Welcome to EEASA
The Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa is a voluntary membership based multi-sectoral and multi-organisational association of educators, researchers, policy makers, students and practitioners. The day to day running of the Association is run by a voluntary elected Council, and administered by a secretariat. It is open to all who engage with the relationship between the environment and social processes including politics, economy and development.
The Association has been an integral part of the sub-regional evolvement from nature studies, to environmental education, education for sustainable development and its various manifestations, e.g. green economy. EEASA drew on the pioneering role in the practice of environmental education played by other NGOs including the Kalahari Conservation Society in Botswana, the Wilderness Leadership School, the Wildlife Society of South Africa, and the Mlilwane Trust in Swaziland.
EEASA News
Thank You EEASA Family
The Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa (EEASA), is an organisation with a proud past and an exciting future. I believe we’ve learnt and grown and we will be stronger and more resilient than ever as a community. Thank you for your continued support and commitment.
Thank you for being a valued EEASA member and part of our EEASA family. The EEASA community adds value in so many ways; value arising from the rich interconnected web of perspectives and experiences which offers insight, guidance and inspiration to many of us during these trying times. A sincere thank you to each and every EEASA member (from Southern Africa and much further afield) for your continued support and participation. Just as a healthy eco-system thrives on diversity so we must endeavour to celebrate, protect and expand the diversity of our community. Let 2023 be a year of Hope and Inspiration.
Education in Times of Climate Change
The seventh edition of NORRAG Special Issue (NSI), released in October 2022, is entitled “Education in Times of Climate Change.” Climate change is not a new issue for education, but new levels of consensus and concern are emerging, suggesting that new policy developments may follow.
This NORRAG Special Issue (NSI 07) addresses the question of how education is to equip learners to participate in climate action that would fundamentally disrupt existing problematic systems. NSI 07 showcases what is currently being done to close the gap between the potential of education to contribute to more a sustainable and just world and the experiences of those in education.
This NSI has the potential to inform pedagogical praxis, co-learning, curriculum, climate action, policy formulation, frameworks for evaluating success, resourcing decisions and what we might consider educative acts for engaging with climate change and its multi dimensional uncertainties, risks and opportunities.
NSI 07 is guest-edited by Distinguished Professor Heila Lotz-Sisitka and Professor Eureta Rosenberg, Environmental Learning Research Centre Rhodes University, South Africa. The 28 articles in the issue are divided into eight parts:
- Part 1 draws lessons across disciplines, issues and contexts.
- Part 2 addresses ways in which we can expand learning and agency across boundaries from three different continents.
- Part 3 goes beyond formal schooling to offer lessons in building transformative learning, activism and relations.
- Part 4 leads the reader past western, rational, techno-scientific ways of knowing to engage diverse knowledges in climate change responses.
- Parts 5 and 6 challenge the reader to listen to and engage with young people and children’s views and voices in climate action.
- Part 7 focuses on higher education responses.
- Part 8 concludes the NSI by considering other places and spaces relevant to education for sustainable and just futures
National Wetlands Indaba 2022
Wetlands Action for People and Nature
The National Wetlands Indaba for 2022 is taking place from Monday 24 October to Thursday 27 October 2022 at the Golden Gate Highlands National Park in the beautiful province of the Free State in South Africa.
The Indaba will be hosted by the Free State Wetland Forum (FSWF) and supported by the SA Wetland Society.
Be part of an event that celebrates the Ramsar World Wetlands Day theme for 2022 of Wetlands Action for People and Nature, through invited keynote speakers, plenary sessions, presentations, workshops, discussions and training events.
For more information click here.
To submit an abstract click here.
To register click here.
Engaging ‘Green TVET’ in the SST Course with EEASA President, Dr Presha Ramsarup
In a recent Alumni Feature webinar in the SST course, Dr Presha Ramsarup, Director of the University of Witwatersrand Centre for Researching Education and Labour, and President of the Environmental Education Association of southern Africa (EEASA), offered further interesting guidance to TVET educators in taking up this challenge.
Dr Ramsarup clarified that while there was a need to focus on production, TVET should move beyond a productivist only lens, and give attention to issues of sustainable livelihoods and the common good (e.g. water resources and climate change). She noted that “TVET in the global South has generally been disconnected from the environment”, with the result that TVET “uncritically mirrors the dominant logic of mainstream industry”, which has a history of environmental damage (e.g. water pollution, advancing extractivism, and contributing to climate change). To read further please visit the SST website.
Transforming teacher education policy and practice for sustainable development in Southern Africa: Sustainability Starts with Teachers
UNESCO’s Regional Office for Southern Africa are happy to announce that the NEW website on Education for Sustainable Development for teachers and teacher educators in the Southern African region is NOW LIVE!
The portal kicks off at time UNESCO and partners are working on fostering distance education to ensure learning never stops in the face of the global COVID-19 pandemic.
The website provides course materials, news, stories of change, policy briefs and an interactive learning space, developed under the Capacity Building Programme for Teacher Educators on Education for Sustainable Development called, “Sustainability Starts with Teachers”. The web portal was developed in partnership with Rhodes University and will support the upcoming online Sustainability Starts with Teachers regional course to be launched in September 2020. Go to the Sustainability Starts with Teachers website for more information.
ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION IN A TIME OF CRISES
Please write for the Southern African Journal of Environmental Education. We are launching a 2020 Special Edition on EE in a time of crises: Insights for and from environmental education scholars. What do environmental education scholars make of the Covid19 pandemic and the reactions to it? What does it mean for our practice? For whom and how and what we teach, and research? To find the call details, click here.
Publications: The publication teams have produced another set of publications. These include the EE Bulletin issue 43; EE Bulletin issue 44 and the Southern African Journal of EE Vol 34 (2018). The journal is now available on Africa Journal Online (AJOL). To see articles and previous volumes, click here. For more information on EE Bulletins click here.
Some Achievements
Albeit being a voluntary organisation some of the accomplishments include the voluntary hosting of the EEASA annual conferences by countries in the region including the 4th World Environmental Education Congress (WEEC) that was hosted in South Africa; developing and publishing various publications including monographs, bulletins as well as the accredited annual Southern African Journal of Environmental Education (SAJEE); and contributing to the inception and development of major regional Environmental Education /Education for Sustainable Development projects that have become stand-alone programmes such as the SADC Regional Environmental Education Programme (SADC REEP) coordinated by the SADC Food Agriculture and Natural Resources Directorate.
EEASA plays a major role in providing a platform for developing and channelling a critical southern African EE/ESD bottom up/ broader voice to be developed and heard globally. Following a vibrant consultation and engagement with the 2005-2014 UN Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD) as reflected in EEASA’s annual conferences and publications, EEASA has committed to the UNESCO Global Action Plan (GAP) as a way forward post the UNDESD. Although EEASA has committed to all 5 priority areas, UNESCO has invited EEASA to be a member of Partner Networks of the Global Action Programme on ESD participating in priority 3 (Building capacities of educators and trainers – increasing the capacities of educators and trainers to more effectively deliver ESD.) EEASA’s priority 3 commitment is:
“Increasing capacities of educators and trainers through encouraging re-orientation of teacher education programmes in southern Africa in partnership with the SADC Mainstreaming Environment and Sustainability in African Universities (MESA) Chairs, the SADC ESD Teacher Education Network, SADC REEP Network, ESSA, WESSA, and RCEs using cluster and institution based training workshops and online initiatives. Also, to promote and implement the use of eLearning and mLearning in disadvantaged areas, even those where electricity and internet connectivity are lacking – to enhance access to quality ESD materials in partnership with SADC.”
These commitments will be explored, deepened, monitored and reported on through EEASA’s annual conferences, publications and other activities (UNESCO funded a project for Out-of-School Youth in Namibia where they take two courses that we named “Education for Sustainable Development for out-of-School Youth” and “Micro-Gardening (Horticulture)”. These two courses are for skills development where we focus on ESD (specifically on water and energy management) and food security where the youth learn how to produce vegetable using well managed water. These two courses are running on the mLearning system that I presented in Japan and we selected to offer the two courses in a rural school in Omusati region. The school don’t have electricity from the national grid and without the Internet; we use solar energy. The out-of-school youth use the system in the afternoon when the school closes and the school learners use it during the morning up to 13:00 (school closes this time). We have already learning materials on the system for ESD (a lot of learning materials including the integration of ESD in some subjects offered in the Namibia curriculum), Mathematics, ebooks for kids to foster literacy and many more.)