Foundational Practices in Environmental Education – A Story Set in the Indian Scenario

The emergence of Environmental Education (EE) interventions in our country dates back to 1964, when the Kothari Commission called for bringing it into the formal stream of subjects taught in schools. Objectives mapped then, and still relevant to date, stressed on children being exposed to a combination of the natural and the social worlds. Learning about, through and for the environment using the methods of science became the crux of environmental education in India. However, unlike mathematics or science, developing a single syllabus in EE for the whole country did not make sense.

EE not only involves content based in the natural sciences but is also closely intertwined with the manner in which humans interact and develop a relationship with the natural world. This feature requires EE to be nuanced, contextual and place based to cater to the needs of each unique community and the natural world immediately around them. It needs to address the manner in which interactions between human communities and the natural world manifest.

Therefore, in a country like ours with its large diversity of people, cultures, landscapes, biodiversity and natural spaces, a single syllabus by the NCERT could never hope to cater to the needs of all. Hence, the government chose to create overarching curricular goals and handed over the responsibility of catering to specific needs of different communities and places to locally based Non-Governmental Organizations. Let us look at the manner in which a few organizations in the country have worked through the decades in the area of Environmental Education.

Systemic Thinking in Environmental Education

In 1987, Uttarakhand Seva Nidhi Paryavaran Shiksha Sansthan (USNPSS) was appointed a nodal agency by the MHRD to implement locale based EE programs in schools in Uttarakhand. This organization has more than three decades of experience in the field. In 1988, they created a course in EE called ‘Our Land Our Life’ that focused on village land rehabilitation and sustainable management.

This course was locale specific and used the village and its surrounding areas as a laboratory for students to explore and learn. The approach to creating this course was based on ‘systems thinking’ rather than looking at EE as a single discipline. In any given subject, one conceives a linear causal relationship between two phenomena.

For example, trees cut in a neighbourhood not only have an immediate impact on its surroundings, but also cause a disturbance at various other levels including, for example, habitat loss for animals and soil degradation. In this course, developing quantitative skills and scientific temper was given focus along with elements that involved qualitative analysis as well. For example, children were encouraged to perform activities like measuring rainfall and firewood use, while also interacting with their elders about the manner in which life was in their times and how it had changed through time.

The content of the course was focused around addressing land degradation, as that is the major issue faced by the community. The idea was for children to learn skills and concepts to improve their own situation in the village. The pedagogy involved encouraging children to work on the activities given in the workbook in small teams, facilitated by teachers. This approach was different from the instructional method that teachers had been used to until then. It involved not only stepping back and allowing students to explore and construct knowledge on their own, but also grasping the philosophy behind systems thinking as opposed to looking at EE as science or social science in order to help students learn.

During 1988-1992, this course was tested in schools from classes 9-10. In the next decade it was implemented across a number of schools, reaching students through inservice teachers trained in its pedagogy. Workbooks were published in the local language. In 2002, it was introduced as a separate subject and formally included in the regular school curriculum by the Department of Education of the Government of Uttarakhand (GoU).

The initial team at USNPSS involved people from different backgrounds and not just educators. Their focus was on looking at the local environment and livelihoods of people, and consequently the manner in which an education program could be designed based on these. The issues that are usually perceived when people think about the environment are associated with conserving biodiversity, increasing tree cover, reducing pollution, global warming, and in recent times the overarching idea of climate change interweaving all of these problems.

“But, when these issues are examined from ground up, the livelihoods of people are affected,” says social worker and environmentalist Dr. Lalit Pande, founder of USNPSS, who was honoured with Padma Shri, in 2007, for his contributions to environmental education.

The organization began their work in EE by examining the needs of the community. This involved taking into consideration their livelihood, which consisted of agriculture and cattle rearing. The manner in which people here connected with the land around them for resources like soil, water, the ways in which biodiversity and the ecosystem had an impact on local practices, along with insights on how interactions between these elements panned out, were central to creating the EE course.

Dr. Pande says that, “While many development programs have a top-down approach to implementing their ideas, we worked with the core philosophy that people have to learn to identify their own problems and learn to solve them. Here we challenged the local community to take agency of the issues they were facing and come up with their own solutions.”

USNPSS’s EE program is not restricted to just the course and the workbooks. They also have a Balwadi program. They have identified and energized various local NGOs to undertake awareness raising activities combined with action oriented projects. USNPSS’s approach is a long term, sustained effort that works with the core philosophy of creating a population that is knowledgeable, aware and concerned about their environment. They strive to ensure that the community have internalized the need to take action towards addressing environmental issues in a conscious and systematic manner.

Communicating the Nuances in Environmentalism and Conservation through Environmental Education

Kalpavriksh has been working on environmental awareness, campaigns, research and other areas in environment and development since 1979. Their team has also been involved in EE by creating awareness through slideshows, talks, nature walks, and conducting nature clubs in school and colleges. Kalpavriksh’s foray into locale specific education began in the 1990s when they were invited to create locale specific EE programs by various organizations.

Backed by two decades of experiences in the field, they set out to create custom made programs that took into consideration local stakeholders, biodiversity, along with development issues that the stakeholders faced. Initiatives at Andaman and Nicobar Islands, BRT Sanctuary, Ladakh, Bhimashankar Wildlife Sanctuary and Kutch unfolded in the following years. “The approach and methods used in each context was different,” says Sujatha Padmanabhan, who has been a member of the organization since 1983. Each local NGO and region have had their own specific needs and Kalpavriksh has worked to respond to these.

In the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the key issue was the people’s alienation from their surrounding biodiversity and environment. Many people who had lived all their lives on the islands had never taken a dip in the ocean or had the opportunity to witness its diverse coral reefs. Hence, Kalpavriksh, along with the Directorate of Education, decided to create an Environment Education textbook that drew its content from local biodiversity and involved experiential activities for children. The outcome of this program was ‘Treasured Islands’, an illustrated, activity based manual for teachers to be used as a guideline for implementing EE in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Snow Leopard Conservancy-India Trust, requested a program from Kalpavriksh for the Ladakh region. The organization had done some EE work sporadically till then, and wanted to conduct more sustained programs with children from villages that faced conflict with snow leopards. “So with that program we thought here’s an opportunity! Let us not look at just snow leopards. Let us look at Ladakh’s wildlife, biodiversity and its people as a whole together and attempt to communicate the same. If we are going and interacting with children then let the focus not just be on one charismatic species,” says Sujatha. Snow Leopard Conservancy also wanted Kalpavriksh’s involvement in training the local educators who would take this forward and later do monitoring and evaluation of the program as well.

Kalpavriksh co-created and produced learning materials. During the course of curating this program, Sujatha wrote Kalpavriksh’s first nature based children’s story book ‘Ghost of the Mountains’. She had already written ‘Chuskit Goes to School’ for another NGO that worked on inclusive education in Ladakh. Kalpavriksh had also started publishing a series of nature-based stories for the ‘Young World’ supplement of the newspaper The Hindu and for other newspapers and magazines as well.

Kalpavriksh got a request by a network of local NGOs that specifically wanted them to create educational material based on the ecosystems of Kutch. The state government, along with local NGOs, had initiated a program of setting up learning centres across government schools to encourage foundational learning in primary schools. Hence, Kalpavriksh created tools like reading cards, storybooks and other learning material based on the ecosystems and wildlife of Kutch for these learning centres.

These stories were translated into Gujarati. One of these focused on encouraging children to learn about the ecosystems and another to learn about wildlife in the region. These were systematically field tested in different schools, in Bhuj, in the areas immediately around Bhuj and in some places a little farther off, to understand how children and teachers from different areas responded to the content.

In 2017, Kalpavriksh got an offer from the TATA Trusts through their Parag initiative (which works towards inculcating and enhancing literacy across the country) to publish books based on nature and the environment for children. After much deliberation, Kalpavriksh took up this offer with the idea of reaching out to a wide audience. Backed with research and experience of about three decades in the field of environmentalism and development, Kalpavriksh realized that they had an opportunity to bring in certain nuances about environmental issues through their stories.

The book ‘People and Wildlife’ exemplifies this idea. It contains stories of community based conservation efforts across the country. The narratives contained in the book include conservation efforts that range across rural and urban landscapes.

These emerge from traditional beliefs and practices and make efforts to include diverse approaches that encompass different regions and states. ‘Pedro and the Big Boom’ brings in issues related to mining in Goa. ‘Saving The Dalai Lama’s Cranes’ is about issues with a proposed dam that would threaten the wintering habitat of black-necked cranes.

Kalpavriksh primarily publishes books in English. Many of their books have been translated into Tibetan, Hindi, Marathi, Kannada, Telugu, Gujarati and Nepali by regional publishers and local NGOs. The language and illustrations in Kalpavriksh’s books are carefully curated to communicate the complexity of the environmental issues in such a way that children can visualize the manner in which it manifests, learn about it, and think and process the nuances in each scenario.

These books are also a window into the diverse ecological landscapes and cultures that are part of our country. Children in one part of the country can learn about happenings in other regions through these stories. Kalpavriksh hopes that making them aware at such a young age might lead towards developing respect for diversity and aid in cultivating environmental resilience.

Inculcating Biocentrism through Environmental Education

Changes occurring in any field of study inform the manner in which educational practices pertaining to it pan out. For example, science curriculum is informed by changes occurring in the field of science and technology at the global scale. Similarly, EE has been informed by the changes in philosophy and approach to environmental science and conservation in the past couple of decades. The initial philosophy of EE was anthropocentric with the idea of people protecting the environment. People perceived the environment as ‘the other’ and themselves as not belonging to it.

In recent years there has been a shift in this thought process. The philosophy has changed from anthropocentrism to biocentrism, which encourages people to think of themselves as being part of the environment and the ecosystem and working towards addressing issues in a holistic manner. The Wild Shaale Program at Centre for Wildlife Studies has engaged with this philosophy in EE.

Centre for Wildlife Studies (CWS) has worked in the field of wildlife research, in situ conservation and related policy issues for the past 37 years in our country. Dr. Krithi Karanth who heads the organization has been part of studies on Human-Wildlife Conflict (HWC) in various parts of the country in the past couple of decades. Through her research, she has identified that children living in the areas where HWC exists are deeply affected by it. However, the focus of HWC mitigation measures are usually on addressing socioeconomic impact and its effect on families as a whole. Its impact on children is generally not given much importance.

“The distress caused to children belonging to these families when they are pulled out of school to guard their crops, staying up all night worrying about a family member who has gone to guard crops or schools being shut down due to the presence of an elephant in the vicinity, were never taken into account. No child should have to go through that…,” says Nitya Satheesh, Senior Program Manager at Wild Shaale, Karnataka. Wild Shaale is an EE initiative by CWS specifically designed to create awareness amongst children about HWC and equip them with coping mechanisms to deal with the same.

The children impacted by HWC have no factual information on wildlife they come into contact with on a daily basis. They do not understand why animals behave the way they do or the manner in which the actions of the community might cause animals to behave in certain ways. Hence, Wild Shaale was started in 2018 to create an EE program which was locale specific. Its approach is to help students understand that the animals causing conflict are not ‘the other’ and separate from their lives, and that, the community and the wildlife in the vicinity form the ecosystem together. Thus, Wild Shaale envisages a biocentric way of looking at human-nature interactions.

The Wild Shaale team goes to schools that are present in regions with HWC and conducts informal sessions with students. Through multiple sessions, they teach them about the ecology and behaviour of local wildlife, various elements of the environment, and how these interact with each other. The team also shares with the children basic dos and don’ts to follow when staying in close proximity to wildlife. “For example, if there is an elephant in the village, don’t step out of the house. The animals are wild and might retaliate if you attack them. Children need to stay safe. Their safety comes first. To do this they need to know what they are dealing with and understand the behaviour of these animals,” says Nitya.

The Wild Shaale EE program is based on experiential learning frameworks. The pedagogy involves an interactive exchange of information, followed by activities that help children reflect on their learning. For example, they are taught that an elephant needs to consume about 150 kgs of food each day. Then they are given the prompt – how would you go about consuming that much amount of food each day? Where would you find it? Would it be available in one place or will you need to find it by other means? Such a prompt will encourage children to put themselves in the place of an elephant that might have come to their fields looking for food and analyse the situation from its point of view.

After learning about elephants’ dietary requirements, they are made to play a game in which all children become elephants. They then have to forage for food (which is limited) competing with their classmates who are other elephants. Such a session equips the children with information and allows them to reflect on their learnings from different perspectives. They also use art and storytelling to engage with children. The Wild Shaale team works towards building connections with children as well. They value the manner in which children respond to these activities and make close observations, which will then feed into monitoring and evaluation of the Wild Shaale interventions as a whole.

One of the biggest challenges Wild Shaale has faced is in coming up with culturally relevant tools for engaging with children. “What works in western countries will not work in India or cater to the rural Indian context and the HWC scenario present there,” says Nitya. While they draw their inspiration from western ideas, they are aware of what might and might not work for the communities they work with. They have worked over the years towards developing the program, piloting it and changing it as needed. Their efforts towards measuring the impact of their program focus on helping others set up similar programs across the country.

Teacher Engagements for Enhancing Environmental Education

Aripana Foundation is based out of Darbhanga, Bihar. Established in 2017, their first foray was into the creation of children’s literature focused on including the mother tongue of children in their education. The team at Aripana Foundation quickly came to understand that the geography where they work in, that is the Mithila region of Bihar, needs to be accounted for while engaging with communities. “Seven rivers run across the plains of Mithila and the region is ravaged by floods every year. The culture and practices of its people are shaped by water,” says Jamuna Inamdar, program director of the Education Initiatives at Aripana Foundation.

Hence, it was clear from the beginning that environmental concerns become a pervasive subject to be addressed across all the interventions that Aripana Foundation would take up and pursue. While wanting to take up EE, for a small and fledgling organization it appeared to be a daunting task due to its scope. In 2019, they applied for the Wipro Sustainability Educators Program and took up the implementation of the Wipro earthian Program in government schools. The Wipro earthian program, with its structured approach to EE, well-developed content and pedagogy, calendarized sessions that are ready to go into the classrooms, and most importantly trialled and tested for almost a decade, created the perfect opportunity for Aripana Foundation to segue into EE.

“While implementing Wipro earthian does not require much more than a genuine interest and a sustained four month commitment by the teachers, there were other issues that cropped up” says Jamuna. The pandemic hit and any hope of implementing an experiential, activity-based module like Earthian diminished.

However, a teacher who did composting on her terrace decided to invite students to her own home and through 2-hour sessions spread over two and a half months completed the whole ‘Waste and Sustainability’ module from erthian. “Later, when the schools reopened, both students and teachers were overwhelmed with various issues. But, there was a teacher who said that she would set aside 2 hours each week to implement the Wipro earthian Program,” says Jamuna.

Encouraged by the manner in which teachers battled various problems in order to give the children an experience of a meaningful program such as Wipro earthian, Aripana Foundation decided to support and engage with teachers in order to equip them with necessary skills and devise ways of reducing their burden. They came up with the novel idea of making teachers conceive the modules of Wipro earthian as part of the existing curriculum rather than as a separate set of lessons.

This involved mapping the Wipro earthian modules to existing chapters in Science for 7th and 8th grades. For example, the chapter ‘Gandi jal ka niptan’ (Wastewater Management) in 7th standard science textbook could be linked with water purification and waste related activities from Wipro earthian. Soon teachers were effortlessly combining modules from earthian with their Science classes. Teachers were also encouraged to reflect on the manner in which this combination enhanced the experience of learning for the children and themselves.

However, having had an output oriented training, many teachers looked at the idea of successfully executing the earthian program as having tangible ‘good or the right’ results. Aripana Foundation played a major role in building the attitude that ‘trying’ was key to learning amongst the teachers. Any process that emerged from attempting earthian was a successful result.

If an activity failed, then the teachers were encouraged to write about the manner in which it failed and reflect on how they could do it next time. They managed to incorporate scientific temper into the process of EE rather than it just being limited to a ‘skill’ for the students to acquire.

Aripana Foundation understood the needs of the teachers through these experiences and decided to start engaging with teacher capacity building for EE in a sustained manner. Their approach involved cocreation and co-learning of EE with the teachers. Using their contacts from the Wipro Sustainability Educators Network, they collaborated with Nature Classrooms to conduct workshops for teachers and their own team members in Nature Learning. They followed up on the ideas that emerged from this workshop and supported teachers with resources to implement their ideas.

“One of the key realizations that we had while engaging with teachers on the subject of Nature Learning was that most of the teachers come from rural backgrounds. They are still connected to their roots. Memories of interacting with nature are fresh in their minds. What better than to have teachers in EE than those who have had encounters with nature. What if we give teachers an opportunity to relive their own experiences, to recount how much nature has played a role in shaping them as individuals and then maybe further think about what we can do with these experiences as educators so that the children they teach don’t miss out on similar opportunities?” says Jamuna.

During one of the brainstorming sessions with the Nature Classrooms team on the manner in which they could manifest these reflections into practice, they came up with the idea of taking teachers out on a nature picnic. This idea was a pioneering attempt at moving away from traditionally established ‘teacher training programs’. Usually teacher training programs involve an expert who would deliver content and methods to an audience of teachers in a formal space. The nature picnic solely focused on providing the teachers an experience of interacting with nature for their own sake.

Teachers engaged in activities and reflections surrounding their own experiences, rather than look at it through an educational lens. The stress of having to take every learning to the classroom was taken away and attention was given to providing them a fulfilling nature based experience. “However, many teachers did not understand the underlying value of this process. They were perplexed that no particular knowledge was imparted and no teaching techniques were taught during the session,” says Jamuna.

While the team at Aripana Foundation was initially taken aback and disheartened hearing this, they took it in stride and reflected on what might have occurred to give the teachers this impression. The team soon realized that their focus had been on the experience of being amidst nature and not any particular outcome or take away.

Teachers are used to being given methods and deliverables during training sessions all their lives. In this case, the journey itself had been the goal, the act of manifesting the nature picnic, collaborating with teachers, building connections with them and encouraging them to reflect on their nature experiences had been points of success.

Aripana Foundation’s journey is a lesson in persistence and reflective learning through various experiences. They continue to work in taking EE to government schools, engaging with children and teachers. They are looking at taking their learnings and starting a systematic engagement with local communities in the near future.

In Conclusion

While the approaches of these organizations perhaps may be easily summarized in a paragraph, their journey is filled with rich narratives. These journeys are tales of systematic, consistent hard work with pitfalls and challenges. These involve not just overcoming a plethora of challenges related to Environmental Education but also addressing the changing times. These organizations have also been alert to catering to the needs of the dynamic relationship between the communities and their environment while taking into account the environmental movement at a global scale.

You may reach out to the organizations featured in the story at: [email protected] (USNPSS), kalpavriksh.info@ gmail.com (Kalpavriksh), outreach@cwsindia. org (Centre for Wildlife Studies) and https://www.aripanafoundation.org/contact-us/ (Aripana Foundation).