Global Partnerships For Climate Education

In the context of the climate and nature emergency, the internationalization of our university is necessary for two reasons: the forest needs a place at the tables where decisions about the future of the planet and of Indigenous Peoples are being made. Indigenous Peoples who are part of the forest need their voice heard and their rights upheld in climate efforts of mitigation, adaptation and coordination.

We are seeking partnerships with Western institutions because we know that important decisions will involve Western researchers versed in Western sciences and technologies. We believe there is much to be gained in bringing together Indigenous and Western expertise when we meet in equality and good faith for the benefit of the planet, to move beyond simplistic solutions grounded in greed, paternalistic and tokenistic engagements grounded in arrogance, and narrow and limited ethnocentric ideals of change, justice and sustainability grounded in ignorance.

Through the wisdom of the forest, we have the means to redirect human intelligence and prosperity towards a path of emotional serenity, relational maturity, intellectual discernment and intergenerational responsibility (SMDR compass) and we are putting this knowledge on the table.

The Yuxibu/quantum wisdom of the forest can help everyone to deactivate the indifference that has brought us to the brink of global disaster, and to activate a form of responsibility that goes beyond self-interest.

To access this knowledge, people need to be ready to listen – and not with the ears in our heads, but with our guts, our hearts and our whole collective bodies. This requires humility, generosity, compassion, as well as practice, patience and discipline.

We have much to offer in terms of educational approaches that foreground respect and reciprocity and that can equip learners to show up in the world with reverence and respect towards the living planet we are part of.

We are not interested in selling our knowledge to corporate interests, but to make it available to everyone, first to those who need it the most. We will not trade our knowledge and we will not let it be stolen or abused either. In our knowledge mobilization efforts, we expect reciprocity and accountability towards the forest itself, and all its beings.

In partnership with the Gesturing Towards Decolonial Futures (GTDF) Arts/Research Collective, the Teia das 5 Curas network, and the support of the Musagetes Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, we have developed an approach to climate education that is critically-engaged, complexity-informed, contextually-relevant and socially and ecologically accountable. We have also developed a collection of climate education resources that are available here.