Environmental Justice Storytelling for a Sustainable Future

• In Event: Extending Empathy in Environmental Justice Movements: Understanding Missing Voices and Utilizing Transformational Praxis

Proposal

We can no longer talk just about sustainable futures, but about sustainable present. Because the environmental crisis is already here. There is a need to change our worldview from human-centrism to eco-centrism, it is necessary a certain level of leap in the way of thinking about what leads us to well-being and also in the way of acting and living. Education plays an important role in this shift of direction. Having the dialogue and the word in the centre (Freire, 1965), to move towards eco-centrism, to incorporate the human well-being in the centre, it is important to pay attention to the stories that we are surrounded by. It is not possible to create a sustainable future, if the stories we tell, the words we use, do not align and do not show us that reality. The aim of this research is to analyse, through the life stories of activists in environmental justice, involved in education projects for holistic sustainability, what are the challenges and learning for future projects, motivations.
“In order to do what the climate crisis demands of us, we have to find stories of a liveable future, stories of popular power, stories that motivate people to do what it takes to make the world we need.” (Solnit, 2023).

Author

• Leire Agirreazkuenaga, UCLA Paulo Freire Intitute