Ecoliteracy: Ecoliteracy Is The Ability To Understand The Natural Systems That Make Life On Earth Possible. It

Ecoliteracy
- Ecoliteracy is the ability to understand the natural systems that make life on earth
possible. It is the power that comes from the knowledge and consciousness of
how nature’s living systems operate.
- To be ecoliterate means understanding the principles of organization of

ecological communities, collaboration, and using these principles for creating
sustainable human communities.
- Ecoliteracy takes place when we humans let Nature become our teacher.
Ecoliteracy takes place when we form a legacy by passing our knowledge and
our ecoliterate worldview on to other members of our community.
The power to save humanity from itself rests with environmental educators and
with our youth of age 25 or younger.
The Role of Environmental Educators

- The role of environmental educators is to rebuild a sustainable ecoliteracy within
our youth and to maintain an ongoing legacy of that ecoliteracy. Our youth are at
ages where the destructive and unsustainable consumptive worldview of the
adult population is not yet embedded in their young person’s worldview.
Presented properly, our youth are receptive to the awe and wonder of Nature.
- Center for Ecoliteracy cofounder, Fritjof Capra, suggests that we must teach our
children these fundamental facts of life:
- Matter cycles continually through the web of life.

- Most of the energy driving the ecological cycles flows from the sun.
- Diversity assures resilience.
- One species’ waste is another species’ food.
- Life did not take over the planet by combat but by networking.
Ecoliterate enables educators to foster the kind of learning that meets the critical needs
of the twenty-first century — and offers an antidote to the fear, anger, and hopelessness
that can result from inaction. It reveals how the very act of engaging in some of today’s
great ecological challenges — on whatever scale is possible or appropriate — develops
strength, hope, and resiliency in young people. And it presents a model of education for
doing so that is founded on a new integration of emotional, social, and ecological
intelligence.
From Emotional to Ecological Intelligence
The model of education presented in Ecoliterate takes the cultivation of emotional and
social intelligence as its foundation and expands this foundation to integrate ecological
intelligence. But rather than conceive of these as three separate types of intelligences,
we recognize emotional, social, and ecological intelligence as essential dimensions of
our universal human intelligence that simply expand outward in their focus: from self, to
others, to all living systems. We also conceive of these intelligences in a dynamic
relationship with each other: Cultivate one, and you help cultivate the others.
The practice can take many forms. But we identify two core dimensions as through-
lines. One is affective, or related to emotions: namely, empathy for all forms of life. By
"empathy," the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, we do not intend
to imply that plants, for instance, have feelings. Rather, our intent is to encourage a
sense of caring that is not restricted to other human beings but extends to all forms of
life.
Cognitive
The other through-line is cognitive, or related to how we think: that is, understanding
how nature sustains life. Since life began, Earth’s ecosystems have developed ways of
supporting the great web of human and nonhuman life through certain patterns and
processes, such as cycles, networks, and nested systems — all of which reflect the
fundamental fact, as Center for Ecoliteracy cofounder Fritjof Capra puts it, that "nature
sustains life by creating and nurturing communities." To understand how nature sustains
life, then, requires the capacity for systems thinking, or the ability to perceive how the
different aspects of a living system exist, both in relationship to one another and relative
to the whole that is greater than its parts.
But how, it would be reasonable to ask, can anyone truly develop the capacity to
understand all the ways in which human systems interact with natural systems and act
upon that knowledge? The answer is simple: We can’t. Not alone.
Rather than residing within a single individual, ecological intelligence is inherently

collective. Socially and emotionally engaged ecoliteracy, therefore, encourages us to
gather and share information collectively, and to collectively take action to foster
sustainable living. This makes school communities — which, like ecosystems, come to
life through networks of relationships — ideal places to nurture this new and essential
ecological sensibility.
Educational and Ecological Benefits
Many schools embraced social and emotional learning during the past several decades
on the promise that helping children develop the capacities for self awareness, self
management, social awareness, and relationship management would increase their
likelihood of success in school and in life.
Now, extensive research shows that these programs do lead to important student gains
and reduced risks for failure. For example, a 2011 meta-analysis by the Collaborative
for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning of 213 social and emotional learning
programs concluded that these programs improve students’ achievement test scores by
11 percentile points — and lead to even greater gains in improved attitudes and positive
classroom behaviors, as well as reductions in conduct problems and disciplinary
actions.
Research studies examining the influence of an environment-based context have

revealed similar encouraging findings with respect to academic performance. In the two
decades that the Center for Ecoliteracy has worked with schools to support education
for sustainable living, it has found that socially and emotionally engaged ecoliteracy
advances both teacher and student involvement and achievement through hands-on,
experiential, contextual learning in the natural world and community.
The cultivation of emotional, social, and ecological intelligence, as a result, builds on the
successes resulting from the movement in education to foster social and emotional
learning — and it cultivates the knowledge, empathy, and action required for practicing
sustainable living
Ecological Footprint Works
 Ecological Footprint accounting measures the demand on and supply of nature.
 On the demand side, the Ecological Footprint measures the ecological assets
that a given population requires to produce the natural resources it consumes
(including plant-based food and fiber products, livestock and fish products, timber
and other forest products, space for urban infrastructure) and to absorb its waste,
especially carbon emissions.
 On the supply side, a city, state or nation’s biocapacity represents the

productivity of its ecological assets (including cropland, grazing land, forest land,
fishing grounds, and built-up land). These areas, especially if left unharvested,
can also absorb much of the waste we generate, especially our carbon
emissions.
 Both the Ecological Footprint and biocapacity are expressed in global hectares—
globally comparable, standardized hectares with world average productivity.
 Each city, state or nation’s Ecological Footprint can be compared to its

biocapacity.
 If a population’s Ecological Footprint exceeds the region’s biocapacity, that

region runs an ecological deficit. Its demand for the goods and services that its
land and seas can provide—fruits and vegetables, meat, fish, wood, cotton for
clothing, and carbon dioxide absorption—exceeds what the region’s ecosystems
can renew. A region in ecological deficit meets demand by importing, liquidating
its own ecological assets (such as overfishing), and/or emitting carbon dioxide
into the atmosphere. If a region’s biocapacity exceeds its Ecological Footprint, it
has an ecological reserve.
How Can We Reduce Ecological Footprint?
 Humanity is facing a global crisis. The latest results from the National Footprint
Accounts - a globally recognised ecological footprint dataset - indicate that our
ecological footprint is already 1.7 Earths. In other words, we are currently using
nature 1.7[1] times faster than our planet's ecosystems can regenerate. And this
global ecological ‘overshoot’ continues to grow.
 To tackle these challenges, it is vital that we understand the biggest threats to

nature so that we can better protect it. Climate change is certainly a growing
threat, but according to the latest Living Planet Report and the IPBES report, the
main drivers of biodiversity decline continue to be the overexploitation of species,
agriculture and land conversion – all driven by runaway human consumption.
WHAT’S CURRENTLY HAPPENING IN THIS FIELD?

There is no one field of research tackling the scarcity of resources. Indeed, research in
almost every area of science, from atmospheric physics to Artificial Intelligence could
profoundly shape how we maintain Earth’s natural resources, and reduce humanity’s
impact. The below gives a quick snapshot of just a couple of areas which are of
particular interest to Merck:
1. CLEAN MEAT
 Loss of wild areas to agriculture is the leading cause of the current mass
extinction of wildlife. While meat and dairy provide just 18% of calories and 37%
of protein, it uses the vast majority – 83% – of farmland and produces 60% of
agriculture’s greenhouse gas emissions.[8] Finding a viable - and palatable -
alternative to meat could therefore have huge implications for tackling scarcity of
resources and reducing our impact on the planet.
 Clean meat, also known as ‘clean protein’, ‘cultured meat’, and ‘lab-grown meat’,
is meat grown from real animal cells through a process known as cellular
agriculture. It eliminates the need to breed, raise, and slaughter animals for food
en-masse, reducing the heavy environmental impact of factory farming.
2. PRECISION AGRICULTURE
 Precision agriculture encapsulates everything that makes the practice of farming

more accurate and controlled when it comes to the growing of crops and raising
livestock. A key component of this farm management approach is the use of
information technology and a wide array of items such as GPS guidance, control
systems, sensors, robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, variable rate
technology, GPS-based soil sampling, automated hardware, telematics, and
software.
 The primary aim of precision agriculture is to ensure profitability, efficiency, and

sustainability while protecting the environment. This is achieved by using the big
data gathered by this technology to guide both immediate and future decisions
on everything from where in the field to plant a particular crop, to when it’s best to
apply chemical, fertilizer or seed.

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Ecoliteracy

- To be ecoliterate means understanding the principles of organization of

The Role of Environmental Educators

- Matter cycles continually through the web of life.

Rather than residing within a single individual, ecological intelligence is inherently

Educational and Ecological Benefits

Research studies examining the influence of an environment-based context have

 Ecological Footprint accounting measures the demand on and supply of nature.

 On the supply side, a city, state or nation’s biocapacity represents the

 Each city, state or nation’s Ecological Footprint can be compared to its

 If a population’s Ecological Footprint exceeds the region’s biocapacity, that

 To tackle these challenges, it is vital that we understand the biggest threats to

WHAT’S CURRENTLY HAPPENING IN THIS FIELD?

 Precision agriculture encapsulates everything that makes the practice of farming

 The primary aim of precision agriculture is to ensure profitability, efficiency, and

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