Abstract
Educating children and young people on how to care for the environment is the focus of this paper. Today’s children will encounter the adverse effects of global population growth and subsequent pollution by adults at the expense of the environment. Thus it is important to draw children’s attention to carbon footprints and climatic changes. Through participation they will have opportunities to learn more about the implications of the way we choose to live our lives in the short, medium and long terms. Children learn about their rights and responsibilities by being given the opportunity to express their ideas and to translate policy into practice through small scale interventions that make a difference to this generation and succeeding ones. Such interventions can include lessons on recycling, use and re-use of resources, composting, organic and ethical farming, water and energy conservation techniques and much more. The essence of this paper has been extracted from my Participatory Action Research (PAR) on the life chances of children and young people in institutional care in Sri Lanka. This PAR largely employs qualitative investigations to manipulate the information collected during the study in order to assess and evaluate the findings. During the PAR , it was identified that some children’s homes have initiated a few enhanced ecosystem governance practices that redress problems associated with the worst aspects of industrialisation. These practices promote the harmonious coexistence of humanity and nature and have adopted the concerns of critical systemic thinking with consequent improvement of human well-being and ecosystem health. The potential of these homes to provide education for these vulnerable children by improving their ability to deliver stewardship responsibilities towards the environment should never be underestimated.
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Notes
- 1.
The word Anthropocene fell into common usage after Paul Crutzen, an atmospheric chemist, and the late biologist Eugene Stoemer, used the term in the Global Change Newsletter in May 2000. The word joins the Greek word ‘anthropos’, for human, to the suffix ‘cene’, meaning new or recent, to suggest an epoch defined by recent human activity (Source: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/oct/16/).
- 2.
Holocene: The prior epoch of more stable human-environment relations (Source: Romm 2015, p. 2).
- 3.
The author of this article conducted the field study throughout Sri Lanka in 2012 as part of PhD research using PAR and critical systemic praxis undertaken at Flinders University of South Australia (referred to as ‘PAR 2012’).
- 4.
Children’s homes: Institutional care settings for orphaned, abandoned and destitute children that are provided by Non-Government Organisations (DPCCS, 2010).
- 5.
Some provincial commissioners of DPCCSs revealed that some NGOs have hidden agendas such as financial gain and religious conversion in lieu of the “true” meaning of their manifestation, i.e. care and protection for children.
- 6.
Poly-Ethylene Terephthalate.
- 7.
UN Guideline 134 and 135.
- 8.
General Standards 5.22 and 5.23.
- 9.
Re-integration: In this PAR re-integration is referred to as ‘a child’s reunification with family/natural birth environment, socialisation with society/community or other permanent care solutions such as local/foreign adoption’. Source: (Ariyadasa and McIntyre-Mills 2014b).
- 10.
The biosphere is the part of the Earth, including air, land, surface rocks, and water, within which life occurs, and which biotic processes in turn alter or transform. The geologist who in 1875 coined the word biosphere, Eduard Suess, defined it as “the place on Earth’s surface where life dwells” (Source: http://www.morning-earth.org/).
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Acknowledgements
This research is funded by the Australian Government’s Endeavour Scholarships and Fellowships. The structure, ideas and philosophies presented in this paper draw on research under the supervision of Associate Professor Janet McIntyre, Dr Helen McLaren and Dr Leonie Solomons. Insights and feedback offered by Mr. James Turner Alvey, Dr Chandani Panditaratne and Dr Greg Collings were invaluable. The author would like to acknowledge their contributions.
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Ariyadasa, E. (2018). Educating and Empowering Children for Governing the Anthropocene: A Case Study of Children’s Homes in Sri Lanka. In: McIntyre-Mills, J., Romm, N., Corcoran-Nantes, Y. (eds) Balancing Individualism and Collectivism. Contemporary Systems Thinking. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-58014-2_7
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