Education for sustainability through long-term monitoring of Sense of Place

• In Event: ESE in elementary schools: students' and teachers’ perspectives, emotions, and sense of place

Proposal

Our paper emerges from an ongoing initiative to develop a Sense of Place (SOP) and long-term monitoring of SOP through the international LTSER platforms network.
LTSER (Long Term Social-Ecological Research) platforms are conceptual-organizational frameworks. Scientists harness a multidisciplinary research in order to establish, together with local stakeholders, a sustainable management of social-ecological systems, based on research, development of methodologies, and long-term monitoring (Mirtel et al., 2018).
Sustainability depends to a large extent on residents' (individuals and communities) responsibility towards their surrounding and supporting social-ecological systems (SES), in order to reduce human pressures on the ecosystem (Folke, et al., 2010). Conscious citizens and ecological literacy are pivotal in order to constantly adapt (sustain/develop/rehabilitate) SES to the ever changing global and local conditions (Berkowitz et al., 2005; Rozzi, 2013).
In recent years, an increasing number of studies have illustrated the relationship between the 'sense of place' (SOP) of residents and their willingness to live responsibly with the ecosystems and services provided by them (Manzo & Perkins, 2006; Masterson et al., 2017). An interrelationship was also found between SOP and the willingness to protect nature, culture, and society (Larson, De Freitas, & Hicks, 2013; Lewicka, 2011, 2013, Shirotsuki et al., 2017).
SOP traditionally refers to the 'place attachment' and 'meaning' that people or communities create toward a geographical location thus making it a 'place' (Tuan, 1977, Masterson, et al. 2017). People can feel that they are rooted in the place, to the extent that it becomes part of their self-identity (place-identity) and to develop a perception that in this place they can express their full potential (self-dependency) or opposite, to feel alienated from a place (Relph, 1976; Seamon, 2014).
More recently the critical notion of a “global sense of place” was introduced to emphasize the multiple geographical scales, power relations, uneven histories and ongoing processes, through which a place is produced, as well as the openness, dynamics, and instability of places (Massey, 1994).
SOP reflects a complex mental-cognitive state (Scannell & Gifford, 2010), constantly changing (Raymond et al., 2017) and corresponding with changes in the SES, in different geographical scales (Masterson, et al., 2017), as well as a balance of power relations in the social system in different organization scales (Stokowski, 2002). If a place is an ongoing process (rather than a fixed notion or a stable concept), then long-term monitoring of SOP as a social variable in LTSER platforms, is more adequate and of great importance.
This is especially important in light of current social processes that challenge the development of sense of place:
• Biocultural homogenization (i.e., interlocked losses of native biological and cultural diversity at local, regional, and global scales) implies socio-environmental injustice, and demands to value the vital links between the diversity of life "habits" of distinct "co-in-habitants" (human and other-than-human) who share a common "habitat." (The biocultural ethic, Rozzi, 2013).
• Sedentarization of nomadic or marginalized populations around cities demands adaptation of the traditional habits to the changing reality in order to maintain the co-in-habitant.
• Living in urban environments does not leave residents with tangible visible ways to practice and imagine the management of their environment and therefore contribute to their detachment from their SES (Avriel Avni et al., 2010). And challenge the development of ecological literacy; an essential virtue of environmental citizen (Berkowitz et al., 2005).
A long-term development and study of SOP supports education for sustainability in several ways:
1. Provides feedback to local environmental education programs, and allow them to refine their educational activities and accurately contextualize them.
2. Enable an integration of traditional knowledge of sustainable living with life habits of modern society
3. Help characterize the mutual constitution of SOP and sustainable way of life.
In the first phase, our initiative is on a collaboration of two LTSERs that already use SOP in their environmental education (EE) activity:
1. In the Negev Highlands LTSER platform, Israel, in the northern hemisphere, following a twenty-two years of EE activities and ten years of research on the subject (Avriel Avni et al., 2010).
2. At the Cape Horn-LTSER sites in southern Chile, where a methodological approach called "Field Environmental Philosophy" has been developed to foster a SOP in students, researchers, decision makers, and also as part of novel ecotourism activities (Rozzi, et al., 2008).
On both platforms, small towns located in remote areas were chosen as a case study. Mitzpe Ramon in the Negev Highlands, Israel (5000 inhabitants) and Puerto Williams in Cape Horn, Chile (1500 inhabitants). The biophysical and cultural differences, as well as the diverse population composition of the two communities, enable us to characterize a broad range of sense of space.
In the Negev Highlands LTSER Platform, a SOP's monitoring tools have been developed according to the SOP model and the local Social-Ecological system. This tool was adapted to the local social-ecological system of Cape Horn LTSER platforms and a preliminary study was conducted among teenagers on the two platforms.
The findings indicate similar qualities in the sense of place of residents in the two remote areas. A mixture of appreciation of the landscape along with a sense that personal needs are not fulfilled and therefore life in that place challenges optimal personal development. However, there are also significant differences in regards to the ecosystem and the local social system in these two sites
Our paper presents the findings emerging from these two LTSER platforms, indicate differences between SES, and explain the needed adaptation to the local. We will also voice a call for international collaboration in the development of biocultural sensitive tool for SOP's monitoring. Tools that can evaluate SOP, characterize its causes and influences, in a variety of cultures and in different types of communities.

Authors

• Noa Avriel Avni, Dead Sea & Science Center

• Ricardo Rozzi, University of North Texas ; Universidad de Magallanes

• Alan Berkowitz, Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies

• Miri Lavi-Neeman, THE ARAVA INSTITUTE FOR ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES