Promoting environmental and sustainability education in the Caribbean: research imperatives to inform practice

Abstract

Within the Caribbean region, issues such as pollution, habitat destruction, and crime and violence, alongside global phenomena such as climate change and the recent COVID-19 pandemic, pose challenges to sustainable development. Within this context, Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) becomes a critical imperative for the region’s populace to engender knowledge, values and attitudes, and behaviour consistent with sustainability. ESE initiatives in the region have gained momentum in the past decades. So too has the research to undergird the practice. Despite this, the published work of regional scholars is not as prominent as the work of those in other parts of the world. This Special Issue on ESE in the English-speaking Caribbean, therefore, seeks to help redress, in part, this gap by highlighting work from both established and emerging scholars in the field. These theoretical and empirical contributions focus on ESE and curricula, teacher education, ESE and values education, ESE and faith systems, sustainability and assessment and other areas of inquiry. The current global ESD for 2030 Framework offers an opportune moment to highlight, reflect on and offer recommendations on ESE research in the region, in order to further inform practice in both the formal and non-formal realms.