19. Stewardship - Benefits and Knowledge

Le rapport sur l’état de l’environnement 2022 est un document technique destiné à un usage interne. Il n’est disponible qu’en anglais.

 

Haut de la page

Introduction

 

North Nahanni River, NWT. - GNWT

People in the North and around the world are facing unprecedented changes and pressures on the natural environments they live within. To ensure informed decisions can be made on complex environmental issues, residents need to be environmentally aware. Ensuring residents have access to information on environmental issues is becoming increasingly challenging given the breadth and complexity of issues. Changing demographics, advancing technology and global perspectives all compete for our attention and awareness.

The NWT faces additional challenges as many people are spending less time on the land and fewer are engaged in a range of traditional activities. Supporting and sharing environmental knowledge, on the land skills, culture and traditional lifestyles of Indigenous peoples is very important to our environmental, economic, biological, cultural, and social well being.

Measuring the level of environmental awareness of NWT residents is challenging. The availability of opportunities to experience the natural environment and learn traditional land based skills can be measured as an indicator of the potential for increased environmental awareness. Similarly, the availability of environmental programs that help us reduce the impacts of human actions on the environment can also be measured as a proxy for environmental awareness.

 

Haut de la page

19.1 Trends in Environmental Education Opportunities for Youth

Environmental awareness can be positively influenced by exposure to environmental knowledge. The availability of environmental education opportunities for youth can be measured in part by the number of environmental programs offered, or by the number of participants in these programs.

Ryan Gregory dissects a fish for youth at ENR and Ecology North’s Rivers to Oceans Day.

This indicator tracks many, but not all, formal and informal environmental education opportunities offered to youth in the NWT. These opportunities may involve formal planning among organizations, communities, schools and others who are actively engaged in the promotion of environmental education. They may also involve non-curriculum-based learning that occurs in a range of informal settings, such as libraries, park interpretive programs, murals, guiding programs, on the land experiences.

This indicator was prepared by the Government of the Northwest Territories (GNWT), Department of Climate Change (ECC). Information on current environmental and cultural camps was solicited from within ECC. Additional information on other opportunities was collected from other organizations and agencies involved in education and the environment, and the Internet. This list of environmental education opportunities is not an exhaustive list and will be updated.

 

NWT Focus

Environmental literacy is the capacity for humans to understand connections between themselves and their environment. Awareness, understanding and concern for those connections contributes to informed decision making which is required for dealing with complex environmental issues. The provision of a wide range of environmental education opportunities for youth and adults in the NWT supports an environmentally literate population.

Traditional on-the-land knowledge and skills are a critical foundation of the social and cultural heritage of the NWT. Canada’s North is unique because of the proportion of residents still involved in traditional and on the land activities. Involving youth in activities that help them become aware of natural processes and acquire and enhance on the land skills is important to support current and future generations to maintain a strong connection to the land.

Formal education opportunities are not the only way youth gain environmental knowledge in the North. Parents, extended families and communities have an important role to play in transferring knowledge about the environment, in particular traditional and local Indigenous knowledge. Other education opportunities, as measured here, are offered in addition to these important family and community-based opportunities.

 

Current View: status and trend

Formal Environmental Education

Formal environmental education opportunities offered in the NWT are designed for primary to college-level students. Many provide a rich mix of opportunities to learn local and traditional Indigenous and scientific knowledge, both within communities and on the land. Many of these programs are coordinated within regions and designed with community input to fit regional needs (Table 1).

Environment/cultural camps are offered by Indigenous Governments and Indigenous Organizations, the GNWT, District Education Councils and individual schools; Renewable Resource Boards (RRBs) in all NWT regions, academic institutions like Dechinta, Aurora College and a number of Canadian universities, and, through cooperative efforts of different organizations.

Informal Environmental Education

Efforts to educate go beyond traditional curriculum-based programming and formal education venues, such as schools, camps and workshops. Informal education does not replace formal learning; rather, it provides other ways of learning that complement the formal education process. These approaches are often inquiry-based which allows students to explore what interests them. In some cases, trained facilitators are present to help answer questions and start conversations not constrained by a curriculum. In other cases, learners lead their own process, for example, by reading a book, talking to experts or through online learning.

Each year, ECC is involved in a multitude of creative, innovative and informal education opportunities that are available for different group and individual participation (Table 1). These range from animal calling contests at festivals to library displays during special environmental days and/or weeks.

Environmental Publications

While the GNWT and other partners offer many different programs, providing staff to deliver in-person programming can be a challenge in many communities, given limits in local capacity and expertise, the various partners involved in delivery are already often at capacity. There are a number of environmental publications ECC and its partners develop and distribute that can help provide education opportunities to help fill gaps.

Table 1. Some examples of environmental education opportunities available in the NWT. Note: Due to COVID-19, many of the in-person activities were postponed during 2020 and 2021.

 

Looking around

There are a large and diverse array of environmental and on the land based education and awareness opportunities for youth, both nationally and internationally. With respect to the NWT there can on occasion be gaps between the priorities of these larger programs and the local cultural, and educational needs of specific communities. There is a need to provide adaptation, bridging initiatives or complimentary programming to suit the needs of communities

Looking forward

Organizing formal on-the-land learning experiences for children and young adults is challenging but also very rewarding. Educators, communities, organizations and agencies are noting increased interest in traditional skills, on the land activities and environmental knowledge, in part influenced by these educational opportunities. Participant evaluations provide important feedback and input to identify areas for improvements and offer insights for program changes to enhance the learning outcomes of these initiatives. 

This is not a comprehensive inventory of all formal field opportunities and educational camps across the NWT, and there are other ongoing or new environment, culture and on the land camps put on by a range of organizations. In future updates on this indicator, information from Indigenous governments, Indigenous organizations, regional Education Districts, renewable resource boards, co-management partners, and other organizations and agencies will be included.

In addition to the programs identified here, public education specialists, renewable resource officers, biologists and other environmental experts from the GNWT offer classroom visits and special presentations to schools and organizations. They are on varied topics and represent the diversity of environmental interests in the NWT, ranging from caribou habitat for Sparks and Brownie groups to career fairs in high schools. These visits and presentations are done on request but are not formally tracked. A wide range of informal environmental education opportunities and publications are also occurring throughout the NWT to compliment more formal learning.

 

Find out more

For further information on many of the programs listed in Table 1 visit:

 

 

Haut de la page