limate change is disrupting our societies globally. We need to systematically coordinate learning for climate action to ensure that every person across the world has the information and capacity to engage in individual and collective climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. While learning is needed to tackle climate change and to foster sustainable futures, climate change impacts disrupt learning opportunities. Additionally, quality learning opportunities and climate change impacts are highly variable. Those most impacted by climate change often receive less education, which is also more disrupted.
Creating just, coherent learning ecosystems for climate action is challenging, particularly given that models must support intergenerational learning for action. In order to foster sustainable, equitable climate learning, three design principles should be at the core of such a model to help center justice: inclusive participation and shared decision-making, knotworking, and infrastructuring.
Inclusive Participation, Shared Decision-Making
Inclusive participation and shared decision-making by all stakeholders in the design of the learning ecosystem ensures the centering of justice and maximizes innovation. Diversity of experiences and perspectives is beneficial to foster innovation around emerging issues—such as those resulting from climate change. For many years, community organizers addressing issues of environmental and climate injustices have been working collaboratively; one such group is the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Climate Change Consortium (HBCU-CCC). The HBCU-CCC produces knowledge and provides networking opportunities for groups across the United States to learn with and from each other around climate change impacts and actions. Such networks often use community participatory design research practices to work across networks, drawing in knowledge from both community and academia. Other examples of involving diverse stakeholders in designing just climate and sustainability learning ecosystems occur at different scales of work at city, regional, state, national, and international efforts. The Jemez Principles provide guidance for engaging in equitable participation in shared decision-making.
Knotworking
As more stakeholders are brought into designing justice-forward climate and sustainability learning ecosystems, it is necessary to intentionally consider how to link disconnected individuals, organizations, or networks together to foster the creation of new knowledge and practices. This is a practice known as knotworking. Knotworking provides a model for coordinating activities that have a shared goal, but which imposes little in the way of coordination or control. This principle draws on the idea that we learn and act best when in relationships with and accountable to each other. A knotworking approach to designing climate and sustainability learning ecosystems that is grounded in inclusive participation and shared decision-making connects people to each other in meaningful ways to leverage powerful, co-created actions to mitigate or adapt to climate change impacts. Bringing stakeholders together who wouldn’t usually interact also encourages the development of new relationships, activities, and resources—often allowing those excluded from climate mobilization and sustainability efforts a pathway into such work. However, justice is only fully supported when these new relationships are grounded in respectful, inclusive, and collaborative practices, from problem definition, through solution options, to on-the-ground climate action implementation.
Networks that foster knotworking around climate action are emerging at all scales. While research suggests the “sweet spot” for climate action happens within networks of 10,000 to one million people, we also need “networks of networks” sharing new knowledge and practices across global scales. One such example is UNESCO’s Greening Education Partnership (GEP), a global network of organizations to synthesize and produce knowledge and resources for building resilient k-12 education systems.
Infrastructuring
Parallel to knotworking is the need for infrastructuring to develop just climate change and sustainability learning ecosystems. Infrastructuring is the process of providing support and resources across the system as needs emerge. Supports and resources could include policy briefs, community designed communication toolkits, educational curricula, professional learning resources, data visualizations, or funding.
The International Center for Climate Change and Development’s Locally-Led Adaptation (LLA) initiative provides an excellent example of community and justice forward infrastructuring. The LLA met in 2022 to address the challenges faced by many stakeholders in Bangladesh in facing climate change impacts. Using a knotworking approach, the LLA brought together previously disconnected stakeholders to share challenges and opportunities. From this a first step of infrastructuring was to design a national platform of activities that draws in from divisional platforms in different regions of the country. This bottom-up strategy allows for sharing of work as it emerges and for local participants to learn of similar efforts and resources in other regions, greatly increasing local participants’ capacity to make informed actions. Some guidance for designing educational infrastructure is emerging out of similar efforts in North America.
Mobilizing climate change mitigation and adaptation must be a whole-of-society global effort, an effort that needs a coherent and justice-forward approach to ensure our shared sustainable future. Climate empowerment was clearly defined in the original United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Article 6) in 1992, and again restated in the Paris Agreement (Article 12) in 2015. Researchers have clearly defined equitable and inclusive participatory design strategies to foster climate empowerment. Yet the need for coherent and strategic implementation of learning ecosystems to foster such empowerment are still poorly understood—and when developed and implemented, they are often underfunded, and, thus, have limited impact. If we are serious about ensuring justice in climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, we must be more intentional and strategic in the design and resourcing of climate change and sustainability learning ecosystems.
Editors’ Note: This article was included in our COP 28 special edition, which was published on November 21, 2023, and which you can find here. All articles were written with that publication time frame in mind.
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Creating Just and Resilient Sustainability Learning Ecosystems
Photo by Tyler Lagalo on Unsplash
November 22, 2023
Climate change education is crucial to tackling climate change, but climate change in turn disrupts learning opportunities. To create just, coherent learning ecosystems for climate action, systems should embrace three design principles, write Drs. Deb Morrison and Sarah Jessen.
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limate change is disrupting our societies globally. We need to systematically coordinate learning for climate action to ensure that every person across the world has the information and capacity to engage in individual and collective climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. While learning is needed to tackle climate change and to foster sustainable futures, climate change impacts disrupt learning opportunities. Additionally, quality learning opportunities and climate change impacts are highly variable. Those most impacted by climate change often receive less education, which is also more disrupted.
Creating just, coherent learning ecosystems for climate action is challenging, particularly given that models must support intergenerational learning for action. In order to foster sustainable, equitable climate learning, three design principles should be at the core of such a model to help center justice: inclusive participation and shared decision-making, knotworking, and infrastructuring.
Inclusive Participation, Shared Decision-Making
Inclusive participation and shared decision-making by all stakeholders in the design of the learning ecosystem ensures the centering of justice and maximizes innovation. Diversity of experiences and perspectives is beneficial to foster innovation around emerging issues—such as those resulting from climate change. For many years, community organizers addressing issues of environmental and climate injustices have been working collaboratively; one such group is the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Climate Change Consortium (HBCU-CCC). The HBCU-CCC produces knowledge and provides networking opportunities for groups across the United States to learn with and from each other around climate change impacts and actions. Such networks often use community participatory design research practices to work across networks, drawing in knowledge from both community and academia. Other examples of involving diverse stakeholders in designing just climate and sustainability learning ecosystems occur at different scales of work at city, regional, state, national, and international efforts. The Jemez Principles provide guidance for engaging in equitable participation in shared decision-making.
Knotworking
As more stakeholders are brought into designing justice-forward climate and sustainability learning ecosystems, it is necessary to intentionally consider how to link disconnected individuals, organizations, or networks together to foster the creation of new knowledge and practices. This is a practice known as knotworking. Knotworking provides a model for coordinating activities that have a shared goal, but which imposes little in the way of coordination or control. This principle draws on the idea that we learn and act best when in relationships with and accountable to each other. A knotworking approach to designing climate and sustainability learning ecosystems that is grounded in inclusive participation and shared decision-making connects people to each other in meaningful ways to leverage powerful, co-created actions to mitigate or adapt to climate change impacts. Bringing stakeholders together who wouldn’t usually interact also encourages the development of new relationships, activities, and resources—often allowing those excluded from climate mobilization and sustainability efforts a pathway into such work. However, justice is only fully supported when these new relationships are grounded in respectful, inclusive, and collaborative practices, from problem definition, through solution options, to on-the-ground climate action implementation.
Networks that foster knotworking around climate action are emerging at all scales. While research suggests the “sweet spot” for climate action happens within networks of 10,000 to one million people, we also need “networks of networks” sharing new knowledge and practices across global scales. One such example is UNESCO’s Greening Education Partnership (GEP), a global network of organizations to synthesize and produce knowledge and resources for building resilient k-12 education systems.
Infrastructuring
Parallel to knotworking is the need for infrastructuring to develop just climate change and sustainability learning ecosystems. Infrastructuring is the process of providing support and resources across the system as needs emerge. Supports and resources could include policy briefs, community designed communication toolkits, educational curricula, professional learning resources, data visualizations, or funding.
The International Center for Climate Change and Development’s Locally-Led Adaptation (LLA) initiative provides an excellent example of community and justice forward infrastructuring. The LLA met in 2022 to address the challenges faced by many stakeholders in Bangladesh in facing climate change impacts. Using a knotworking approach, the LLA brought together previously disconnected stakeholders to share challenges and opportunities. From this a first step of infrastructuring was to design a national platform of activities that draws in from divisional platforms in different regions of the country. This bottom-up strategy allows for sharing of work as it emerges and for local participants to learn of similar efforts and resources in other regions, greatly increasing local participants’ capacity to make informed actions. Some guidance for designing educational infrastructure is emerging out of similar efforts in North America.
Mobilizing climate change mitigation and adaptation must be a whole-of-society global effort, an effort that needs a coherent and justice-forward approach to ensure our shared sustainable future. Climate empowerment was clearly defined in the original United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (Article 6) in 1992, and again restated in the Paris Agreement (Article 12) in 2015. Researchers have clearly defined equitable and inclusive participatory design strategies to foster climate empowerment. Yet the need for coherent and strategic implementation of learning ecosystems to foster such empowerment are still poorly understood—and when developed and implemented, they are often underfunded, and, thus, have limited impact. If we are serious about ensuring justice in climate mitigation and adaptation efforts, we must be more intentional and strategic in the design and resourcing of climate change and sustainability learning ecosystems.
Editors’ Note: This article was included in our COP 28 special edition, which was published on November 21, 2023, and which you can find here. All articles were written with that publication time frame in mind.
