Presentation short abstract

This presentation argues that, given the complex and political nature of environmental challenges, environmental education must draw on perspectives from both political ecology and the tradition of powerful knowledge.

Presentation long abstract

This presentation argues that, given the complex and political nature of environmental challenges, environmental education must draw on perspectives from both political ecology and the tradition of powerful knowledge. Environmental problems are inherently political because any attempt to address them can have consequences for people’s lives and everyday routines, potentially creating winners and losers. At the same time, managing these problems requires engagement with knowledge about natural and social processes, making it crucial to understand how environmental knowledge is produced. The political character of environmental governance, with its production of winners and losers, means that knowledge can never be entirely neutral. Therefore, in this post, I will argue for the importance of combining political ecology and powerful knowledge in environmental education.

Often environmental education (EE)/ education for sustainable development (ESD) ends up at a idealistic and moralistic level not concerning the contradiction and conflicts both at the material and discussive levels in society more alienate than engaged learners. To get a deeper ESD in contradiction of a shallow ESD, the use of political ecology thinking and taking knowledge serous as in Powerful Knowledge is needed.