The WEEC community shapes the future: from 2026 to 2028, new events and initiatives for the global EE network

/in /by

After the cancellation of the meeting expected for next September in Australia because of the huge geopolitical crisis, the worldwide community of practice and research in environmental education continues its engagement, its work and its stewardship in favour of an education that is not only a discipline or a field of research, but a lighthouse in times of troubles, growing challenges, and increasing threats to humans and the Planet.

We regret the cancellation of the 2026 meeting, but we have new initiatives, meetings, partnership opportunities, and publications.

We have some important news.

  1. First, the next congress is ready to collect the international community of practice and research for the environment and sustainability. You are invited to attend the next WEEC congress, to be held in Bilbao (Spain), 21-25 March 2028. Further information is coming soon.
  2. Second, the international initiative “No Limits to Hope”, on learning challenges, launched jointly with the Club of Rome and The Fifth Element, is underway.

We will inform you soon about the launch event for the first book, born of contributions from all over the world.

Further publications will be issued gradually, and the online forum remains open on the WEEC website (https://weecnetwork.org/no-limits-to-hope/). Send us your contributions!

  1. Finally, we remind you of the World Environmental Education Day, celebrated each year in October, around the anniversary of the UN-UNESCO Conference in Tbilisi (14 October 1977). On the WEEC website, you can find and download the official logo, available in many languages (https://weecnetwork.org/world-environmental-education-day/).

You can promote seminars, conferences, workshops, and so on. The network will collect the initiatives, publish them online, and announce them through newsletters and social media.

Follow the agenda on this website and on social media!

LAÏSA PIVERT, ISABELLE ARSENEAU, ÉMILIE MORIN, ANNE FAURÉ: Hope Has No Limits: Empowering Youth to Transform the World

/in /by

Authors: Laïsa Pivert, Isabelle Arseneau, Émilie Morin & Anne Fauré

 

We are living in a time marked by multiple crises : climate, social, economic, and health-related. The scale of these challenges is leading many young people to feel powerless and increasingly pessimistic about the future. As a result, their engagement in both individual and collective action is often limitedⁱ. Yet, the need to act has never been more urgent. In the face of socio-ecological challenges linked to the climate crisis, education can play a decisive role. But for this to happen, schools must help young people feel capable of taking actionⁱⁱ and equip them with the tools they need to address the issues that matter to them. From this perspective, we argue that education, both formal (in the classroom) and nonformal (in the community), should be designed holistically to foster young people’s capacity to act, both individually and collectively. This can be achieved through two main directions: (1) moving beyond the isolated individual toward collective action, and (2) developing the skills needed to act for greater social and environmental justice.

1. Moving beyond “small actions” toward collective change
Today’s crises are not only environmental, health-related, or social, but fundamentally political and collectiveⁱⁱⁱ. In response to these global challenges, schools must move beyond promoting “small green actions” and instead equip young people with the capabilities needed for collective mobilization. However, this responsibility should not fall solely on schools or on younger generations alone. Communities, organizations, and institutions must also stand alongside young people. A strong sense of agency often emerges from this shared, collective engagement, whatever form it may take. This is what our current research on agency and public action seeks to highlightⁱᵛ. We focus on individuals who, confronted with the impacts of climate change and environmental and health issues, particularly around the St. Lawrence River in Quebec, are working to transform public policies they see as harmful to the environment and social justice. These individuals do not act alone. They organize, collaborate, negotiate, and imagine alternatives together in order to influence public and political decisionsᵛ. Through their actions, they help reshape how decisions are made by opening up spaces for dialogue and changeᵛⁱ. Their journeys are
marked by perseverance and creativity. Even in the face of resistance and obstacles, they continue to act, adapt their strategies, and propose new ways forward. They show that solutions do exist, and that meaningful policy change is both possible and achievable, even in complex contextsᵛⁱⁱ.

2. Building the capacity to act through inspiring examples
While collective action is essential, young people must also feel capable of taking part in it. Developing this sense of agency requires both skills and a key ingredient: hope. Researchᵛⁱⁱⁱⁱˣ shows that hope plays a crucial role in civic engagement, as it directly shapes people’s willingness to act on social and environmental issues. However, simply understanding the causes and consequences of climate change is not enough to sustain hope, especially when proposed solutions seem ineffective or out of reach. What truly nurtures hope is the belief that action can lead to real change. When young people see that citizen mobilizations have influenced public decisions or led to policy change, their sense
of efficacy growsˣ. This belief in collective effectiveness becomes a powerful driver of engagement.

From this perspective, an education that fosters hope cannot be limited to raising awareness or providing information. It must also make visible concrete examples of successful collective action and inspiring paths of engagement. Showing young people that others, citizens, organizations, or collectives, have been able to make a difference, helps turn hope into action. It allows them to see themselves as agents of change. This is the aim of our research project Agency and Public Action, which highlights individuals who have taken action on socio-ecological issues to transform public policies. We hope that our findings will contribute to the development of educational tools that strengthen individuals’ sense of agency, including among young people, while also rethinking education as a space for learning to act. Education should not only help students understand the issues; it should also empower them to take action, both individually and collectively, on matters that concern them. This approach aligns with calls for transformative education that prepares today’s and tomorrow’s change makersˣⁱ.

Conclusion
“Hope has no limits”: when learning becomes a driver of both individual and collective transformation. When schools, or any educational setting, give young people the means and legitimacy to engage, collaborate, and imagine alternatives, they become spaces where a viable future can be built. Our research shows that there are individuals who have developed the skills, capacities, and sense of purpose needed to act for a more just world. By drawing inspiration from them, education can become a powerful force for social and ecological transformation. As one of these individuals put it: “Politics is too important to be left in the hands of politicians.” In education, this means recognizing young people as true co-creators of fair and sustainable solutions for the future.

ⁱ Li, C. J., & Monroe, M. C. (2019). Exploring the Essential Psychological Factors in Fostering Hope Concerning Climate Change. Environmental Education Research, 25(6), 936–954.
ⁱⁱ Morin, É. (2021). L’étude du sentiment de pouvoir agir de jeunes du Québec face aux changements climatiques : dimensions et conditions favorables à son développement à l’école secondaire. [Thèse de doctorat inédite]. Université du Québec à Rimouski.
ⁱⁱⁱ Bachand, C.-A. (2025, 26 août). Sortir du petit geste : L’école doit donner aux jeunes les moyens de se mobiliser. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/sortir-du-petit-geste-lecole-doitdonner-aux-jeunes-les-moyens-de-se-mobiliser-255694
ⁱᵛ https://transformative-ocean-climate-action.github.io/publications/2025-WP3Onepager/
ᵛ Petridou, E., & Mintrom, M. (2021). A Research Agenda for the Study of Policy Entrepreneurs. Policy Studies Journal, 49(4), 943967.
ᵛⁱ Arnold, G., Klasic, M., Wu, C., Schomburg, M., & York, A. (2023). Finding, distinguishing, and understanding overlooked policy entrepreneurs. Policy Sciences, 56(4), 657-687.
ᵛⁱⁱ Mintrom, M., & Norman, P. (2009). Policy entrepreneurship and policy change. Policy studies journal, 37(4), 649-667.
ᵛⁱⁱⁱ Baldwin, C., Pickering, G., & Dale, G. (2023). Knowledge and self-efficacy of youth to take action on climate change. Environmental Education Research, 29(11), 1597-1616
ⁱˣ Jones, L., Parsons, K. J., Halstead, F., & Wolstenholme, J. M. (2024). Reimaging activism to save the planet: Using transdisciplinary and participatory methodologies to support collective youth action. Children & Society, 38(3), 823-838.
ˣ Groleau, A., Pouliot, C., & Arseneau, I. (2021). Educating for the Anthropocene. In Knowledge for the Anthropocene (pp. 98-106). Edward Elgar Publishing.
ˣⁱ United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2023). Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights, International Understanding, Cooperation, Fundamental Freedoms, Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000386924_fre

 

 

« L’espoir n’a pas de limite : outiller les jeunes pour transformer le monde »

Nous vivons une période marquée par des crises multiples : climatiques, sociales, économiques et sanitaires. L’ampleur de ces crises génère chez de nombreux jeunes un sentiment d’impuissance et un certain pessimisme face à l’avenir. Cela a pour effet de limiter leur engagement dans des actions à l’échelle individuelle ou collectiveⁱ. Or, il y a urgence d’agir. Face aux défis socio-écologiques liés à la crise climatique, l’éducation peut jouer un rôle déterminant. Encore faut-il que l’école aide les jeunes à se sentir capables d’agirⁱⁱ et leur donne les outils nécessaires pour faire face aux situations qui les préoccupent. Dans cette perspective, nous proposons que l’éducation en contexte formel
(dans la classe) et non formel (dans la communauté) soit pensée et orientée dans sa globalité pour viser le développement du pouvoir d’agir des personnes apprenantes sur les plans individuel et collectif, et ce, à partir de deux axes : (1) sortir de l’individu isolé, pour viser l’action collective, (2) développer chez les jeunes des compétences permettant de passer à l’action pour plus de justice sociale et environnementale.

1. Sortir du « petit geste » pour viser l’action collective
Les crises actuelles ne sont pas seulement environnementales, sanitaires ou sociales. Elles sont d’abord des phénomènes politiques et collectifsⁱⁱⁱ. Face à ces enjeux globaux, l’école doit outiller les jeunes pour sortir « des petits gestes verts » et leur offrir toutes les capabilités nécessaires à une mobilisation collective. Toutefois, cette responsabilité ne doit pas reposer uniquement sur l’école ni uniquement sur les épaules des plus jeunes générations. Les communautés, les organisations et les institutions qui entourent les jeunes doivent également se mobiliser à leurs côtés. Le sentiment de pouvoir agir de ces derniers naît en grande partie de cet engagement collectif, quelle que soit la forme qu’il prend. C’est ce que met en lumière la recherche que nous menons actuellement sur le pouvoir d’agir et l’action publiqueⁱᵛ. Nous nous intéressons à des acteurs et actrices qui, confrontés aux impacts des changements climatiques et à des enjeux environnementaux et de santé,
notamment autour du fleuve Saint-Laurent au Québec, cherchent à transformer des politiques publiques jugées défavorables à l’environnement et à la justice sociale. Ces personnes ne se contentent pas d’agir seuls, mais s’organisent, coopèrent, négocient, imaginent des alternatives en groupe pour faire évoluer les décisions publiques et politiquesᵛ. Par leur engagement, elles contribuent à transformer les manières de gouverner en ouvrant des espaces de dialogue et de changementᵛⁱ. Leur parcours est marqué par la persévérance, ainsi que la créativité. Face aux résistances et aux obstacles, elles continuent d’agir, d’adapter leurs stratégies et de proposer de nouvelles façons de faire. Elles montrent ainsi que des solutions existent et que des changements de politiques sont possibles et réalisables, même dans des contextes complexesᵛⁱⁱ.

2. Développer les compétences du pouvoir d’agir dans l’apprentissage à travers la mise à disposition d’exemples inspirants
Si l’action collective est essentielle, il importe que les jeunes se sentent capables d’y prendre part. Le développement du pouvoir d’agir repose alors sur des compétences à acquérir, mais aussi sur un élément central : l’espoir. Plusieurs recherchesᵛⁱⁱⁱⁱˣ montrent que l’espoir joue un rôle clé dans l’engagement citoyen, car il influence directement la volonté d’agir face aux enjeux sociaux et environnementaux. Toutefois, connaître les causes des changements climatiques et leurs conséquences ne suffit pas à entretenir cet espoir, surtout lorsque les solutions proposées semblent inefficaces ou hors de portée. Ce qui nourrit véritablement l’espoir, c’est la conviction que l’action peut produire des changements concrets. Lorsque les jeunes perçoivent que des mobilisations citoyennes ont permis d’influencer des décisions publiques ou de faire évoluer des politiques, leur sentiment d’efficacité s’en trouve renforcéˣ. Cette croyance en l’efficacité collective devient alors un puissant moteur d’engagement.

Dans cette perspective, une éducation porteuse d’espoir ne peut se limiter à sensibiliser ou à informer. Elle doit aussi rendre visibles des exemples concrets de mobilisations réussies et de trajectoires d’engagement inspirantes. Montrer aux jeunes que d’autres citoyennes et citoyens, des organisations ou des collectifs ont réussi à faire bouger les choses contribue à transformer l’espoir en action. Voir que le changement est possible permet aux jeunes de se projeter comme acteurs et actrices de transformation. C’est dans cet esprit que s’inscrit notre projet de recherche Pouvoir agir et action publique en mettant en lumière des acteurs et actrices de changement qui, confrontés à des enjeux socio-écologiques, se sont engagés pour faire évoluer des politiques publiques. Nous espérons que les résultats issus de notre recherche pourront permettre de concevoir des outils pédagogiques visant le développement d’un fort sentiment de pouvoir agir des individus, dont des jeunes, et permettra par la même occasion de repenser le rôle de l’éducation comme un espace de formation à l’action. Une éducation qui permette aux élèves non seulement de comprendre les enjeux, mais aussi d’intervenir, individuellement et collectivement, sur ce qui les préoccupe. Cette approche rejoint l’appel à une éducation transformatrice capable de former les acteurs et actrices de changement d’aujourd’hui et de demainˣⁱ.

Conclusion
« L’espoir n’a pas de limites » lorsque l’apprentissage devient un levier de transformation individuel mais aussi collectif. Quand l’école, ou tout dispositif éducatif, donne aux jeunes les moyens et la légitimité de s’engager, de coopérer, d’imaginer des alternatives, elle devient un lieu d’engagement dans la construction d’un avenir viable. Notre recherche montre qu’il y a des acteurs et actrices de changement qui ont su développer ces compétences, ces capacités, ce sens de l’action pour agir pour un monde plus juste. En s’en inspirant, le milieu éducatif peut devenir un moteur de transformation sociale et écologique. Comme disait l’un de ces acteurs : « la politique est trop importante pour la laisser entre les mains des politiciens ». En éducation, cela signifie reconnaître les jeunes comme de véritables co-créateurs de solutions durables et justes pour un avenir viable.

ⁱ Li, C. J., & Monroe, M. C. (2019). Exploring the Essential Psychological Factors in Fostering Hope Concerning Climate Change. Environmental Education Research, 25(6), 936–954.
ⁱⁱ Morin, É. (2021). L’étude du sentiment de pouvoir agir de jeunes du Québec face aux changements climatiques : dimensions et conditions favorables à son développement à l’école secondaire. [Thèse de doctorat inédite]. Université du Québec à Rimouski.
ⁱⁱⁱ Bachand, C.-A. (2025, 26 août). Sortir du petit geste : L’école doit donner aux jeunes les moyens de se mobiliser. The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/sortir-du-petit-geste-lecole-doitdonner-aux-jeunes-les-moyens-de-se-mobiliser-255694
ⁱᵛ https://transformative-ocean-climate-action.github.io/publications/2025-WP3Onepager/
ᵛ Petridou, E., & Mintrom, M. (2021). A Research Agenda for the Study of Policy Entrepreneurs. Policy Studies Journal, 49(4), 943967.
ᵛⁱ Arnold, G., Klasic, M., Wu, C., Schomburg, M., & York, A. (2023). Finding, distinguishing, and understanding overlooked policy entrepreneurs. Policy Sciences, 56(4), 657-687.
ᵛⁱⁱ Mintrom, M., & Norman, P. (2009). Policy entrepreneurship and policy change. Policy studies journal, 37(4), 649-667.
ᵛⁱⁱⁱ Jones, L., Parsons, K. J., Halstead, F., & Wolstenholme, J. M. (2024). Reimaging activism to save the planet: Using transdisciplinary and participatory methodologies to support collective youth action. Children & Society, 38(3), 823-838.
ⁱˣ Baldwin, C., Pickering, G., & Dale, G. (2023). Knowledge and self-efficacy of youth to take action on climate change. Environmental Education Research, 29(11), 1597-1616
ˣ Groleau, A., Pouliot, C., & Arseneau, I. (2021). Educating for the Anthropocene. In Knowledge for the Anthropocene (pp. 98-106). Edward Elgar Publishing.
ˣⁱ United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). (2023). Recommendation on Education for Peace, Human Rights, International Understanding, Cooperation, Fundamental Freedoms, Global Citizenship and Sustainable Development. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000386924_fre

MICHAELA EMCH: The Meadow Knows

/in /by

A child does not need to be taught that soil is alive. She already knows. She has felt it, smelled it, watched things emerge from it and return to it. What she needs is for us not to take that knowledge away from her.
This is where education fails most quietly. Not in what it teaches, but in what it displaces.
We fill classrooms with representations of the world while the world waits outside.
We offer diagrams of ecosystems to children who have not yet learned to sit still in one. We talk about biodiversity in rooms where the only living things are the students themselves. And then, years later, we wonder why the adults those children became struggle to think in systems, to tolerate complexity, to imagine futures that look genuinely different from the present.
The meadow was always the better classroom. We just stopped going there.

What the forest teaches before the teacher arrives
What nature offers young learners is not content. It is a way of seeing.
A child who spends time in a forest learns, without being told, that nothing is wasted. That what falls becomes what rises. That a dead tree is not an ending but a reorganization of energy, shelter, soil. She learns that adaptation is constant, that disruption is not catastrophic but generative, that the most resilient systems are the ones with the most relationships.
These are not metaphors for life. They are life’s actual operating principles, visible, touchable, available.
And here is what matters most for the generation we are educating now: nature does not teach sustainability. It teaches regeneration. Sustainability asks how we preserve what remains. Regeneration asks how we restore what was lost, how we participate in cycles larger than ourselves, how we leave a place more alive than we found it. This is a fundamentally different orientation, and it begins with a fundamentally different relationship to the living world. One that starts young. One that starts outside.
A child who has watched a river find its way around an obstacle has already understood something that most strategic planning frameworks spend pages trying to explain. Give her that experience first. The frameworks can come later.

The lichen speaks first
The same principles hold when we shift from the young to those who lead.
I work with executives, teams, and organizations in the alpine environment. What I have observed, consistently, is that nature does something for adult learners that no workshop can replicate. It mediates.
There is a moment I have watched happen more times than I can count. A manager, a team leader, someone who arrived carrying the full weight of their role, stops talking about strategy. And starts talking about lichen.
They do not plan it. No one asks them to.
Something about kneeling in front of a rock face, examining how a crustose lichen persists at 2,800 meters with almost no resources, no soil, no shelter, something about that unlocks a different kind of speech. They begin to describe, quietly, their own fragility. Their organization’s brittleness. The way they have been trying to grow on nothing.
They are talking about themselves. Without talking about themselves.
Every educator knows that the most important things are hardest to say directly. To ask directly is to trigger defensiveness, performance, or silence. Nature removes that barrier. When the mind is directed outward toward a living system, internal defenses lower. Pattern recognition deepens. The connections people draw back to their own lives carry an authenticity that classroom exercises rarely achieve.
Nature does not judge. It simply shows what works, what endures, and what does not survive.

Not Surviving. Returning.
And it teaches the same lesson it taught the children: not how to sustain, but how to regenerate.
The alpine ecosystems I have worked in for over fifteen years are functioning models of adaptive intelligence. They manage uncertainty, scarcity, and shock. They build resilience through redundancy, collaboration, and radical efficiency. They do not merely hold their ground. After every disturbance, fire, avalanche, drought, they come back differently, more complex, more diverse, more capable. That is not sustainability. That is regeneration, and organizations are beginning to understand that this is what they need too.
A lichen is not a metaphor for symbiosis. It is symbiosis, alive, under pressure, performing. A gentian flowering at the edge of a snowfield is not an illustration of persistence. It is persistence, instantiated, measurable, real.
When we treat nature as the learning platform rather than the backdrop, something shifts in the learner. Observation becomes rigorous. Questions become genuine. The transfer of insight to human contexts happens on its own, because the learner built the bridge themselves, from their own attention.
This is the difference between being told a principle and discovering it. Between information and formation.

An unmade choice
What would it mean to take all of this seriously, for every age, every public, every context?
It would mean training educators in natural history alongside pedagogy, giving them the tools to read a landscape the way a scientist reads a text. It would mean designing curricula around living systems questions: how does this forest recover from fire, what can we learn from that? It would mean trusting that a mountain, a wetland, a garden, a hedgerow, any living system, contains everything needed to teach adaptive thinking, collaborative intelligence, and regenerative possibility.
Above all, it would mean recognizing that the separation between human learning and the natural world is not a given. It is a choice, made not long ago, and one we can unmake.
The children who grew up tracking seasons, reading soil, following rivers were not romantics. They were learning, at a cellular level, how living systems work. We can offer that back to the young and to the seasoned alike. Not as nostalgia. As method. As hope.
The meadow has been teaching for longer than we have been arriving to learn. What changes now is our willingness to sit quietly enough to be taught.

International Secretariat

Via del Carmine, 15
10122 Torino – Italy
tel.+39 0114366522
secretariat@weecnetwork.org

LEGAL NOTICE

Privacy Policy
Cookies Policy
Facebook

Discover all the activities on our Facebook Page

Instagram

Follow our Instagram Profile!

Linkedin

Join our Linkedin world

Youtube

Join The Newsletter

Stay up to date with the latest news and trends in the digital world! Subscribe to our newsletter to receive exclusive content, practical tips, and updates directly in your inbox.