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Script of Mr. Brookes's Lecture, #1 |
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Reporter admin ,
Date 20040405
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His house is just next to a forest and kangaroos are hopping in his garden.
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Over 40 participants were gather even though it was the first Monday night of a new physical year for government, schools, and businesses in Japan.
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Thank you for inviting me to give this address. I am very pleased to be here, and hope that some of what I have to say about my work in Australia may have some relevance here in Japan, if only by offering some points of comparison. I want to talk about environmental education for a people who live in cities, but who are collectively responsible for a large and complex land.
I live in south eastern Australia, near the rural city of Bendigo, which has about 80,000 people. Bendigo is about 150 kilometres from Melbourne, a city of three or four million. I grew up in Melbourne and was introduced to walking and camping in the outdoors firstly by my parents, and then through a bushwalking (hiking) club. I now live with my family in a rural area, next to the forest. My work is informed by my experiences both as a visitor to ŽÒthe bushŽÓ from the suburbs, and also as a resident of "the bush". (The bush is an Australian term for rural areas, especially areas that have few people).
I will talk about some relationships I see between education for environmental sustainability, and Australians' experience "the bush". There are two reasons why I make this connection.
First, a great deal can be learned from reading, from watching films, from good teachers, and from the internet. But different things, perhaps important things, are learned from personal outdoor experience, and what is learned may take on a special significance because of how it was learned. I don't expect this is a controversial statement.
Second, every experience that city people have of the "outdoors" is a kind of environmental education, whether intended to be education or not. I assume that tourism and outdoor sports might shape what people know and feel about particular environments as much as planned environmental education experiences do. I say these experiences are "a kind" of environmental education, because the outcomes of this unintended education may be quite different, and even counter to, planned education for sustainability.
At least in Australia, the relationship between ideas about "the environment" and experience of actual places deserves close study. Cultural beliefs and practices that have been imported into Australia - first from England, then from many places - have contributed to a successful society, but have also caused many problems. From the time of the first English colony in 1788, imported ideas, mostly European, have turned out to be badly suited to the Australian landscape, ecology, and climate.
It would be a strange conception of environmental education that took no account of differences between actual physical and social environments. It may be that outdoor experiences are an important way to ensure that thinking about environmental sustainability remains connected to the details of actual environments.
*Australian society and the Australian environment
The Australian colonies were established as a place to send prisoners, to ease overcrowding in English prisons. The story of my grandfather's grandfather is typical. He was "transported" for life to Van Diemens Land (now called Tasmania) in 1835, for stealing a horse from his father. After ten years as a prisoner, he was released to as a free man, provided he stayed in the colonies. He came to the colony of Victoria and joined the gold rushes. It would not be right to say there was a clash of cultures between aboriginal Australians and the English at that time and place, because the local aborigines had been displaced so quickly. However, from the earliest days of European occupation, European Australians experienced place differently to aboriginals, even when guided by them [1].
Since the first attempts by the English to understand an island the size of Europe (but drier, flatter, lower, and older [2]), non-aboriginal Australians have struggled to define their relationship to the land.
For the English, experience contradicted even basic concepts, such as "tree" or "river". Trees shed bark and limbs and refused to offer shade. Rivers failed to converge to the sea, and instead dispersed seasonal floodwaters across desert plains. Seasons failed to behave seasonally and pastures failed to sustain stock after one or two seasons - many native plants did not survive sheep grazing, and did not return even when a pasture was rested [3]. (In northern latitudes ecosystems in areas previously covered by ice during the last ice-age, are characterised by relatively few species which share robust, invasive habits).
Many Australian ecosystems reflect a very long evolutionary history, and have very large numbers of unique species, and great diversity.
Canada is a country of similar size, having a broadly similar history, and comparable culture and population to Australia. Canada has about 10 million square kilometres, a population of around 30 million, a federal parliamentary democracy, and is predominately English and French speaking. Both France and England established colonies in the 17th century. Australia has about 8 million square kilometres, a population of around 20 million, a federal parliamentary democracy, and is predominantly English speaking.
Australia was not colonised until the late 18th century. Comparing the geography and ecology of Australia and Canada is instructive.
Canada has the most freshwater of any country. Australia is the driest continent. Canada has about 3000 flowering plant species; Australia has 20 000. Canada has 84 species of reptiles and amphibians; Australia has 777 species. Australia has twice as many bird species as Canada, and has 268 species of mammals to Canada's 194.
Almost no species of animals or plants are unique to Canada; most of Australia's animals and plants, and half of its birds, are unique to Australia. Since European settlement Australia has seen many extinctions: 19 species of mammals, 76 known species of plants, 20 species of birds, and 3 known species of reptiles. Even from these few facts it can be seen that English experience in North America could not have prepared them for Australia.
Most of the Australian continent is empty of humans: 0.3% of the population inhabit 50% of the land, and 84% live in 1% of the land in cities, mostly along the eastern coastline [2]. The impacts of settlement are not so confined. European occupation has brought the destruction of much indigenous culture (and in some cases near-genocide) and widespread environmental degradation [3].
The introduction of European farming practices, and non-indigenous plant and animal species caused profound ecological disruption, the consequences of which continue to reverberate.
Cattle and sheep, for example, compacted soil (Australia has no native hoofed animals) eliminated certain plants, and spread weeds [3, 6]. Rabbits when introduced multiplied in extraordinary numbers to devastating effect on native vegetation.
Australians see themselves as having a distinctive culture. However, the dominant influence in the first century of settlement at least was English [7].
The settlement of Australia for grazing and agriculture was rapid, and Australia quickly become a largely urban culture. By 1891, a century after the first settlers arrived, two thirds of Australians lived in towns or cities [8].
Bolton, an environmental historian [3, p.23] observes "[s]eldom were so few people in possession of such power to shape the environment of so much of the earth's surface"; moreover, in comparison to other nations, "Australians have yet had less collective opportunity of getting to know their environment and learning how to come to terms with it".
Australia is part of a global community, and questions of environmental sustainability and environmental education arise in Australia because of connections through trade, globalisation, and shared oceans and climate.
Environmental education in Australian schools may be comparable to environmental education in schools in other countries. Urban life is similar in many parts of the world, and schooling often aims to teach knowledge that can be applied widely.
These global or universal aspects of sustainability do not exhaust the question of sustainability. They may leave out important, but local, considerations. Moreover, it possible that some ideas of sustainability or environmental education may be as unsuited to Australia as other imported ideas have been in the past - universal principles can turn out not to be universal after all.
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