History is Written by the Victors!

Since we have been here a good while, we are learning more and more about where to go to find the cool places off the beaten track. The last two holiday weekends (two Mondays off in the summer in succession… not bad) we have headed out tramping to magnificent places where the marketers have not been (nor lots of other people).

This weekend we went to Pureora, which came to our attention as it was the flash point in the 1970s for environmental protest across New Zealand against the destruction and clearcutting of native forests by the big companies. It is NZ’s equivalent to Clayoquoit Sound in BC or the tree sitting in Northern California. People protested and sat in trees to protect some of the biggest remnants in the area that were about to be cut. Only… in this case they won. They protected these trees and over the next decade pressure built and ultimately a national law was passed preventing all future cutting of native forests. The companies are still cutting and replanting the areas previously cut (agriforestry) but all existed native forests are protected… about 30% of New Zealand.

So I am not sure if you can read the fine print, but here are two NZ Department of Conservation interpretive signs heralding the protests and the end of clearcutting. I love the picture on the 2^nd sign of the big machinery destroying the forest, and this quote from it… “all this activity [destruction due to forestry practices] has left us with the diverse and fragmented landscapes of Pureora. The work of restoring some continuity to these forests and re-establishing healthy wildlife communities is the challenge for today and the future.” Wow… you would not see these sorts of signs in Canada. In fact the current history of our forests seems to be written by Irving in their greenwash TV ads. This shows there is another way and at least some folks in the world have found it…. oh and by the way the rural economy in New Zealand is not in shambles, it has not been destroyed by the logging ban, though the loggers at the time would have had you believe it. Hmmm.

This is looking up at a tree from the ground

    A wonderful trail infrastructure preserves the forest

                                                                                  Forest Regeneration

So here are a few more pictures from the weekend travels. Ginny goes "Kiwi"...

    This is the Kiwi hiking top, but where are your tan khaki shorts?

Good Kiwi hiking form... hiking up a 

stream "trail" with her hiking boots on.

Lake Taupo from the Umukarikari Ridge. Lake Taupo is the crater of the
largest volcano to blow in recorded human history (186AD). Both Rome
and China had it documented in their records based on red sunsets and
climate cooling.

Are you doing any work?

So everybody is always asking me… “Are you doing any work?” So now you get your just desserts… having to read a blog about work… It is just that it seems more fun and interesting to write about the latest wilderness tramp or eco marvel than the latest section of a food policy paper. But… I did get to go to the New Zealand Environmental Education Conference two weeks ago, which was excellent, and since a number of the folks reading this blog are generally interested in sustainability, community and/or education… here are some of the best things I harvested at the conference for your learning pleasure. Sorry, no pictures.

Enviroschools (www.enviroschools.org.nz)

Enviroschools is a pretty amazing NGO that is taking a whole school approach to education for sustainability. It pretty well dominates sustainability approaches in schools in NZ. More than 25% of the schools in New Zealand are enviroschools and working toward bronze, silver or green gold status. What is so neat is that this is a very reflective, philosophy based and student centred process of working for sustainability. Everything done in an Enviroschool is to be anchored in 5 principles:

• Empowered Students: Enable the development of skills, knowledge, confidence and experience to contribute to their communities.
• Integrate Māori perspectives.
• Learning for Sustainability:
• Sustainable Communities: Connect children and young people/tamariki and rangatahi to contribute to their communities.
• Respect for the diversity of people and cultures in our communities and world.

These principles must be enacted in four areas… involving everyone (kids, teachers, janitors, parents, community, etc.), greening of the place, greening of the curriculum experiences, and the lifestyle practices (composting, water use). How exactly the school takes the principles and applies them in the areas is up to them, but there is a rigourous self-assessment process involving interacting with an external facilitator. Ultimately the kids decide after working through an evidence based process on what they have done. Each school has to have a lead student group. Anyway, it is pretty neat and very different to the activity package, tick the box approaches in Canada. I am going to spend some time with the staff in the next few weeks, visit some schools and bring home some of the resources. I am going to buy the toolkit which is amazing in that the activities and concepts apply all the way from preschool to university (and it is a beautiful artistic presentation). Lots of great community development, empowerment, facilitation activity ideas. They also have the script we can use for next year’s solstice play (with a few adaptations)!

Steady State Economy (steadystate.org)

The concept that at the core of all our sustainability problems is that we have a world economy based on growth in a limited biosphere, which cannot support it. These are economists defining and developing ways to change the fundamental assumptions to bring about a steady state economy. There’s lots here but the briefing papers are most accessible under “Explore.”

Education for Sustainability and Environmental Education in Schools

http://seniorsecondary.tki.org.nz/Social-sciences/Education-for-sustainability

FYI here is the link to the New Zealand Depart of Education’s curriculum website on Education for Sustainability. It is funny how NS has no equivalent nor really ever pays anything more than mild lip service to Education for Sustainability in its curriculum and curriculum guidelines. Though dated, NZ also has Environmental Education curriculum guidelines: http://efs.tki.org.nz/Curriculum-resources-and-tools/Environmental-Education-Guidelines. The NZ school curriculum is about 50 pages whereas in Nova Scotia every high school course is about 50 pages, covering all levels. If you added all of the NS Curriculum documents together you would have at least 1000 pages, 20 times what New Zealand has. That sends a very different message about the role of the teacher and the concept of education in schools. The vision statement for the NZ Curriculum is:

"Our vision is for young people:

• who will be creative, energetic, and enterprising
• who will seize the opportunities offered by new knowledge and technologies to secure a sustainable social, cultural, economic, and environmental future for our country
• who will work to create an Aotearoa New Zealand in which Māori and Pākehā recognise each other as full Treaty partners, and in which all cultures are valued for the contributions they bring
• who, in their school years, will continue to develop the values, knowledge, and competencies that will enable them to live full and satisfying lives
• who will be confident, connected, actively involved, and lifelong learners.

 P.S. I tried to google the NS one to compare and could not easily find anything, just documents for each course or topic. Hmmm?

Design Thinking

(www.ideo.com and www.designthinkingforeducators.com)

(candychang.com)

This was an excellent talk on being innovation in the design of programming and community development initiatives. Design thinking is briefly… don’t plan much. Do some intensive framing up and research on the issues to define the question, then pull people together, brainstorm and then go try stuff and learn from failure and reflection. The idea is that folks get bogged down in long committee processes that stifle innovation… collect wild ideas, try the best ones quick and dirty and then revamp. The one liner is… “to succeed more, we need to fail more.” Some of the info is on the ideo websites. Candy Chang is an urban designer who has done a bunch of creative projects to get community members connecting to each other. Her website pictures a few of them