Passion for Protecting: How Ecological Knowledge and Place Attachment drive Nascent Environmental Activism in Young Students in the Galapagos

• In Event: The Future is Now: Youth Engagement and Environmental Action

Proposal

Environmental activism in the United States is most common now among younger generations, according to a Pew Research Survey (2021), and as CIES members and educators, we all are likely to have noted increased large-scale and widely-publicized environmental activism by young people, such as Fridays for the Future, an organization founded by Greta Thunberg (UNICEF, 2021). As Wallis and Loy noted, youth will continue to experience greater impacts of climate change than older generations, and new global protest movements by youth have gained force in the past decade to address that particular point (2021). Because young people stand to inherit and be impacted by significant environmental challenges I believe that it is imperative to research the foundation of nascent forms of environmental activism, in which we can seat environmental protest, in order to support further and continued pro-environmental efforts by younger generations. In an effort to support young peoples’ environmental activism, it is important to explore what seeds are sown that lead to its development. To contribute to this goal, I have looked at ecological knowledge and place attachment as two of the seeds that contribute to the development of nascent environmental activism in younger students living in the Galapagos Islands.

Literature that explores the impacts of ecological knowledge and place attachment on pro-environmental beliefs and behaviors, which can be seen as localized and acute forms of activism, observe a positive relationship (Manzo & Perkins, 2006; Altman & Low, 1992; Ramkissoon & Mavondo, 2017; Dang & Weiss, 2021). In this paper, I discuss the data collected on a case study of this positive relationship and thus an uncovering of nascent environmental activism in young students living in the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador. Research questions that guided this research were: 1) do students in the Galapagos display ecological knowledge about the Galapagos environment? 2) do students in the Galapagos display place attachment to their Galapagos environment? 3) do students in the Galapagos engage in pro-environmental behaviors or display pro-environmental beliefs? It is key to note that pro-environmental behaviors and beliefs are used here as proxies for nascent environmental activism. Data to answer these questions was gathered via in-person fieldwork with fifth grade students (students in this grade are, on average, 9 years old), on two Galapagos islands, using a mixed methods approach including a survey, interviews, and focus groups. The majority of this youngest generation of Galapagueños was born on the islands, making it a unique group of young people and residents, and potentially giving them more context and time to develop early place attachment. Particularly of interest for this paper are the interviews with students, which asked them about their ecological knowledge of Galapagos; actions they may do to protect the Galapagos environment; if they thought protecting the environment was important, and if so, why; and if they liked living in Galapagos and if so, why. Initial findings suggest that, event as some of the youngest residents of Galapagos, these 5th graders display a level of passion for knowing things about their environment (ecological knowledge) and an emphatic insistence that protecting their Galapagos home and environment is important (place attachment and pro-environmental beliefs), that both suggest that place attachment and ecological knowledge is contributing towards increased nascent environmental activism.

So why look at young students in the Galapagos? The Galápagos is a small archipelago of 21 main islands located about 1,000km off the coast of Ecuador. The islands were brought into the western spotlight by the field notes and later publishings of a then-novice naturalist, biologist, and geologist, Charles Darwin (Darwin, 1859). As 97% of the landmass of the archipelago is protected as National Park land, leaving 3% for urban development, the flora and fauna of the islands are unsurprisingly a core topic of academic research. However, the opportunity to observe and support young people living and learning in an environment that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) deems a Natural World Heritage Site is vast, and has, as yet, not been fully explored by the academic community. Furthermore, the extent to which the production of ecological knowledge and development of place attachment can sow the seeds of nascent environmental activism in Galapagos children has yet to be researched.

Ecuador has made national efforts to prioritize and increase conservation and management of the Galápagos as a national park, and UNESCO consistently promotes and expects effective conservation for all UNESCO Natural World Heritage Sites, including the Galápagos. Because of the stated and actual efforts of these two bodies it is clear that conservation is one of the top priorities for the islands. I believe that research with students in the Galápagos that produces actionable insights into how to support increased ecological knowledge and place attachment will directly and positively impact nascent environmental activism amongst young Galapagueños.

It is important to note that I approached this research with an interpretivist epistemology, as I believe that, as a researcher, I undoubtedly am a part of the research itself, contributing to the information that students choose to share with me and the opinions that they have about the research as a whole. Additionally, as a westerner working with young students in a country that I was not a resident of or native to, it was important to conduct fieldwork and subsequent analysis from a power-sensitive perspective. While I do speak Spanish and have previously conducted research within schools on the Galápagos, I am not a native speaker or a resident of Galápagos and as such, am an outsider looking in. I take note from both a feminist methodology and the pedagogy of the oppressed, championed by Freire and Kozol (Liamputtong, 2011). Both frameworks highlight the importance of working with, not on, research participants, in order to allow them to own the space and their own narratives (Liamputtong, 2011). I believe that this approach is especially important when working with children if I am to hear their own beliefs and ideas and to minimize the effects that my identities have on their responses.

Author

• Amelia Farber, University of Oxford