Biodiversity and why it matters
Biodiversity is a key element in sustainability of our planet and our people. Due to extensive and unsustainable use of natural resources and significant environmental impacts of human activity on the planet, the threat to biodiversity across the globe is great.
In the Arctic the threat to its ecosystems, brought by climate change and rapidly increasing human activity in the region, is even greater. These ecosystems are important globally and effects of the crisis are felt not only by Arctic communities reliant on these ecosystems but also worldwide.
Why biodiversity education is important
According to Biodiversity Education Network, one of the barriers to implementation of biodiversity protection efforts is lack of public education on biodiversity themes, often limited to specialised courses such as biology and environmental sciences. Therefore, the need for cross-disciplinary and collaborative biodiversity learning is recognised.
For example, invasive alien species are one of the top drivers of biodiversity loss in the Arctic and sub-Arctic areas. For effective detection, monitoring, prevention and management of invasive species, engagement and collaboration between stakeholders, local communities, indigenous people and tourists is essential. Management actions also benefit from sharing and collaboration across knowledge systems.
Mainstreaming and integrating biodiversity education across fields requires diverse forms of co-operation in educational planning and delivery across disciplinary and institutional boundaries, and education levels.
How can COIL pedagogy contribute?
COIL provides a free, accessible and cross-disciplinary platform for biodiversity education, among other sustainability themes. Students on a variety of courses can collaborate with students from other countries and cultures on biodiversity topics, increasing awareness and understanding of biodiversity issues, and collaboratively seek solutions.
As a cross-cultural pedagogy, COIL enables understanding wider impacts of localised biodiversity issues and learning from different communities across the continents about these impacts and ways of mitigating those. COIL can also act as enabler of mainstreaming biodiversity education, reaching to institutions, where this topic is not formally taught or researched.
By collaborating with biodiversity-experienced institutions on COIL projects, other organisations can expand their knowledge and get access to materials during their project, that can benefit students from other disciplines. Many organisations, such as Biodiversity Education Network in Finland, have created a variety of open access resources, that can be used to design and deliver COIL projects.