About the Earth Charter

What is the Earth Charter?

The Earth Charter is a declaration of fundamental principles for a just, sustainable and peaceful global society in the 21st century. It recognises that everything is interlinked, including the environment, justice, the economy, ways of living together, spiritual ideas, and is underpinned by four overarching themes:

• Respect and Care for the Community of Life
• Ecological Integrity
• Social and Economic Justice
• Democracy, Non-violence and Peace

The Charter enables people to broaden their perspectives on local and global problems, develop new visions of what is possible and then devise integrated, long term solutions for the future.

The opening words of the Earth Charter state:

‘We stand at a critical moment in Earth’s history,
a time when humanity must choose its future.’
They remind us that many possible futures await us.

What makes the Earth Charter attractive to young people is that it promotes a positive vision of the future and encourages them to seek ways to help shape it. It is a document of hope. It also recognises that the serious global problems we face are a shared responsibility and calls us to join together to overcome them.

The Earth Charter can be downloaded in 31 languages at the following website: http://www.earthcharter.org

Over Winter 2007 we present a series of sixteen articles on the principles of the Earth Charter. These 'bite sized' chunks by Moy Hitchen provide a useful introduction to the Earth Charter principles and a commentary from the perspective of a Christian Brother. Read more.

How is the Edmund Rice Centre implementing the Earth Charter?

The Edmund Rice Centre has joined thousands of organisations throughout the world in adopting and implementing the Earth Charter.

The Edmund Rice Centre’s approach to implementing the Charter is two-pronged: firstly to develop ways of integrating environmental considerations into the workplace and staff activities; and secondly to explore ways of integrating the principles into its existing social justice education, research and advocacy programs aimed at promoting human rights.

For example, the Centre has held a workshop for staff around principle 7 of the Charter, which encourages people to ‘adopt patterns of production, consumption and reproduction that safeguard Earth’s regenerative capacities, human rights and community well-being.’ The workshop helped staff identify priorities and targets to strengthen the Centre’s commitment to improving their environmental performance. Environmental action plans have been developed and teams nominated to implement actions and monitor progress.

The Centre is also seeking out a diversity of perspectives from a range of Aboriginal communities in order to explore appropriate ways of incorporating the Indigenous relationship with the earth in our work with the Earth Charter.

The next step is to further engage interested students and teachers on the Charter through the schools networks program. This website contains a list of existing resources and examples of the environmental education work that is already being undertaken in schools. The Edmund Rice Earth Charter project aims to strengthen this by forging closer linkages between environmental and social justice education.

Education uses of the Earth Charter

Is your school keen to improve its role as a place that respects and cares for the earth and for one another? Do you want to become a no-waste school by 200X? Do you want to see some practical changes in your school such as composting, less water and energy use? Do you want to promote an understanding of how our every day actions affect poorer countries? Do you want to strengthen links with your local community? Do you want your school to more consciously link ethics with actions?

Whether you want it to be an integrated ‘whole of school’ approach, that is expressed in all parts of the curriculum and life of the school, or whether you want to begin very slowly, the Edmund Rice Centre is keen to provide support.

The Charter has many educational uses in schools for developing an understanding of the critical choices facing humanity and the urgent need for commitment to a sustainable way of life. It can be used to advance many fundamental educational objectives: consciousness raising, application of values, critical thinking and planning for action.

A School Earth Charter Program could be adopted via a number of learning approaches:

i. Cross-curricular program – Earth Charter principles could be integrated into existing subjects or delivered as an independent unit of study where the core curriculum allows such flexibility. For example, science classes could conduct energy audits in the school and develop an understanding of greenhouse science and impacts of global warming; Maths classes calculate total costs of waste in economic and environmental terms; English classes could write letters to political figures on the need to support renewable energy and deforestation concerns; Religious Education classes could consider the social justice implications of the environmental threats of people living in developing countries in the Asia-Pacific such as declining water quality and global warming.

ii. Extra-curricular activities – Teachers and students could consider setting up Earth Charter Youth Groups to develop ways of putting into action the mission and aims of the Charter. Furthermore, schools could consider strengthening linkages with community and environmental groups active in their local area (e.g. Landcare or neighbourhood centres) or investigate what their local council is doing to implement Agenda 21 in their community.

iii. Social Justice Coordinators Network – social justice coordinators or interested teachers could encourage students to form a social justice group, school council or eco-committee to design and plan initiatives for implementing Earth Charter principles in the school.

iv. Religious Education and spirituality – as we get in touch with the earth and God’s creativity, it inspires a sense of awe and wonder. Young people and adults are searching for meaningful spirituality and an understanding of the Earth Charter invites us to a renewed sense of God’s presence in all creation that promotes an inclusive society living in communion with rather than exploiting the earth.

What’s already being done to promote the Earth Charter in schools

You can begin by searching the international Earth Charter’s online teaching resource database that contains a comprehensive list of curriculum materials and case studies of implementing the Earth Charter in schools. The database has a strong focus on education for change and contains a comprehensive range of curriculum stimulus materials; power point presentations; lesson plans, educational strategies and workshops at all levels of formal and community education.

The Earth Charter website also contains the following guidance:

• The Youth Initiative
The aim of this section is to support young people in building networks so they can support and learn from each other as they carry out positive actions. It also includes a shorter simpler adaptation of the Earth Charter for children is available as well as a more detailed one for young people.

• Local communities
Case Studies from all over the world tell their stories of initiatives they have taken. There is advice on how the charter can be used as a framework to help local communities.

• Endorsement
Your school or organisation can endorse the Earth Charter on line. There is an endorsement letter you can down load and send to the secretariat on your own letter head if you wish to publicly endorse the charter.

Case Studies

• Many primary and secondary schools in the UK have successfully implemented educational sustainable development into their policies, practices and curriculum. The Office of Standards of Education has reviewed these schools in their report Taking the first step forward…towards an education for sustainable development.

For example, one school through its science lessons, realised and calculated that energy that was being wasted that could be saved. The pupils devised ways to manage the problem, particularly by promoting energy efficiency through poster campaigns and raising awareness in assemblies and eco-committees. The problem was recognised and managed in a sustainable way, as well as saving the school money.

Another school has combined the learning of languages and sustainability education. Students learning French accessed a French -Canadian website to look at ‘Ecological footprints’ and completed the ecological footprint in questionnaire in French. This enabled students to think about their use of resources and the effect on the earth and society, whilst expressing what they had found out in a different language.

Many of these schools encourage the understanding of global interdependence, international trade, the individual’s role in the world economy, how consumer choices affect people in other nations and the environment. This includes the awareness of the links between wealthier countries demands for cheap food and the exploitation of workers in producing countries. This report offers several other examples that can be used to incorporate sustainability education into curricula and practice. Additional case studies, mission statements and curricula for sustainable UK schools can be found at the website of the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.

• There are some useful case studies of successful sustainable schools in Victoria. Most of them are primary, but there are a few examples of secondary schools showing how sustainability education can be integrated across a variety of curriculum streams.

• A number of schools are developing Sustainable Environmental Management Plans (SEMP) to meet their environmental objectives. For example, Kemblawarra Primary School in NSW has developed a SEMP that systematically defines the schools individual goals and approach towards sustainability over a 5 year period.

Learning Resources and Useful Links

• Eco-footprint indicators are a useful tool for comparing consumption, production and pollution patterns of individuals, suburbs and nations and is suitable for exploring principle 7 of the Earth Charter. Interested teachers and students could apply this on a local scale by attempting to work out their own ecological footprint or the footprint for their school or classroom.

An eco-footprint quiz has been developed and takes less than 5 minutes to complete and compares your individual footprint with the average for Australia. It also tells you how many planets we would need to continue your individual consumption patterns. Some local councils have also developed eco-footprint quizzes that are available on-line (Marrickville Council is currently developing a quiz)

• Linking ecological issues with social justice: the organisation Redefining Progress has a whole range of free downloadable sustainability curriculum material and lesson plans. the site also contains a lesson plan inclusive of web resources that ties in the eco-footprint workshop with social justice issues by comparing the ways that developed and developing countries use resources. It is US based, but transfers readily to Australia. It also has a link to the Earth Charter website and associated curriculum resources. There is also a workshop designed around the eco-footprint quiz.

• Which Rice? is a simulation game looking at the significance of rice beyond consumption. It enables participants to explore in an experiential way the complexity of sometimes conflicting interests between the rice growing community, the environment, the media, big business, science, the government and consumers. The game promotes an understanding of the environmental, economic and social impacts of modern versus traditional rice farming practices, ecological resource use, social and economic pressures facing developing countries, fair trade and food security issues.

• The United National Education, Science and Culture Organisation hosts a database with extensive educational resources on cross-disciplinary sustainability issues, including sustainable agriculture, women and sustainable development, understanding world hunger, population and development, indigenous knowledge and culture and religion for a sustainable future.

• Other useful websites of interest for sustainability include:

Virtual Library on Sustainable Development – a comprehensive list of internet sites dealing with sustainable development, including organisations, projects and activities, e-journals, libraries, references and documents, databases and directories.

Envirolink Library – comprehensive resource of environmental information available on the Internet

The Sustainability Web Ring – a list of websites relevant to sustainable development

International Institute for Sustainable Development – a collection of documentation and links relevant to sustainable production and consumption

Government and Non-government programs and policies

• Sustainable Schools program 1 in 4 high schools are participating in the Sustainable Schools program. In NSW sustainability education curriculum material is being developed by the environment agencies and the Department of Education and Training (DET). It will contain draft environmental education policies, action plan templates and guidance on conducting environmental audits. For more information you can contact the Education section of the Department of Environment and Conservation on (02) 8837 6007.

• The Department of Environment and Training’s environmental education policy strongly encourages schools to undertake an audit and develop an Environmental Management Plan to meet their environmental commitments.

• Catholic Earthcare has developed a 20 minute video and CD-Rom that might be a useful discussion starter for students.

• The Catholic Education Offices (CEO) produce various environmental education resources and curriculum policies. Your school or CEO in your area may already have an environmental policy or strategic environmental management plan covering school resources and the curriculum. It might be worth seeing where potential Earth Charter learning workshops could fit into this overarching scheme. For example, Toowoomba CEO has included some useful teaching material on environmental and social justice issues on their website.

• The Department of Environment and Conservation has a number of programs and course guides to assist teachers and the broader community work towards achieving environmental outcomes, including the Earth works program, Stormwater Education Program, HSIE and science stormwater teaching guide, and fact sheets on a variety of environmental topics.

• The Department of Infrastructure Planning and Natural Resources coordinates the WaterWatch program designed to assist communities and students getting involved in protecting local waterways. The Waterwise program provides guidance on how to better manage urban water resources.

• The NSW Council on Environmental Education is a government body that has introduced a Sustainability Education Plan 2002 – 2005 which includes a focus on schools.

• Ozgreen is an environmental education training organisation that have undertaken projects with a number of schools, councils and businesses such as the Living Waters project which involves training volunteer eco-team leaders to encourage more ecological sustainable ways of living in their communities .

• The Gould League also provides a number of environmental education services across Australia.

Assistance available from the Edmund Rice Centre

• Deliver presentations to interested teachers to introduce the Earth Charter and discuss possible educational uses.

• Facilitate workshops with teachers and/or student leaders to provide capacity to engage with the Earth Charter and determine priority areas for implementing it in their school.

• Help plan programs and obtain resources to design potential workshops on any aspect of the Earth Charter.

• Facilitate the trial and evaluation of school initiatives by helping devise appropriate sustainability indicators to monitor progress.

• Support the design of cross curricular programs and units of study based on the Earth Charter.

'Bite sized' chunks of the Earth Charter

The Earth Charter and Climate change

Articles and information about the role of the Earth Charter in the climate
change negotiations:

http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/content/categories/Climate%20Change

Earth Charter Virtual Library:

Pamphlet on food, agriculture and the Earth Charter: