Sustainable cities – overcoming human-nature binaries in narratives about climate change through education

Beschreibung

In the Anthropocene, human beings have reached a stage in which they are able to modify their environment at an unpreceded extent, leading to disastrous phenomena such as climate change. Theories of urban planning and management only slowly catch up with adequate measures to find new solutions for urban problems. Human-nature or society-environment relations need to be rethought, as nature and technology no longer appear as distinct and neutral entities, but rather as entangled agents in the complex pulsating fabric of a city. This challenge being global, a dialogue across different cultural environments is essential. Education plays a key role in overcoming old and exploring new approaches to human-nature relations. Secondary school education can/must draw on the immediate everyday experience students live in 21st century Anthropocene environments. Therefore, the aim of this project is to explore student conceptions of human-nature relations in an urban context in the era of climate change, both in Recife, Brazil, and in Lucerne, Switzerland. Exploratory field work based on videography and collaborative workshops will enable us to connect state of the art theory in urban studies with the everyday experience in different urban environments. The main outcomes will be dissemination seminars for educational stakeholders and an online seminar for researchers. The findings will be integrated into the teaching activities at the three participating institutions.