Education for Planetary Justice

Learn more about how this theme explores education at the intersection of climate and ecological crises.

This theme explores education at the intersection of climate and ecological crises. It examines the impacts of climate change on education and the ways in which education can respond to the needs of planetary and social justice, across and between the Global North and Global South.

An increasing number of children, young people and teachers are unable to participate in formal and informal education because of the impacts of climate and ecological crises. Floods and fires destroy educational infrastructure. Lack of water in schools and universities leads to closures. Droughts, floods and subsequent impacts on livelihoods limit participation in education. The economic impacts of climate change further constrain investment in education systems.

The differential impacts of climate change, by factors such as location, gender, class, race and caste, can worsen existing inequalities in access to education. People living in poverty keep children at home to support climate-depleted livelihoods. The gendered division of labour can mean girls walk further to fetch water in drought conditions, leaving no time to attend school. The Global South has contributed less to climate change, but receives insufficient recompense from the Global North to mitigate these impacts.

At the same time, education has the capacity to help young people learn new skills to repair ecosystems and address carbon over-production in conjunction with their own diverse knowledges and histories. Education can socialise children and young people into values and dispositions that build a shared vision and commitment for planetary justice. It can offer children and young people the time and space to encounter the world that they live in, to consider its existential and spiritual demands on them.

Education can help children learn how they might live together with other people, species and things, in ways that are not destructive to them, their communities, or the wider planet. This educational work must draw on the local and particular, while also recognising the global interconnectedness of the climate and ecological crises. Such an education for repair expands beyond schools, colleges, NGOs, and universities, to include communities both local and global.

Some of the questions we aim to answer include:

• how do education systems contribute to planetary injustices, wittingly and unwittingly, but also to their regrowth?
• how might the field of education bring together diverse knowledges, including the scientific, traditional, indigenous and lived experience, to address planetary justice? How might it also connect children and young people’s local lives to others globally? In what ways do climate and ecological knowledge reflect inequalities, such as gender, class, caste, race, ethnicity, religion and age?
• how can pedagogy be used to foster deep attention to planetary justice, in ways that include an engagement with multiple uncertainties, deliberation, critique, and a response that fosters repair and renewal?
• how do climate change and ecological depletion shape inequalities in accessing quality education?

Key examples of research

• Strengthening indigenous knowledge systems to tackle the crises of climate, hunger and conflict in Somalia

  In 2023, Somalia experienced the most severe hunger crisis on earth. It is estimated that 7 million Somalis faced acute food insecurity, and a quarter of a million faced starvation. However, this crisis largely went unnoticed, and humanitarian aid was cut in half. It was in this context that Dr Nimi Hoffmann collaborated with the Peace and Development Research Centre in Somalia (Mr Abdullahi Abdurahman and Mr Muctar Hersi) and Queens University, Ontario (Prof Awet Weldemichael) to generate evidence-informed policy discussion on the crisis.

  This ESRC-funded project conducted a mixed methods survey of Puntland to explore the dynamics of the crisis, potential mitigation measures and long-term resiliency strategies at the grassroots, state and federal levels. The research included the voices of government officials, nomads, fisherfolk, farmers, internally displaced people and city-dwellers.

  A key finding from this research was that ecological commons – and the knowledge systems required to govern them sustainably – are collapsing in Somalia, and that this has been a key factor in widespread hunger and a catalyst for conflict. There is an urgent need to protect these indigenous knowledge systems and integrate them into formal education. These indigenous knowledge systems are flexible and creative.

  This is critical, because Somali feminists have argued that indigenous knowledge systems should be hybridised and adapted to reflect greater gender equality. Current work examines how to bring indigenous knowledge into Somali curricula in ways that allow Somali girls and boys to learn about their indigenous knowledge systems and creatively rework them to fit the needs of their contemporary society.

• Supporting social learning for land reform, sustainable agriculture and biodiversity stewardship in South Africa

  The pain of land dispossession emanating from colonialism and apartheid in South Africa remains unresolved. The alienation of black South Africans from their land has exacerbated poverty and inequality by constraining their ability to own or use land for subsistence, commercial farming or biodiversity stewardship. Communal property associations are instruments of redress which seek to attain economic justice and social stability for the victims of land dispossession.

  By focusing on black women, youth and people with disabilities, communal property associations have the potential to transform the material conditions of people who are among the most marginalised in the country. However, land hunger and contestation over resources are increasingly triggers of conflict in communal property associations.

  This research collaboration between Dr Nimi Hoffmann from Sussex University and Dr Siviwe Shwababa from Rhodes University in South Africa seeks to examine the ways in which indigenous knowledge systems might be used to help resolve conflict, strengthen biodiversity stewardship and support sustainable agricultural practises in communal property associations.

• Hope-in-the present: Uncertain pedagogies for youth and community resilience in India and Ecuador

  Climate change and pandemics demand creative, critical and resilient civil societies. Educationally, this requires children and young people to acquire scientific knowledge, as well as to cultivate their capacity to respond where solutions are-as-yet-unknown (core to Sustainability Development Goal 4.7).

  In 2021, Dr Rebecca Webb and Dr Perpetua Kirby worked with an interdisciplinary team across the University of Sussex and academics in India (Dr Anindita Saha) and Ecuador (Dr Citlalli Morelos-Juarez) to explore the role of arts-based deliberative pedagogies for supporting youth to express relationships with sustainability uncertainties, in dialogue with stakeholders, with a view to fostering community resilience expressed through narratives of hope and action. 

  The project extended into an exchange of objects related to young people’s sustainability concerns, between those in India, Ecuador and the UK. This resulted in an ESRC Festival of Social Science exhibition, with workshops: Objects that matter: exhibition and creative workshop of ‘objects’ connecting children’s sustainability concerns across Global South-North. 

  The research was funded by International Development Challenge Fund (IDCF) & Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP), financed by the University's Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF).

• Creating with Uncertainty: Covid recovery to education for sustainable futures in the UK

  Dr Perpetua Kirby and Dr Rebecca Webb work with local schools in the south-east of England utilising ‘uncertain pedagogies’ that foster a creative, playful and deliberative engagement with the complexities of planetary justice. In 2022 and 2023, this included a project with 10 schools (primary, secondary and special) to enable teachers and students to engage with existential and uncertain dimensions of the pandemic and climate change.

  This created opportunities for them to relate knowledge facts to their own experiences (i.e. feelings, resources, practices, external pressures), to critically assess competing information sources, and to navigate inherently difficult philosophical tensions and questions. This was an interdisciplinary project involving many faculty, including Prof. Michael Jonik and Prof. Alice Eldridge (School of Media, Arts and Humanities), Prof. Mika Peck (School of Life Sciences), Prof. Anke Schwittay (School of Global Studies) and Prof. Ian Scoones (Institute of Development Studies). 

  This research was funded by the Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) in association with the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP).