GEA: how to boost environmental education towards responsible citizenship?

September 1, 2023

Many attempts to educate the public in adopting responsible behaviours to preserve the environment and take action against climate change have relied on alarmist strategies that can often inhibit the desire to act. Eco-anxiety is now recognised as a community phenomenon and there is a lack of a structured approach to deal with it.

GEA intends to support the environmental education of adults, to enable them to adopt a more conscious approach to contextualise environmental challenges and take individual responsibility for protecting the entire community in which they live. Over the course of three years, the project partners will work together to develop a series of educational resources aimed at both educators and adult learners (especially those outside formal education).

The first stages of the project include the implementation of a research to identify gaps in adult environmental education and the main interests and barriers that exist in the participation to citizen science projects and environmental initiatives by local communities.

On the 29th and 30th June, the project partners met in Palermo at the premises of CESIE (coordinator), to discuss the information gathered in their countries (Italy, Belgium, Greece, Estonia, Germany, Macedonia, Lithuania) and plan its presentation through an interactive report. The meeting offered a unique opportunity for discussion and exchange of information between the consortium members, who are in the process of finalising the research, which includes online questionnaires, interviews and focus groups. The involvement of representatives of the project’s target groups and the analysis of different geographical realities is a key step in ensuring the effectiveness of the next resources: the GEA e-learning programme (addressed to educators), the sustainability kit and the co-designed policy initiatives manual.