Abstract
This article presents and discusses student assignments reflecting on the documentary film If a Tree Falls, written as part of the Business Ethics and Sustainability course at The Hague University of Applied Sciences. This article follows two lines of inquiry. First, it challenges mainstream environmental education, supporting critical pedagogy and ecopedagogy. These pedagogies, which advocate pedagogy for radical change, offer a distinct and valuable contribution to sustainability education, enabling students to critically examine normative assumptions, and learn about ethical relativity, and citizenship engagement from environmentalists. The discussion of “lessons of radical environmentalism” is pertinent to the question of what types of actions are likely to achieve the widely acceptable long-term societal change. While this article focuses on student reflection on a film about radical environmentalism, this article also discusses many forms of activism and raises the question of what can be considered effective activism and active citizenship in the context of the philosophy of (environmental or sustainability) education in connection didactics and curriculum studies. Second, this article argues for the need for reformed democracy and inclusive pluralism that recognizes the needs of nonhuman species, ecocentrism, and deep ecology. The connection between these two purposes is expressed in the design of the student assignment: It is described as a case study, which employs critical pedagogy and ecopedagogy.
Highlights
Protected areas are the foundation of biodiversity conservation, safeguarding nature and cultural resources, improving livelihoods and driving sustainable development [1]
A multi-agency criminal investigation known as Operation Backfire coordinated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation resulted in convictions and incarceration of several Earth Liberation Front (ELF) and Animal Liberation Front (ALF) group members in 2002 [34]
Student 1 reflected on how definitions of terrorism and radicalism are ambiguous, especially as the motives for certain actions were dictated by the belief or experience that they are more efficient in achieving certain aims than alternative actions
Summary
Protected areas are the foundation of biodiversity conservation, safeguarding nature and cultural resources, improving livelihoods and driving sustainable development [1]. Protection of nature has never been as controversial and even dangerous, with hundreds of environmental activists (and citizens defending their homes from displacement) being attacked and even murdered, and many more jailed, mostly in developing countries [2]. Many anti-logging campaigners who have been murdered are members of indigenous groups [5,6]. The largest death toll in Africa includes conservation workers and park rangers killed by poachers, illegal (or legal!) loggers supported by corrupt officials [9,10,11,12]. In Cambodia, the anti-logging campaigner Chutt Wutty was murdered, without fair investigation completed [15], with three other deaths in 2018, reportedly by poachers, still being investigated [16].
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