Young Children and the Environment Early Education for Sustainability

This book’s purpose

As I wrote in the first edition of this text, this is not a book about the perils of global warming and its impact on children, although climate change provides an impetus for this text. Nor is it a response to issues that seeks to shift responsibilities from adults to children, asking next generations to fix what we leave behind. Instead, it is a book of positive ideas and actions that shows what early childhood education communities can do when children, teachers and parents work together to address perhaps the most serious issue of our times – how to live sustainably.

Since the first edition was published in 2010, scientific evidence of human causation of climate change has become virtually incontrovertible (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] 2013), despite the continuing ‘unbelief ’ of a small number of vocal individuals, lobby groups and politicians. The authors of the Summary for Policymakers published in relation to the Fifth IPCC Assessment Report state: ‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gasses have increased’ (IPCC 2013, p. 4). Nevertheless, and regardless of one’s views about climate change, the matter of (un)sustainability has never really been in question – it is quite apparent that humans are living beyond the capacity of existing social, environmental and economic systems to function well or, clearly, equitably (United Nations 2013). The global financial crisis that took effect in 2008, for instance, exemplifies unsustainable economic systems that impact negatively upon societies, just as the 100 or so species of Australian flora and fauna that have become extinct since European settlement – with more than 1500 under threat – are evidence of unsustainable environmental systems.