International Multiplier Event

Ecosystem services in Baltic schools. Resources for teaching from an Erasmus+ project

GIVE VALUE TO NATURE: LEARN HOW TO MEASURE WHAT ECOSYSTEM SERVICES DO FOR US

 KA201 STRATEGIC PARTNERSHIP PROJECT NUMBER-2020-1-ES01-KA201-083255

Venue:Utena, Lithuania

Date:  27 June 2023

About ValuingNature Erasmus+ Project

https://www.storyjumper.com/book/read/158260541/6561ca633ec4d

https://www.artsteps.com/view/649a7571f4d1f5c1288b11c7

The main objective of the project is to introduce in the classroom the importance of valuing the benefits that nature provides to humans.

Sustainability or sustainable development is one of the fundamental issues of the Europe 2020 Strategy. Moreover, the EU has subscribed to the 2030 UN Agenda for Sustainable Development.  Valuation of natural capital and accounting has been proposed as a valuable tool and a decision-making criterion to undertake such sustainability measurements. In recent years, most proposals for natural capital accounting have been based on the valuation of ecosystem services. Ecosystem services (ES) are usually defined as all those benefits people obtain from nature. However, ecosystem services up to now have remained vaguely known to general public, and they have hardly reached European secondary school classes.

Ecosystem services demonstrate the enormous human dependence on nature by focusing on the critical roles of ecosystems for sustaining human life and well-being. They are classified into three main groups: provision, regulation and cultural service. If we are able to measure them, we will be able to put value on everything what the environment does for us.

Since ecosystem services have barely been included into the curricula of secondary education, much effort is needed to prepare teachers and to develop new training materials and tools.  This project has attempted to address this shortcoming. For this reason partnership of universities and high-schools from different biogeographical areas of Europe (Atlantic, Mediterranean, Alpine, Continental, Boreal, Arctic) has been created.

Six secondary schools from different countries and two universities have joined forces to carry out the project. This is the list of the participants:

University of Salamanca, Spain (coordinator of the project)

Ilisimatusarfik University of Greenland

IES Aliste, Spain

Srednja skola fra Andrije Kacica Miosica, Croatia

PLATON M.E.P.E, Greece

LICEUL KOROSI CSOMA SANDOR COVASNA, Romunia

Utena A.Sapoka Gymnasium, Lithuania

Zespol Szkol w Zychlinie, Poland

The issues addressed by the project include:

- Enhancing the value of nature: understanding the ecosystem services provided by nature in each region where high school partners are placed.

- Economic Valuation of Ecosystem Services.

- Changes in ecosystem services provision caused by climate change.

- Nature as the basis for regional development of peripheral rural areas with demographic problems in Europe.

- Intergenerational dialogues: evolution of the human-nature relationship.

Partnership and cooperation have aimed at creating high-quality intellectual outputs in order to provide European students with new skills and competences about ecosystem services and all the benefits that humans obtain from nature in the context of climate change and under a cross-cultural and diachronic approach.

Valuing the benefits that nature provides to humans (ecosystem services), promoting better management of natural resources and living more sustainably should be taught to people: students and adults, as “We will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught" B. Dioum.

FOUR INTELLECTUAL OUTPUTS HAVE BEEN DEVELOPED/ CREATED 

1. MOOC FOR TEACHER TRAINING

By now, at European level, there has hardly been any training of introducing the concept of ecosystem services content specifically aimed at teacher training. In this project, the Universities of Salamanca and Greenland have developed MOOC specifically designed for secondary school teachers on ES valuation in a context of climate change.

2. WEB PLATFORM “VALUING NATURE” WITH EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES ON ECOSYSTEM SERVICES AND THE ECONOMIC VALUATION OF THE BENEFITS PROVIDED BY NATURE – https://valuing-nature.eu

In order to facilitate the introduction of the ecosystem services framework into secondary school curricula, learning/ teaching materials and educational resources have been designed.

A mobile application has been developed to economically quantify the ecosystem services provided by a given region so that students would be able to make their own calculations about the benefits that nature provides in their area and to their own lives

4. E-BOOK  “INTERGENERATIONAL DIALOGUES ON ECOSYSTEM SERVICES”

In this intellectual product – e-book – we want each partner school to encourage an intergenerational dialogue between students and their grandparents and/ or other elderly people. Each climate pattern and each biogeographic region, imposes some environmental conditions under which each culture operates depending on its beliefs and systems of values. From its ancestors each generation also receives knowledge and understanding how to obtain and ensure the long-term supply of basic ecosystem services for their own well-being.

This project represents a unique opportunity to make cross-cultural comparisons on the evolution of the relations between humans and nature in the different biogeographical regions of Europe.

This diachronic approach is essential for environmental protection, following the philosophy somewhat implicit in the saying: We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

Furthermore, it is these same ecosystem services that provide human groups with a cultural identity through the ecological heritage received from their ancestors, a heritage that is being lost but which is also their best tool for tackling climate change.

There were  similar events organized in other partner countries, but this event (even if it is organized on a smaller scale) is important because it is held in a geographical area, the Baltic, very different from that of Atlantic or  Mediterranean areas. Moreover, because of the location of Utena and its network of contacts, this event will reach people from Latvia and Ukraine (two countries not directly covered by the project).