right not to be destroyed; however, this is not the responsibility of nature, since humans are the only beings which are reflective, historical and capable of transformation (Dewey 1963; Freire 2000). In constructing what “sustainability” is, say, in ESD, we must ask to what degree (of destruction or change) nature should be altered so that this right is protected. For example, the question of widespread deforestation is most likely to be seen as negative for most people – but what about someone cutting down trees to build a shelter or someone turning on a light in an ecopedagogy classroom? All these actions affect nature, but the question as to where on the continuum of destruction of nature such actions become unbalanced/unsustainable is very contextual, highly debatable and another problem-posing point of discussion in ecopedagogical learning spaces.

That goals of human progress and environmental preservation should be in conflict with each other is not surprising; however, this does not mean that sustainability and balance are unachievable. The division between anthropocentric and biocentric framings is not fixed but rather overlapping and interdependent. A biocentric framing includes humans within its planetary, holistic lens. Anthropocentric framings are measured on a very wide continuum in terms of what is defined as “progress” and how such progress correlates with all that is non-human. According value to everything “non-human” through an anthropocentric view is largely determined by understanding socio-environmental connections, many of which are very indirect but nevertheless affect society. This highlights the importance of ecopedagogical models. Unless the connection between humans and all things non-human is deeply understood through critical analysis, progress can only be superficially determined as human progress within a false vacuum separated from everything which is non-human. As a result, ecopedagogical practice leads to praxis – the iterative process of rigorous reflection and action – praxis focused on determining how we define progress and what is needed to understand the pathway to this progress.

One recurrent belief voiced by both the North and the South American participants in the first research study when asked about the difficulties of achieving such a balance was that ecopedagogy must be full of hope. This theme also emerged in the second research study in connection with GCE, with participants maintaining that the need for hope within environmental pedagogies was essential, because without hope fatalism is emphasised and socio-environmental oppressions are normalised. Many of the participants, similar to many critical educational scholars (e.g. Freire 1998; Torres and Teodoro 2007), connected this increasing sense of fatalism in education with neoliberalism. These discussions did not only coincide with the Freirean perspective that education should help students dream of possible utopias as goals (Freire 1992), but also reiterated that hope is essential to the foundational goal that, through praxis, students can determine the gap between the current situation and the situation they are hoping for (Gadotti 1996). In these pedagogical arguments, utopia, although perhaps an impossibility, is necessary to guide individuals towards a better socio-environmental world – similar to walking towards a horizon which will never be reached (Torres and Teodoro 2007).

Conclusion

Emerging from discussions of citizenship, one of the important questions is how it links back to development, determining our acts of progress towards development, and in environmental education pedagogies, how it links back to environmental pedagogies, especially in ESD models. In one of my other publications (Misiaszek, forthcoming), I have focused on this question, specifically detailing how sustainable/development needs ecopedagogical learning and analysis to question whose development is at stake, and how it is balanced with environmental wellbeing in constructing the concept of sustainable development. I argue (ibid.) that development needs to be locally contextual, but viewed through a global lens. Simply put, there is no single definition or single source of defining development, but rather a multi-perspective, bottom-up and top-down process of complex contextual defining of development and subsequent sustainable development. Global analysis is necessary because environmental issues inherently affect socio-environmental wellbeing globally, as well as locally. What the consideration of various spheres of analysis of citizenship allows for is to narrow the distances between local socio-environmental issues using a global perspective.

Questioning and countering development which benefits a few and oppresses many is the overall goal; however, this is complex in some ways and not in others. It involves the ability to look at environmental issues through various lenses, from wider global-planetary to narrower more localised perspectives. The teaching, learning and analysis is complex, and often endless questions emerge which lead to further research and learning in the effort to understand additional aspects of socio-environmental knowledge rather than any fixed solutions emerging. This is true in the pursuit of critically learning about any social/environmental phenomena. When socio-environmental understanding is overly simplified, the resulting solutions are not emerging from critical praxis. However, the goal is rather simple – to construct processes towards development (progress) which maximise socio-environmental wellbeing. Put the other way around, the goal is to minimise environmental ills by conceptualising development holistically across all societies affected by nature’s inherent rights of non-destruction.

One of the main difficulties of determining such processes is overcoming the current, often historical, socio-environmental oppressions which have largely become a normalised baseline. What ecopedagogical teaching has students (and teachers) question and re-question is this oppressions’ baseline, as well as asking them to imagine a world without this baseline. The purpose of this strategy is to enable them to determine actions for development which are centred on ending socio-environmental oppression. Non-critical, banking education (see footnote 2) is essential for oppressive structures such as neoliberal determinants of development. Neoliberal education promotes development without alternatives, regarding all other constructs of development and societies, in general, as abnormal.

In this article I have presented ways in which critical theories of citizenship, including critical GCE, could reframe socio-environmental issues to include an increased “solidarity of wellbeing” within and outside of geo-political borders. The reframing of socio-environmental issues within spheres of citizenship localises the negative effects resulting from neoliberal approaches oppressing fellow citizens. In essence, this reframing centres the connections between persons (and nature in some spheres), rather than the disconnections among them, with the goals of global common good, including the goal of environmental sustainability. Within GCE it localises issues of environmental oppression between people living at opposite ends of the world, as well as teaching that environmental problems most often do not stop at geo-political borders but are global. Planetary citizenship/education stresses this last point in that it positions us humans holistically as being part of nature.

I argue that defining and evaluating development through multiple citizenship spheres is essential for transformational change towards saving the planet from crisis(es). Ecopedagogy centres teaching about the causes and effects of environmental ills on a deeper understanding of diverse social, political and economic systems from multiple perspectives – respecting but also questioning the socio-environmental aspects of local cultures, as well as deconstructing processes of globalisation from above and below. Another essential point is the need for biocentric teaching about environmental problems, with rigorous comparing and contrasting with anthropocentric socio-environmental issues. While this last sentence is not really needed, I include it here to emphasise the need for biocentric framing, because anthropocentric lenses are inherently situated within biocentric framings. The key aspect here is that human livelihood concerns must be considered along with the concerns of sustaining everything else which makes up the planet. In defining and measuring development, all these concerns must be taken into thorough consideration. There is no step-by-step method for this, but a single holistic process which extends beyond economic perspectives and counters neoliberal mindsets is essential in determining what development is.