A sustainability handbook and toolkit for schools, teachers and policymakers : The SCRAPPIES project

What can we as educators do in response to this rapidly changing world? As our planet becomes increasingly globalised through technological advancements, new communication methods, and evolving travel experiences, we are also testing the limits of nature’s carrying capacity. With a growing population and expanding capabilities, the pressures on our environment are intensifying. The urgency for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is more critical than ever as we face challenges related to well-being, democracy, digital power, and the stability of our economic foundations (Sitra, 2023). It is imperative that we equip future generations with the knowledge and skills to navigate and address these complex issues. Our values have a lot to do with what we experience when we are young: what we learn at school, see on television and the internet, and what other people around us think and do. As we face challenges as individuals, as societies, and humanity as a whole, it could be said that the most important building blocks to endure and flourish are built from the ground up. This is where teaching and learning have important roles. We as educators have the power to perhaps not entirely change the values of our future youth, but to make a difference. To build sustainable values, to inspire creativity, to teach our children and the children of others to care about each other, to care about the future, and to take action, whether small or big. Education should be emancipatory, so that we can all have the tools to create positive change, for a better tomorrow. Of course, the world is full of problems and challenges to tackle, and to even attempt to list all of the most pressing ones is difficult to fathom. But going back to thinking about the changing world, there is one thing that inevitably concerns all of us from time to time, and that is that we as human beings change the world, its nature, and its climate. And it is becoming increasingly important to take action to protect our planet, to change our attitudes about climate change, and to develop ways to lessen our impact, or even reverse it, on our planet. This change concerns all of us in different ways depending on where we live, but it is for certain that it does concern everyone no matter their situation and location in the world. This little handbook is written to assist educators in facilitating this change for the better.