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'Biodiversity in Schools' aims to teach young people across Ireland about biodiversity and get them actively involved in nature conservation. It's great for nature and it's great for children; boosting their eco-literacy and both their mental and physical health too. Our big idea is to engage with Ireland's almost 1 million school children and 67,000 teachers to create a patchwork of around 4,000 mini nature reserves!
We created the initiative as we felt the best way to ensure a more environmentally-friendly future for Ireland was to engage with the next generation. While there is outstanding environmental work being done in schools across the country, time pressures often push nature to the bottom of the pile. We aim to make it easier for schools to teach children about this important topic. Also, with young people's increasing access to technology there is a growing detachment from the outdoors and a consequent nature-deficit. To reset the balance of indoors and outdoors, 'screen-time' and 'real-time', it is essential that we encourage children to engage with the natural world. And it's not just about the children, there's serious nature conservation to be done too! Sadly, since 1970 over half of the earth’s wildlife populations have been lost; 68% of all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish are now gone. Every single day our planet's population grows by 246,015 people. Every 3 seconds a forest the size of Croke Park is lost. The pressures we are putting on nature are immense and the losses to date are a very sad reflection on our society. In recognition of this, in May 2019 the Irish government declared a Biodiversity and Climate Change Emergency. It is a tough task ahead but young people across Ireland and the world are a beacon of hope as they continue to take to the streets in the School Strike for Climate, standing up for the environment. Unfortunately Ireland has had an extremely poor record of biodiversity conservation for decades and nature education on a national level has remained massively under-developed and second rate at best. It is our ambition to encourage and provide nature education that the children of Ireland deserve and that we as a country can be proud of on an international level. We need to do our absolute best to stop biodiversity loss or future generations will pay the price, as David Attenborough so concisely and accurately points out: "Right now, we're facing a man-made disaster of global scale... If we don't take action, the collapse of our civilizations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon." David Attenborough, December 2018 |
what if our schools
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Schools
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Teachers
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Students
we could create a nationwide nature reserve patchwork of over...
ACRES
or
Croke Parks
References
Department of Education and Skills (2019) Key Statistics
IPCC (2018) Special Report Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C
Irish Times (2018) David Attenborough: Mass extinction is ‘on the horizon’.
Population Reference Bureau (2016) World Population Data Sheet
World Wildlife Fund (2017) Deforestation
World Wildlife Fund (2018) Living Planet Report
World Wildlife Fund (2020) Living Planet Report
Department of Education and Skills (2019) Key Statistics
IPCC (2018) Special Report Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C
Irish Times (2018) David Attenborough: Mass extinction is ‘on the horizon’.
Population Reference Bureau (2016) World Population Data Sheet
World Wildlife Fund (2017) Deforestation
World Wildlife Fund (2018) Living Planet Report
World Wildlife Fund (2020) Living Planet Report
