{"id":119937,"date":"2020-11-20T08:39:28","date_gmt":"2020-11-20T07:39:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/?p=119937"},"modified":"2025-12-19T11:25:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-19T10:25:15","slug":"whether-it-comes-to-the-climate-crisis-educators-need-to-tackle-the-identity-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.erasmusmagazine.nl\/en\/2020\/11\/20\/whether-it-comes-to-the-climate-crisis-educators-need-to-tackle-the-identity-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"When it comes to the climate crisis, educators need to tackle the identity problem"},"content":{"rendered":"

A lot of students walk around with a guilty conscience and a feeling of unease, despite their utilitarian rationalizations regarding sustainability, says education expert Ginie Servant-Miklos. She thinks the solution is to expose students to nature more often. \u201cWe have got to get our students out into the woods, the dunes, the fens and the prairies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGinie Servant-Miklos<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>

Facts will not win the war against catastrophic environmental breakdown, pandemics, wildfires and all. They bounce off the hard shells of our western middle-class identities. Learning about climate change et. al. isn\u2019t enough. Even consciously engaging with the influence of our identities on our behaviour won\u2019t cut it. Only education that helps to rebuild environmental identities will succeed. These are the findings of my postdoctoral research, now published in an article I wrote together with my EUC colleague Gera Noordzij for the Journal of Cleaner Production<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Radical change in behaviour<\/h2>

I started my research project at Aalborg University in 2017, just after the hottest year on record<\/a>. This was the pre-Greta era, and certainly the pre-Covid era, but already it was plain to see that we were heading for a cascade of crises that would demand a radical change in behaviours at all levels. That many older folks show little interest in environmental issues<\/a>, while disconcerting, is not entirely surprising. The idea of inter-generational solidarity is nice on paper, but it doesn\u2019t cut any ice (excuse the pun) with a generation that has basically had it all \u2013 economic prosperity, access to housing, subsidized healthcare \u2013 and will be gone before the price really comes due. However, that many young people would still make individual and collective choices that will add up to a dangerously destabilized world within their lifetimes? That\u2019s a harder circle to square.<\/p>\n

I investigated two groups of students who went through what you could call \u2018best practice\u2019 sustainability education. One group was in an environmental planning programme in a project-based study in Denmark, and the other, right here at EUR, studying sustainability in an interdisciplinary, problem-based learning approach. My thinking was that if we look at the impact of best-practice sustainability education on changing mindsets and behaviour, then we can draw conclusions regarding young people who don\u2019t have access to this kind of environmental education.<\/p>\n

Bucket list<\/h2>

First, the good news: taking an interdisciplinary, problem-based, humanistic perspective on environmental breakdown really does help students to reflect systemically. Students who learned about sustainability in this way were less likely to indulge in \u2018technofix\u2019 fantasies and other greenwashed ways out of the crisis. But now comes the bad news: even with this systemic awareness of sustainability issues, and even with an understanding of the racial and socio-economic inequalities involved in these problems, students still did not want to change some of their most damaging behaviours.<\/p>\n

To their credit, most of these students changed their eating behaviour to more sustainable habits. However, the minute I mentioned travel\u2026 that was the no-go zone. The American Dream is alive and well \u2013 house, kids, (electric) car and all \u2013 and now comes with an Instagram-friendly list of travel destinations and a high-adrenaline, high-environmental-impact bucket list. The students offered justifications that would make the founders of neo-classical economics proud: literal cost-benefit analyses in utility terms.<\/p>\n

Western middle-class habitus<\/h2>
\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGinie Servant-Miklos<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>

What did I conclude from this? That students\u2019 concern for the environment forms part of a \u2018moral identity\u2019. This moral identity is part of a whole identity-package that\u2019s been socialized into them since birth. In sociological terms, we call this package a \u2018habitus\u2019, and it\u2019s reinforced by all the interactions we have in all the areas of our lives: family, school, clubs etc. For the sake of giving things names, we\u2019re going to call this package \u2018western middle-class habitus\u2019. It\u2019s not class in the classical Marxist sense, it\u2019s more of a class-in-practice, as a result of the social interactions that we build up over time.<\/p>\n

Being seen as a moral person, a person who does good things in the world, a person who is <\/em>good, is an important part of that identity package. But so is being seen as a cosmopolitan, worldly, travelled person with a litany of exciting experiences to boot.<\/p>\n

Guilty conscience<\/h2>

So what happens when the two are in conflict? Simple, it\u2019s a number\u2019s game \u2013 all students need to do is to \u2018compensate\u2019 the bad moral behaviour (i.e. polluting) with morally \u2018good\u2019 behaviours, such as going vegetarian. Or even things completely outside of the environmental register, like being a good friend or a good sibling.<\/p>\n

This is a process I\u2019ve called \u2018bargaining\u2019, and it happens very, very, very often. And companies know it, that\u2019s why KLM now offers you a chance to \u2018compensate\u2019 for your flight with tree-planting projects. You don\u2019t know that they will actually plant trees, or that this will actually be done in a sustainable way, but it helps the moral calculus. Still, even as we click the \u2018compensate\u2019 button, something doesn\u2019t feel right.<\/p>\n

\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGinie Servant-Miklos<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>

My research showed that students do <\/em>walk around with a guilty conscience and a feeling of unease, despite their utilitarian rationalizations. Because we know<\/em> that these types of behaviour are not going to prevent catastrophic environmental collapse within our lifetimes. What will prevent this is comprehensive change at every level \u2013 system change, community change, individual change. To make such change happen, we need to engage at all levels. My students see the enormous gap between the changes they can make at the individual level and the broad, collective changes that need to happen, and often panic at the distance between them. I try to break down that distance by showing them that they do not need to go straight from one to the other: there are pathways that go through local <\/em>collective action (starting a community garden, joining a local green party\u2026) and global <\/em>individual action (becoming a climate scientist, a climate journalist or film maker\u2026) that make it far easier to make the step towards global collective action. We don\u2019t all need to turn into Greta overnight.<\/p>\n

Outdoor classes<\/h2>

But knowing where engagement is possible isn\u2019t enough. We really need to tackle the identity problem. My suggestion, following from the work of Susan Clayton<\/a>, is to help our students to move away from moral calculations about the environment. Instead, we need to help students to build a genuine attachment to nature. To appreciate and value nature not as a consumer, but as something we\u2019re a part of and we can build meaningful relationships with. That\u2019s a really difficult one for a lot of our young urbanites who have never put their hands in the soil.<\/p>\n

One of the reviewers on this article wondered if exposing students to nature might not simply make them retreat into depression as they witness the state of decline of most environments. I strongly disagree. I draw inspiration from indigenous movements, looking at the strength of their environmental identity, the vigour of their environmental activist movements, and their commitment to changing things at every level. Their voices are often drowned out, not in least part because of racist prejudice (and in some cases destructive intent bordering on genocide, in Brazil for instance). But some of their voices are coming through in environmental education circles. I highly recommend reading Leanne Simpson\u2019s<\/a> book As We Have Always Done<\/em>, if you want to learn about indigenous environmental identity and activism<\/p>\n

\"\"\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>

\n\t\n\n<\/svg>\n<\/span>\n\tImage by:<\/span>\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tGinie Servant-Miklos<\/a>\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>

Our conversations about environmental breakdown need move out of the theoretical realm. We have got to get our students out into the woods, the dunes, the fens and the prairies. Busy rewilding, busy growing things with their hands, busy observing the wild. Initiatives like Edible EUR are a great place to start, but this needs to be much more systematic across the university. And since we can\u2019t congregate indoors anymore, why not use this opportunity to take our classrooms into outdoor spaces, instead of retreating further from nature into our computer screens? If my thinking on environmental identity is correct, then engaging in the garden is not a substitute for personal and political action, but a prelude to it.<\/p>\n\n\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t

De redactie<\/h2>\n\t\t\n\t\t
\n\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t