Children and Sustainability

Abstract

Childhood and, by implication, education are seen by many as practical stages for engaging people with sustainability. This viewpoint is perhaps prevalent because social and cultural factors are increasingly acknowledged as both root causes of climate and ecological crises (Latour 2013) and significant factors in response to these allied crises (Mann 2021). Childhood and formal education are considered by many as the earliest space in which to address such crises offering a route to social and cultural transformation. The argument for enabling children to engage with a paradigm of sustainability is growing, alongside increasing awareness of the relationship between planetary health and human health and well-being (Vicedo-Cabrera et al. 2021). Enhancing children’s awareness of and ability to respond to the climatic and environmental crisis is also growing amidst concerns about the unequal distribution of the effects of these allied crises. Within this chapter, I intend to draw attention to the need for progression in childhood engagement with sustainability. I build upon previous research (Dunkley 2018) to present an emergent conceptualization of ecopedagogy. This ecopedagogy is concerned with identifying ways of engaging children with sustainability that go beyond deficit models of education and engaging children in relevant ways that are respectful of the life situations and stages that children find themselves living within. I call upon childhood conceptualizations that recognize that children have long been masters of their concerns and activities. In doing so, I explore opportunities for a just and hopeful childhood engagement with climate and environmental crises.