Ecological Literacy: Theory and Practice

Abstract

This chapter introduces the concept of ecological literacy as an integral component of legal inquiry. Evolving to embrace interdisciplinary perspectives and a systems-thinking framework, ecological literacy emerges as a fundamental element in the pursuit of environmental sustainability. The research asserts that incorporating an approach that advocates for eco-responsible behaviours is imperative for legal research and education centred on sustainability. This requires a departure from traditional dogmatic approaches in legal methodology towards a participatory dimension. The study lays down a theoretical groundwork aimed at redefining legal methodology to effectively integrate ecological literacy.

This chapter is an updated and revised version of the publication: Murray, E. M., & Poto, M. P. (2024). Achieving a common future for all through sustainability-conscious legal education and research methods. Global Jurist, https://doi.org/10.1515/gj-2023-0122.

E. M. Murray co-wrote Sects. 1–4, especially contributing to the design and development of Sections 2, 3.4, and 4. She also proofread and edited the entire piece.

M. P. Poto coordinated the research, co-wrote Sects. 1–4 and supervised the last version of the work. This research is funded by ECOCARE (https://en.uit.no/project/ecocare/blogg) (HKDIR UTF-2020/10084) and is also a project result of the project The Ocean Incubator Network (https://en.uit.no/project/oceanincubator) (UArctic 580512124).

1 Ecological Literacy in Research and Education

1.1 Ecological Literacy in the Law Domain

This chapter introduces the concept of ecological literacy (EL), exploring how it can serve as a valuable pathway in legal research and education, encompassing theoretical and practical solutions towards sustainability. Originally coined as “environmental literacy” when Charles E. Roth, American environmentalist and educator, asked “how shall we know the environmentally literate citizen?”,¹ EL has evolved over recent decades to encompass the interdisciplinary and systems-thinking approach necessary for achieving environmental sustainability.² In this regard, EL encompasses a broad array of activities and consequently outcomes, including: improved knowledge and understanding of various environmental concepts and issues; cognitive and socio-emotional understanding of humankind’s position in altering the natural environment and the role humans play in repairing the damage; interest in learning about and embodying environmentally responsible behaviours; and skills such as critical systems thinking, communication and attitude to collaborative efforts towards a more sustainable local and global community.³

In this chapter, EL is treated as an umbrella term comprehensive of both legal education and research in academic settings. Preliminarily to the analysis, it is worth noting that within the legal domain, EL is a relatively unexplored field and must be expanded upon and better integrated into legal education for effective solution-oriented approaches and practices to complex sustainability challenges.⁴ As highlighted by Nicole Graham and Kate Galloway’s study,⁵ embedding ecological literacy within the law curriculum is imperative to fostering future generations who care about the environment when drafting policies and legislation. In particular, the scholars emphasise how education holds a crucial yet often overlooked role in anthropogenic environmental change by shaping individuals into lawyers, judges, and policymakers.⁶ The conceptual framework and taxonomy of law, as taught to law students, often perpetuate an unsustainable disconnect with the environment. This separation—one that is inherently Western and aligns with neoliberal agendas—typically segregates questions of entitlement to land and natural resources from questions of responsibility for them.⁷ The implication of maintaining this division in law curricula is that successive generations of legal practitioners are unlikely to develop a coherent system of environmental law that aligns rights with responsibilities. Moving from this reflection, we argue that developing an approach to research and education that promotes eco-responsible behaviours is essential to sustainability-centred legal research and education. Such an approach requires rethinking the foundational pillars of legal methodology, moving away from the conventional dogmatic approaches constructed on the divide between education and research, and most importantly, conceiving this binomial in its participatory and active dimension.

This chapter therefore aims to offer a theoretical base and some practical examples of how the legal methodology can be rethought and reshaped towards an effective implementation of ecological literacy and therefore towards a more environmentally conscious approach to research and education within the legal domain.

1.2 Sustainability as a Frame of Mind

In this chapter, the terms education and research are used interdependently and are deeply interconnected to an active and collaborative dimension of the involved parties (educators, researchers, scientists, lawyers). When engaging in action research on sustainability, teachers and learners are seen as researchers^8,9,10,11 who have the unique opportunity to co-create ethically informed practices, enhance their response-ability, and strengthen their emotional knowledge, as well as advance their individual and collective coping strategies to sustainability challenges; hence, the interconnectedness between education and research.

The importance of education and research for sustainability emerges when realising that sustainability itself contains the elements of education and action research or, in the words of Michael Bonnett, can be conceived as “a frame of mind”.¹² An integrated vision of sustainability as an education and research process helps us reflect on its essence and the core question that any law and policy development regarding sustainability should be concerned with: “What constitutes a right relationship with nature?” and “What should our basic stance towards the natural environment be?”.¹³ In the face of the climate change and environmental degradation, these questions are more timely than ever and provoke reflection on how humans have treated the natural environment and what must change to prevent further lack of responsibility. In other words, delving into sustainability as a frame of mind and guideline for law and policymakers implies posing a set of questions about the basic understanding of our human identity and our relationship with nature.

Though the scholarship seems to progressively agree on the importance of embedding sustainability in the academic curriculum, an effective education and research approach focusing on complex combinations of interdisciplinary knowledge, understanding, skills, and values are widely recognised as inherently challenging and therefore still hardly applied in practice.¹⁴ More specifically, the scholarship has underlined how non-disciplinary views and approaches to achieving education and research in sustainability are nearly absent in the literature,¹⁵ and only a few researchers have attempted to effectively develop non-traditional views of how students and academics can learn about sustainability and contribute to shaping sustainability solutions.¹⁶ In particular, in their study on Paul Shrivastava, Ingrid Molderez and Kim Ceulemans observe how boldly, and pretty uniquely, the scholar Shrivastava promoted a culture of passion for sustainability, that “can be taught using a holistic pedagogy that integrates physical and emotional or spiritual learning with traditional cognitive (intellectual) learning about sustainable management”.¹⁷ This perspective suggests that it is possible to expand the field of education and research to sustainability by developing innovative approaches and methods that facilitate real integrated and cross-disciplinary thinking and offer concrete solutions, also in the field of education and research, to the sustainability challenges.¹⁸ Furthermore, David W. Orr argues that building a sustainable society is strongly linked to improving EC and that the concept of sustainability itself “implies a radical change in the institutions and patterns that we’ve come to accept as normal”.¹⁹ Radical change, especially behavioural, is urgently needed to make a shift towards a more caring, eco-conscious society; and it is argued here that instilling a sustainability frame of mind in those involved in education and research can have a positive, long-lasting impact on both humans and the environment.

As hinted above, the importance of innovative and integrated educational and research approaches to sustainability becomes even more evident in the field of legal education and research to sustainability, where the tasks of lawyers and legal scholars consist of designing, drafting, implementing, and managing sustainable solutions to the wicked problems posed by the environmental crisis. In legal education and research on sustainability, Bonnett’s definition of sustainability as a frame of mind²⁰ is perfectly fitting, as the law is expected to equip learners and researchers with education and inspiration for feasible solutions for sustainable living,²¹ both in their personal and professional spheres, enabling them to develop a profound understanding of the interactions and consequences of actions and decisions. Enhancing EL within legal education and research which will eventually infiltrate into the legal system as a whole, thus instilling a sustainability state of mind, can foster decision-makers who have a greater sense of environmental stewardship and an awareness of how their actions can shape a sustainable future for all.

1.3 The Three Thematic Pillars of a Reimagined “Ecoliterate” Legal Education

The lack of effective and integrated legal education and research approaches to sustainability is the gap that this chapter addresses by offering concrete examples of how to frame and further develop a transformative approach to legal education and research. As will be further explained, and in line with the study conducted by Angela Moriggi et al.,²² the transformative approach to legal education and research proposed in this study organises the education and research practices developed in academic courses and research groups’ experiences through three main thematic pillars: (1) ethically informed practices, through instilling a “care” lens that allows humans to situate themselves about others and the planet; (2) development of response-ability, through recognising the vulnerability and interconnectedness of living and non-living beings and the planet; and (3) emotional awareness, through nurturing cognitive-emotional skills such as imagination, creativity, and intuition to give humans the capacity to better understand and hope for a better future. The approach is grounded on the need to develop a strong context of inter-relationships and connection to nature, overall focusing on the individual, community, and planet. This is in line with the core issue of sustainability that Bonnett defines as our relationship with nature and how it ultimately shapes sustainability education in three dimensions: the individual, the collective, and the planet.

For this purpose, the first part of the chapter examines how the complexity of the Agenda 2030 indirectly calls for composite responses merging education and research outcomes through its urgency for collaborative, community effort towards sustainability. The interconnectedness of the SDGs and the role that policy can play in implementing society-wide changes is connected to the legal discourse. In its second part, the chapter provides concrete examples of experiential learning and participatory research whose application contributes to equipping legal researchers with the ability to respond to sustainability challenges, before concluding with lessons learned and future directions.

2 The Agenda 2030

The current global framework for achieving sustainability for all, which involves many sectors such as health, education, agriculture, industry, and the environment (to name a few), was unanimously approved in September 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). The document “Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development” (hereinafter: The Agenda) identifies a set of 17 integrated global goals (the well-known Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)), composed of 169 targets and 232 unique indicators, which were set to be achieved by 2030. The Agenda, recognised and in effect in all 193 United Nations (UN) member states, aims to achieve a set of ambitious goals and targets through interconnected actions while balancing the three dimensions of sustainable development: economic growth, social inclusion, and environmental protection.²³ As highlighted in Sect. 1.1, for the purpose of this chapter, the “environmental protection” dimension of sustainable development will be of main focus, drawing on the interconnected SDGs and how the objectives and indicators point towards education and research being powerful tools for achieving good environmental governance and sustainability.

In the Agenda, the SDGs and their respective objectives are preceded by two sections entitled Preamble and Declaration. In the Preamble, the UNGA enumerates the five pillars of the Agenda: people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership.²⁴ Through characteristics of coherence and integrity,²⁵ the five pillars set the foundation for the systemic and interconnected approach that must be taken when working towards sustainability, in any capacity.²⁶ The commitment to implement the SDGs in a coherently integrated way is grounded in the overall objectives which hope to: end poverty and ensure that all human beings can realise their potential²⁷; protect the planet from degradation, adopt urgent measures against climate change, and ensure everyone a prosperous and satisfactory lifestyle; enhance economic and social progress in harmony with nature; promote peaceful, just, and inclusive societies, free from fear and violence^28,29; and, finally, realise the potential of global solidarity, which includes the participation of all countries, stakeholders, and people.^30,31

The Declaration follows with eight subsections, outlining that everyone must play a part in achieving sustainability and the importance of universal, collective action from stakeholders in low-, middle-, and high-income countries across the globe. More specifically, the Declaration urges that science and policy play a crucial role in finding solutions and implementing concrete actions for sustainability,³² and although not explicitly stated, legal education and research—in their scientific dimension—also play an integral role in shaping the sustainability of the future. In the subsection Our shared principles, there are clear links made between achieving sustainability and international law, referring to the Charter of the United Nations, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Millennium Declaration, as well as to international environmental law sources such as the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development.³³ The UNGA recognises that there are many challenges to achieving sustainable development, but points to the fact that we are currently living in a window of opportunity to create more interconnected knowledge societies (among other opportunities, i.e., further developing scientific and technological innovation). Addressing the gap of EL within legal education and research while promoting sustainable education is just a couple of ways to harness this “window” and therefore build a more environmentally aware society that makes decisions with a sustainability mindset.

Examining the individual SDGs more specifically, it is clear that education and research play an important (if not, central) role in making global progress towards the objectives and indicators set to be achieved by 2030. Inherently, each of the 17 global goals cannot be successfully achieved without integrated solutions that simultaneously target the objectives of multiple goals due to the complexity of the challenges we are facing today. For example, any practice or policy implemented to end hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture (SDG 2) must also consider the SDGs that have objectives and targets relating to poverty, human health, education, planetary health, and consumption patterns—virtually each of the 17 goals. It is overwhelming to realise the interconnectedness of the goals and the necessary collaboration that must be taken across all sectors and disciplines to truly reach a sustainable global society, yet empowering for the legal community who has the opportunity to shape education and research around instilling a sustainability mindset into those who will develop the policies and laws that lead to achieving the SDGs.

Consequently, legal education and research have the responsibility of developing methodologies, knowledge, and tangible solutions for the realisation of the overall vision and goals. The term “policies” is mentioned 32 times between the Declaration and 17 goals, with the overall theme of needing to implement national policies and programmes that fit under the framework of the Agenda while aligning with national policies and programmes. This reference makes it evident that the UNGA has the assumption that policies are the main tangible tool towards realising global sustainability. However, even in the mention of important stakeholders in achieving such sustainability, the UNGA neglects to mention how lawyers and policymakers (i.e., those in the legal discourse) hold the responsibility to create such policies and legislation. As mentioned above,³⁴ current legal education and research practices instil a “dephysicalised” perspective of the environment and teach its students that the planet should be conceptualised as a “thing”.³⁵ It is time to close the gap between the legal discourse and ecological literacy by recognising that the planet is an integrated ecological system with an infinite amount of living, moving parts and processes.³⁶ Carrying out educational and research activities that instil a sense of responsibility and care for the planet will influence future lawmakers and the subsequent policies they develop which (hopefully) consider the environment at all costs.

Along these lines, and with the intent to show some practical and effective applications of an innovative approach to integrated legal research and education, the following section expands on several examples of how to shift away from conventional legal teaching and research methods towards nature-based, participatory methods that foster a sustainability frame of mind.

3 Education and Research for Transformative Change in Sustainability

3.1 Introduction

The two sections of the Agenda described above (the Preamble and Declaration) contain statements that, if not accompanied by the assumption of responsibility and actual plans of action, risk remaining empty and rhetorical statements of principle.³⁷ This contribution shows how understanding and implementing the vision that emerges from the 17 SDGs assign a new role to legal education and research, by requiring them to generate and disseminate knowledge to achieve sustainability. Following the three thematic pillars of transformative change as elaborated by Angela Moriggi et al.³⁸ and described above, this section offers practical examples of how legal education and research on environmental matters can offer tools for concrete implementation strategies to give substance to the objectives and overall mission of the Agenda. In particular, it will describe some education and research practices developed and adopted as implementing activities of the research project “An Exchange Program on Empathy Compassion and Care in Water Governance, from the Perspective of Integral Ecology”.³⁹ The examples will be organised following the above-described matrix developed by Angela Moriggi et al.,⁴⁰ in the tripartite form of a care-based approach that leads to transformative change through (1) ethically informed practices; (2) response-ability; and (3) emotional awareness.

3.2 Ethically Informed Practices: A Story About Knowledge

As an example of ethically informed practice (1), the teaching and research developed from the two books “A Story About Knowledge”⁴¹ (hereinafter, the handbook) and “A Story About Knowledge. Illustrated version”,⁴² (hereinafter, the silent book) show how, also in legal education and research, it has been possible to co-create ethically informed practices engaging with a legal context, embracing playful experimentation⁴³ and experiencing the tension towards empowerment, by reframing relations of powers.

The two books are educational and reflection-provoking resources rooted in an Arctic Indigenous story about the search for knowledge, which in the end turns out to be ecological and emotional knowledge. The story characters and plot belong to the Native American Anishnaabe storytelling tradition connected to the myth of Nanabozho, and its relationship with water.^44,45 As will be further explained, these resources have been applied to the research workshops and University curricula developed within the umbrella of the ECO_CARE project, in undergraduate courses as well as in Master’s programmes. Moreover, the teaching materials were used to lead research seminars on the theme of situated knowledges: in 2022, in Bayreuth⁴⁶ and on a research expedition in the Northern Sea⁴⁷; and in 2019–2020 as part of the core activities complementing first and second year students’ doctoral training in Global Studies: Justice, Rights, Politics (University of Macerata, Italy, Department of Political Science, Communication and International Relations). Finally, the teaching methodology has also been adopted in an interdisciplinary Master’s programme on Global Health, with a specific focus on Arctic Governance (McMaster University, Ontario, Canada 2021–2023).⁴⁸

The story at the core of the two books follows the nested loops technique, enabling the core message (“Where can knowledge be found, hidden and preserved?”) to be communicated and discovered through several narratives delivered within one story.⁴⁹ The story is chosen for its focus on the collective search; one that bridges human and non-human worlds with underlying principles of care and responsibility, for the best place to find and have custody of knowledge.

The story begins with a research question posed by the creator to the trickster spirit named Nanabozho, to find that place where knowledge can be found, and from the trickster spirit, the task is delegated to the animals of the Earth (symbolically represented by Arctic animals: a bear, an eagle, a salmon, and a mole). The search becomes an interactive, situated, and delocalised thought-provoking process. Each story character situates their answer based on their knowledge of the habitat they live in: the bear knows the mountains, and is sure that knowledge can be found, hidden, and treasured on top of them; the salmon is the knowledge keeper of the secrets of river courses and sea; and the eagle, created to soar above the heights, provides her knowledge of the high altitudes in the sky. In the unfolding of each animal’s nest, the story leads to the conclusion of the mole, who seems to be the only one able to provide the correct answer to the trickster’s question. Although the mole is not gifted with any apparent eyesight, she is gifted with great vision. In her view, knowledge is found and guarded in the heart of the earth.

The multi-layered theme of this story is found in the fact that there are potentially limitless interpretations of how the problem of the search for (ecological and emotional) knowledge can be solved, and these interpretations depend on the audience, the positioning of each member and also the relationship between the audience members. For example, among the answers we collected through carrying out this activity with legal scholars, it was interesting to note that the scholars studying ecological restoration as a collective act, agreed on the fact that it was not the last animal that provided the answer, but rather the “right” answer blossomed out of a collective sum of the individual efforts of all the animals involved in the search.⁵⁰ Following the story plot, the handbook develops educational insights and stimulates a debate around each animal character, their roles, the relational aspects that are generated from their search, and their deep interconnectedness with nature, as well as with the community of readers and researchers engaging with the story.

In parallel with the lessons developed in the handbook, a co-created and illustrated book project, the silent book, based on the same story plot as above, continues along with the conceptual idea of the need to engage in conversations around the relational dimension of ecology.⁵¹ In this latter case, the investigation process is situated in fictitious and coloured settings (the mountainside, airspace, waterside, and underground). Numerous art prototypes display the crucial moments of the animals’ search for knowledge and the consequent full immersion in and interaction with their own environment. This silent book helps readers and learners engage in the search for knowledge by giving them a voice and transforming them into storytellers and interpreters of the story.⁵²

Seminar series and academic lectures organised around these two books provide examples of ethically informed practices firstly by inviting the audience to develop a sense of engagement with the learning context; a sense of place, represented by the situated answers of each animal; and a sense of community, extending beyond the community of animals and embracing the community of learners, giving life to what the scholars call an eco-sociological model. The skills and lessons realised through this type of learning activity become foundational moments towards the development of sustainability values.

When workshops and lessons around “A Story About Knowledge” are carried out, the sense of place and community is further ignited by the education and research protocol of respect and mutual understanding that is instilled in the development of the learning and investigation experience.⁵³ At the beginning of each session, and following the Indigenous practice of acknowledging traditional territories hosting the human communities, an expression of gratitude to the hosting place is expressed by the session leaders.⁵⁴

At times, the session may begin with the practice of story reading and storytelling; reading or telling the story aloud is also a tool to strengthen a multisensory connection with the space and the community audience.⁵⁵ Afterwards, space is dedicated to sharing and reporting back preliminary impressions, before initiating a deeper conversation around the subject matter. Before, during, and after the sessions, participants are encouraged to engage with the learning materials and stories by providing written answers, as well as their visual creativity. Creative answers brought forward through designing and colouring journaling prompts, are highly encouraged and recommended so that creativity becomes a fundamental tool of pedagogy for ecological education⁵⁶ by encouraging the learners to be engaged in conscious acts of gentle exploration of their abilities in their surrounding space.⁵⁷ Engaging with the learning toolkit through journaling exercises and prompts can be construed as part of a collective therapeutic process that brings awareness to the need to heal the planet by restoring our relationships and improving overall human health by creatively engaging with inner and outer conflicts.⁵⁸ The personal and community work outside the seminar room contributes to spurring new conversations, allowing us to discuss key issues in greater depth, and elevating the richness and complexity of mutual understanding. Through these continued conversations, which consolidated into ethically informed practices of education, the key underlying principles forming a common conceptual framework of integral ecology are identified through the relationship with the environment and the affected peoples.

The experience of delving into collaborative educational and research activities, and thus engaging in a reciprocal effort to co-create and look for solutions, shifts the conversation towards purpose, intention, and consciousness of the socio-ecological interdependencies. Discussing concerns for the biophysical environment including climate change threats, economic and social disparity, and inadequacy of the Western-centric legal approaches to overcome poor environmental governance, leads these ethically informed practices to reflective questions on the need to develop a sense of relational accountability and individual, collective, and planetary search for solutions are understood as part of a ceremony.⁵⁹

3.3 Sustainability-Conscious Legal Education and Research and the Ability to Provide Responses: the Participatory Work with the Chiquitano People of Mato Grosso

Looking at the Agenda’s commitments and objectives from the perspective of environmental response-ability is crucial to ensure that the sustainability vision is transformed into the ability to provide effective and practical responses to the many complex and interconnected challenges of sustainability. Rendering each other able to provide responses is the key role that legal education and research are asked to play within and beyond 2030, by raising awareness on the need to develop a sense of response-ability among individuals and community as a whole to repair the harm to the environment and build up different relational and ethical systems that prevent future harm.⁶⁰ Thus, teachers, learners, and researchers become effective ability trainers and response-givers to the sustainability challenges. Sustainability-conscious education and research aim to strengthen this ability by enhancing awareness of the need to repair the harms and by building a relational sense of solidarity and mutuality.⁶¹

Developing the ability to connect with others, through environmental education and literacy, activates the capacity to “care about”, an internal state of readiness, and a commitment to the possibility of caring for strangers or distant others, which precedes the actual practice of caring.⁶² The ability of responsiveness builds upon multiple ethically informed practices of relationality: the more we engage in attentive relationships, developing a sense of place and a sense of community, the stronger our ecological identity becomes, building our feelings of empathy, compassion, and care for others.

An example of this collective experience of building up these three emotions and therefore strengthening responsiveness abilities is provided by one of the co-created activities carried out by the ECO_CARE research team with the Chiquitano Community of Mato Grosso, Brazil.

In collaboration with local scholars from Brazil, cultural mediators, law students, community representatives, and school communities, the ECO_CARE team created a series of visual and narrative materials on environmental participation with and for the Chiquitano People of Mato Grosso. The project, entitled “Legal Design and Visual Law in International Environmental Law: Conversion of the Escazú Agreement in Visual Materials for the Chiquitano People”, was developed during the related academic course, throughout the year 2020, by the students of the Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, Postgraduate Law Programme and with the active participation of the Chiquitano People from Mato Grosso (Brazil).⁶³ The objective of the project was to teach, in practice, an efficient method to create a knowledge base of participatory environmental law, as well as co-develop educational materials that could work as a tool for strengthening environmental participation. The project participants were assigned to three thematic areas, corresponding to the three pillars of environmental participation, and critically revisited through the three mentioned emotions: respectively, access to information was associated with empathy, as the ability to feel for others; participation was connected to compassion, as the ability to feel with others; and access to justice was connected to care, as the ability to take restoring action.⁶⁴

The leader of the academic team was a Chiquitano student and young scholar, Silvano Chue Muquissai, who holds membership in one of the communities the team has been working alongside.⁶⁵ Silvano has strong social and family ties to the aldeia (“village” in Portuguese) of Vila Nova Barbecho, as this is where he lived until he left for his post-secondary academic studies. The development of this community-based project therefore built upon a very strong base of relationships and kinship with the community members,⁶⁶ and was shared in a relational connection, which has been essential to all stages of our project, most particularly in its early development when it was crucial to build trust and gain community understanding of the project vision, scope, and long-term objectives. The education and research project formally began with many community meetings involving researchers, law students, residents, teachers and spiritual leaders (pajé, in Portuguese), and elders seeking to elicit local perceptions on key environmental issues among the Chiquitano communities in different villages in Mato Grosso. This resulted in various discussions with students and community members through meetings and focus group sessions that enabled a better understanding of local environmental concerns. The meeting point between the community needs and the project vision was found in the co-created version (in comics) of the Regional Agreement on Access to Information, Public Participation and Justice in Environmental Matters in Latin America and the Caribbean (Escazú Agreement 2018). The community members took part in the project, actively becoming the protagonists and discussing the possibility of transforming the Escazú Agreement into an accessible format, where different understandings and concerns could be voiced, and the role of the Chiquitano People could become effectively visible. Thus, the community chose to imagine and develop a comic format for the Agreement (i.e., a manifestation of visual law): the voice was given to the community members who played an active role in participating in the creation of an accessible version of the Agreement, through the construction of co-developed dialogues. Accordingly, the legal provisions on participation of the Escazú Agreement, written in technical legal language, were cooperatively translated into an easily accessible dialogue, understandable by everyone. Each sentence in the comic dialogue was paired with pictures from the village, representing places and people that different individuals could recognise and relate to within the story. The pictures of the community were transformed into cartoons by students and community members and accompanied by corresponding speech bubbles. The final work consisted of three versions of the Agreement in comics, in Portuguese, English, and Spanish, where the Indigenous Chiquitano People of Vila Nova Barbecho converses on the individual and collective understanding and interpretation of environmental participation as regulated in the Agreement.⁶⁷

As a final restitution act, the books were returned to the community, and a series of video documentaries on the process of co-creation, and the building of trust, mutual understanding, and empathy-building between the community of researchers, students, and the Chiquitano communities.⁶⁸ By strengthening the bond between the Indigenous community, its space, and the community of learners, a sense of ecological identity was developed and, through effective participation in education and research, a collective ability for responsiveness to environmental challenges was created.

This co-created approach to research education parallels the essence of situated and community-based education which aims to transform the Western conventional approach of educational institutions to include the spirit of community, a re-imagined relationship to nature and a commitment to the responsibilities that grow from that relationship.⁶⁹

Central to the process of building responsiveness through the community practice of co-creating learning materials were the attributes of healing, participation, storytelling, categorising harm, and accountability. Healing and participation were closely correlated to the process of involvement and cooperation between the community of students and the Chiquitano community members. Conversations and collective brainstorming on the creation of the most accessible legal tool that could effectively give voice to the unvoiced led towards relational and emotional healing through the practice of “re-storying” the experiences, integrating and understanding both the root causes of the problems as well as the responses to them. Storytelling and identifying harms helped develop conversational empowerment and inclusion of perspectives, as well as situating events and persons in time and place, and therefore contributing to developing collective consciousness and accountability.⁷⁰

3.4 Emotional and Ecological Awareness for a Sustainable Future: Follow Your Heart

Another example of practices towards transformative change in research and education is represented by programmes that stimulate emotional intelligence and embed associated competencies as a central element to learning, to foster future generations with an awareness of the relationships with themselves, others, and their surrounding environment. Addressing the gap in EL within a legal education and research context is not possible without building emotional intelligence since EL requires the ability to integrate “empathy, seeing others’ perspectives, and cooperation with an understanding of and respect for natural systems”.⁷¹ The co-creation of the education and research resource “Follow Your Heart: the school for multipotentialites” (hereinafter Follow Your Heart)⁷² forms part of this scenario with a playful, yet scientific approach to improving emotional intelligence, ecological literacy, and an overall appreciation for creativity and mindfulness. The book project developed from the original idea of the illustrator, Valentina Russo, whose personal experiences led to the realisation and motivation for implementing more emotional literacy and creativity within elementary and secondary education, and potentially higher education as well.⁷³ Continuing on the path of creativity and participatory methods for education and research practices that instil a sustainability frame of mind, ECO_CARE supported and developed the original project plan (written in Italian) into an English teaching resource with a multipurpose scope (scientific, educational, and playful).⁷⁴ As mentioned above, the ECO_CARE research group develops education and research approaches that bring empathy, compassion, and care into the world of environmental law and sustainable development, and felt inspired to take on this project with the belief that focusing on emotional literacy in youth will lead to future generations with the emotional-cognitive skills to imagine and create a more sustainable society.⁷⁵

Through the iterative process of developing Follow Your Heart into a co-created and dynamic learning and teaching resource, and an educational philosophy overall, the authors structured the book in a way that speaks to the interests of young learners, educators, and researchers. Within the primary and secondary school systems, learners and educators might use Follow Your Heart as inspiration to reimagine their learning spaces and stretch the boundaries of traditional school curriculum to strengthen imagination and creativity—important skills to nurture in the case of improving emotional awareness.⁷⁶ For researchers and higher education, the themes, concepts, and activities of Follow Your Heart can be further explored through academic courses, community-based research, and interconnected outreach on emotional education, environmental awareness, compassion, ethics of care, and human rights.

With the aim to create space for the development of emotional education and support present and future generations in their effort to make the world a better place, the book is built upon solid research that supports the importance of co-created approaches for achieving a common future for all (the ultimate objective of sustainability).⁷⁷ One unique characteristic of Follow Your Heart is its dual participatory element, which is linked to the co-creation of sustainability approaches: the resource (1) encourages the participation of its target audience members as participants and co-creators of the educational resource itself and the subsequent materials that will continue to develop, and (2) describes a curriculum and teaching style that encourages the active participation of pupils and students in their learning to foster deeper engagement with learning outcomes, and a greater sense of autonomy and belonging.⁷⁸ Along with creating an environment that views participation as a central element in education and research, Follow Your Heart welcomes creativity, imagination, and multiple talents (elements lacking in the Western education context), which can shape the minds and hearts of learners into eager citizens who remain hopeful in the face of difficult challenges and inspired to find sustainable solutions.⁷⁹

Embedded in the first part of the Follow Your Heart book, a fully illustrated children’s story called “The Story of Cora” visually demonstrates the pressure that comes from the question adults often ask children, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”.⁸⁰ One of the themes in Follow Your Heart is to shift away from this question, which limits imagination and creativity while encouraging children to pick a linear path from an early age. The second part of the book contains evidence-based research supporting emotional education and gives examples of multipotentialites such as Malala Yousafzai and Wangari Maathai who have learned how to use their multiple talents and emotional intelligence to work towards a more sustainable future.⁸¹

The book’s final part is a co-created “activities” chapter with contributions from various educators focusing on developing emotional awareness and an understanding of the interconnectedness between humans and nature and the responsibility we have to care for each other. Teaching pupils to care for others sets the foundation for strong interpersonal and social relations with all beings, including a sense of responsibility and care for the natural environment.⁸² Overall, a curriculum that includes mindfulness activities, outdoor learning, multi-language and multi-age classrooms, while embodying and instilling relational thinking, has the potential to raise children with a sustainability mindset and the skills to tackle complex challenges; children who will become future lawyers, policymakers, and politicians who need the skills and self-awareness to create and implement innovative solutions to build a more sustainable society.

In the legal context, emotional intelligence programmes such as Follow Your Heart can and should be engaged with higher education since the acquisition of theoretical knowledge and technical skills, although necessary, are no longer sufficient for working with the complex challenges our society is currently facing. As with Follow Your Heart, there must also be a paradigm shift in higher education towards recognising the multiple potentialities that exist within individuals and teaching them how to utilise their diverse talents (outside academic environments). Developing emotional and social intelligences and making time and space to give students to opportunity to re-discover their creativity, imagination, and autonomy (alongside the necessary university curriculum) will benefit the individuals themselves by giving them the confidence and skills to work cooperatively with others and their surrounding natural environment.

Thus, the resource encourages the development of intergenerational programmes on emotional awareness, especially starting from an early age. The typical Western education classroom is not usually viewed as a place to foster creativity, imagination, and emotions, but rather as academic excellence and discipline. Follow Your Heart promotes educational approaches that enhance emotional and ecological knowledge, recasting the role of children and teachers as agents of intergenerational learning in environmental and sustainably conscious education and research.⁸³

4 Concluding Remarks

This chapter underscores the significance of investing in both ecological and emotional literacy as essential components of legal inquiry aimed at achieving environmental sustainability. The current legal education and curriculum predominantly emphasise theoretical and technical aspects, grounded in conventional (Western) knowledge frameworks. However, they fall short in fostering an ecoliterate mindset among lawmakers and policymakers, which is vital for integrating sustainability into all facets of their work. Therefore, advocating for ethically informed practices, cultivating a sense of responsibility, and promoting emotional awareness represent a threefold approach recommended to nurture caring, empathetic, and accountable graduates of legal education and research programmes. Beyond the realm of legal education, the examples presented in this chapter hold relevance across various disciplines, given the interconnected nature of social, political, economic, and environmental challenges confronting contemporary society.

Examples of the three practices outlined in this chapter have been tested and implemented in various geographical academic settings and demonstrate a way forward in which education and research are committed to the achievement of “Our Common Future”, following the ambitious indication of the Agenda 2030. Thinking of a way forward is, therefore, the second step after the establishment of education and research foundations based on ecoliteracy and emotions, which follow the direction of environmental experts such as David W. Orr who recommends the continuing development of experiential education and research, specifically informed by the interconnectedness of nature.⁸⁴ Attempts should be made to go beyond linear thinking and towards a system-thinking approach, both applied to knowledge systems and to the relational dimensions of the knowledge seekers (teachers and students).⁸⁵ Relational thinking instils situationality and allows citizens to understand their place in the current global vision of achieving sustainability for all. Essentially, improving ecoliteracy in across all education and research disciplines is, in a sense, “eco-designing” (seen, by David Orr, as a complementary activity of ecoliteracy)⁸⁶ a community of care, where individuals, communities, and the planet are part of the same learning experience—this is the main direction that must be followed in the preservation of our common home, the planet.⁸⁷ Without reshaping education and research to foster a sustainability state of mind, the environment will continue to be governed in such a way that does not reflect caring and responsibility, leading to further degradation.

In the future, the different practical examples developed and tested in the project activities described in this chapter as ecological literacy “in practice”, can be upscaled and applied in other contexts and situations. Researching the long-term beneficial impacts of these practices on the restoration of the relational fabric of society can help to expand the evidence base supporting ecological education, especially within a legal context. Collaborating with educators, researchers, and academic institutions as a whole who have integrated emotional and ecological education within their programmes is another way forward, to develop a framework to guide those who want to reshape their curriculum. Additionally, students and educators may be surveyed in the future to investigate what aspects of the ecoliteracy curriculum should be further addressed and developed, which would also contribute to creating an overall framework or set of guidelines to reshape legal education with grounding principles of ecoliteracy and sustainability. Consequently, based on the consolidation of these practices and the research studies that come forth, policymakers could be informed on the relevance of ecological and emotional education to provide concrete responses to complex sustainability challenges. Further research following this study, including a larger number of students, schools, and communities, is expected to be conducted in the near future to build upon the tools for developing ethically informed practices, response-ability, and emotional awareness.

Instilling a sustainability state of mind and integrating practices to strengthen ecological literacy is important across all disciplines and ages, and is a gentle step forward towards the co-creation of a common future for all.