Identifying Points of Contact and Engagement Between Legal and Environmental Education

Abstract

This article explores the shaping and possibly reforming potential of ideas about sustainability in legal education by drawing up a scale of environmental education theories, arranged according to their propensity to transform radically university education. The article offers a critical analysis of current individualist strategies aimed at developing students' environmental skills, in particular that these hamper opportunities for universities to develop a broader and more creative agenda of social change. Applying ideas about how environmental education communities of practice develop, this article identifies some pockets of activity seeking to integrate ideas of sustainability into the law curriculum, including via environmental law and teaching Wild Law or Earth Jurisprudence. These issues form part of an on‐going debate about how well law students are being prepared for work in highly challenging social, environmental, and financial circumstances, against the backdrop of a broader question about ‘what are universities for?’

Locating a Course on Environmental Justice in Theories of Environmental Education and Global Citizenship

“…The different approaches to environmental education and their intersections with legal education have been categorized by Holder (2013) on a scale focused around three anchor points. At one end of the scale is education for sustainable development (ESD), a minimum standard of environmental education.…”

“…This rejects the division of analysis into disciplines and, instead, emphasizes the need to understand integrative relationships (Sterling, 2001, p. 16). Ecological intelligence is the most challenging form of environmental education to import into pre-existing educational structures because it cuts across disciplines in a way that is an anathema to traditional forms of education (Holder, 2013, pp. 545–546).…”

“…The GEJ strand is situated between ecological intelligence and sustainability literacy. While it presented the different scientific, social, technological, anthropological, legal and political aspects of climate change holistically, it fell short of providing the experiential understanding of injustices that are considered essential in delivering ecological intelligence (Holder, 2013, p. 546). The value of a more immersive approach to teaching in terms of developing responses to challenges like climate change is evident when reference is made to quotidian epistemology.…”

Recognising an Ecological Ethic of Care in the Law of Everyday Shared Spaces

“…These examples point to a form of environmental education firmly established in a place, with an associated quality of personal connectedness (Holder, 2013; Howe, 2017). As well as equipping children with a vocabulary for learning about nature, and attributing meaning to their experiences in nature (Macfarlane, 2016:9), such embodied learning is capable of forming part of a broader collective and reflective inquiry, providing the motivation to act on behalf of nature (Orr, 2004), as these statements suggest:In Smithy Wood I learnt the love of nature.…”

Creatures, the Academic Lawyer and a Socio-Legal Approach: Introducing Animal Law into the Legal Education Curriculum

“…72 Animal Law stimulates discussions around the connections between human activities and their effect on animals and the environment. 73 Law schools offering law courses addressing issues of sustainability have begun to appear across the US, including post-graduate and PhD study. 74 This has not been the case in the UK-Animal Law could part form part of provision to address UNESCO's call to introduce students to aspects of sustainability in their education.…”