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Environmental Education and Conservation Organisations

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Education, Community Engagement and Sustainable Development

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Abstract

One of the key on-going debates in environmental education research and practice relates to the content and goals of programmes. Specifically, there is a long history of debate between advocates of educational perspectives that emphasise the teaching of science concepts and those that seek to more actively link environmental and social issues. In practice, educators and organisations respond to these tensions in a variety of ways, often due to the particular social and economic contexts in which they are located. This chapter explores these debates about the ‘appropriate’ content and aims of programmes by looking at the case of environmental educators working within two conservation organisations in Monteverde, Costa Rica. It reveals that environmental education (i) is an important local site of debate about understandings of the natural world and humans’ relationships to it, and (ii) is part of much wider struggles over the control of processes of local development and environmental management.

A version of this chapter was previously published as Blum (2009).

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For a history of conservation NGOs in the community, see the edited volumes by Nadkarni and Wheelwright (2000) and Monteverde Friends Meeting (2001).

  2. 2.

    Since the time of this research, the League has continued to expand its holdings (see http://mclus.org/land-purchase-and-protection/).

  3. 3.

    Costa Rican researchers, on the other hand, were less commonly present in the region during the time of this research, largely because the state had relatively few resources to support scientific research, even within the national system of protected areas.

  4. 4.

    I should note here that the issue of communication of research results is not limited to work in the natural sciences. There is also a history of foreign social science researchers arriving in the community to conduct short or long-term research and then failing to send reports or data back to community organisations.

  5. 5.

    Whether these impacts are strictly measurable is an separate issue and one which has received significant attention both from educators in Monteverde and within the academic literature (cf. Rovira 2000; Fien et al. 2001).

  6. 6.

    Whether this knowledge also changes behaviours – by encouraging recycling or stopping illegal hunting or logging – is similarly difficult to measure and has been the subject of intense debate in the field (cf. Kollmuss and Agyeman 2002; Gough 2002; Courtenay-Hall and Rogers 2002).

  7. 7.

    On one occasion, for instance, one young woman was saved from being thrown over because – as she was told by the rest of her all male group – she could ‘cook for the rest of us’. I have not dealt extensively with gender issues within the schools as part of this research, although they undoubtedly have a significant impact on environmental education and management. A significant body of literature on gender issues in Costa Rica does exist which explores related issues (cf. Stocker 2005; Twombly 1998; Leitinger 1997b; Palmer and Chaves 1998).

  8. 8.

    Each of these skits reflected the key discourses of peace, non-violence and conservation which I frequently heard emphasised both within the community and nationally. The piece on war was particularly striking in the context of on-going US military action in Iraq at the time. There was significant disapproval of this within the Costa Rican media as well as in everyday conversation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Development Education Research Centre Institute of Education, University of London, 36 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0PD, UK

    Nicole Blum

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Blum, N. (2012). Environmental Education and Conservation Organisations. In: Education, Community Engagement and Sustainable Development. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2527-0_4

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