By Dr Rebecca Kitchen
What is Earth Day and why does it matter?
April 22nd is Earth Day. It is an annual opportunity to reflect on the environmental issues affecting the planet and to take part in activities which promote sustainability, such as tree planting, litter picks and pledges. The first Earth Day was held in the US in 1970 and involved around 20 million people. Today it is an international event, attracting over 1 billion participants – about 1 person in every 8. Each year there is a theme and this year it is the title of this blog – ‘Our Power, Our Planet’, which builds on the theme from 2025, ‘Planet vs. Plastics’ – and puts the emphasis on listening to people’s voices to drive policy change.
The power of action
This is important. Students often feel quite helpless in the face of environmental issues such as climate change and decreasing biodiversity, and suggested individual actions such as ‘turning off the lights’ or ‘more recycling’ have relatively little impact (even though they might make them feel a bit better!). However, being educated about the issues and voting for change, having your voice listened to and driving policy, are all much more powerful. One light switch can save about 100kg of CO2 per year; one vote can help to elect governments with policies that cut tens of millions of tonnes of CO2. For example, research from Canada’s 2019 election suggested that each pro-climate vote was equal to a saving of around 34 tonnes of CO2.
Discover Geography: Empowering change through education
As a geography educator, I feel quite strongly that my role isn’t to necessarily turn my students into activists. But it is absolutely my job to educate them about the issues, to support them to engage with these issues critically, and to foster within them a geography of hope. It is to empower them to be thoughtful citizens living in the world so that they can have a positive impact, whatever this might look like for them in their context. This is the position that we have taken in writing the series Discover Geography.
The theme of climate change runs strongly through the series; as well as being the focus of three distinct chapters, other topics build in references to give students both a breadth and depth of understanding. The chapter focusing on the impacts of climate change deliberately looks at planetary health, i.e. the interconnected nature of climate change, biodiversity and ocean acidification. This builds synoptic understanding and really helps students to think like geographers, to understand that climate change does not happen in isolation but has connected effects in other domains. There is a focus on actions that can be taken at different scales – international, national and individual – with the key message that action at each scale is essential. It highlights that individual actions such as becoming vegan or flying less can have a significant impact, but it also appreciates that for some people such significant lifestyle change is difficult.
Fostering a geography of hope
And throughout there is a geography of hope. This does not mean that the impacts of climate change are presented as being positive, rather that, even though it is one of the most significant international emergencies of our time, people can mitigate and adapt. It is important that our students are able to feel hopeful about the future of the world rather than feeling doom and gloom and powerlessness. We need to highlight that when people come together in a common cause, it is incredible what they can achieve.
Which brings me back to Earth Day. It is a fair criticism that one day of awareness about the environmental issues affecting the planet isn’t enough. However, if it encourages people to reflect on the power that they can have as individuals, and if Discover Geography can help them with some of that, then our job as educators is, at least in part, done.
Dr Rebecca Kitchen is author of the Collins Discover Geography series, Collins Geographical Enquiry series, and Cambridge International AS and A Level Geography series, and is Head of Professional Development at the Geographical Association.
Take a look at sample pages from Discover Geography here.
Catch up on our webinar with Rebecca on the evolving landscape of teaching geography and its role in addressing today’s global challenges here.