Methodological approaches to change consumption habits of future teachers in Barcelona, Spain: reducing their personal Ecological Footprint

Highlights

• Online calculators of personal Ecological Footprint: very useful tool for working with students.

• Impact that students' daily actions as consumers have on the Earth has been made clearly visible.

• Cross-curricular training in sustainability can change the consumption habits of students.

Abstract

Online programmes developed by Non-Governmental Organizations to measure personal Ecological Footprint (EF) offer a very useful tool for working with students in the lecture theatre. In and from the University we feel responsible for raising awareness about the interdependence between environmental problems and personal behaviour. Therefore the objective of this study was to provide integral sustainability training for 119 of our alumni from the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (UIC) in Barcelona (Spain). The students who are future Primary School teachers were trained by participating actively in a multidisciplinary educational research project which led them to change their consumption habits and made them much more aware of sustainability and their responsibility for the environment, via the great challenge of analysing and trying to reduce their EF. The students were divided into two groups A and B, according to the subject specific programme they were enrolled in (in addition to the general programme common to both groups). Although analysis of the results showed that there were changes in the consumption habits of both groups, it was only in Group B that the changes before and after training were statistically significant. This study demonstrates in an indirect way, using EF as an attitudes indicator, that transversal training in sustainability can change the consumption routines of students; this is an exploratory study that helps open a line of investigation for further work in sustainability educational programs.

Introduction

Data from the World Wildlife Fund Report (WWF, 2014) shows that in 2010 the global EF was 53% higher than the bio-capacity of the Earth and that the EF in Spain was practically the same as it was ten years ago, which leads us to surmise that citizens are not sufficiently aware of the seriousness of the situation of our planet. Environmental problems such as deforestation, global warming and over-exploiting of fisheries, among others, are not sufficiently visible for the majority of citizens to change their habits of consumption. Therefore it can affirm that people are not fully aware of, nor committed to the true concept of sustainability, nor to the need to change the way of live and to conceive the world.

According to the Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC, 2014) countries in the Southern Hemisphere, which are already in a very vulnerable situation, will experience more frequent severe droughts, floods and more endemic diseases. Reports like these are an urgent ethical wake-up call, which go beyond the affected localities themselves. In and from the University we feel responsible for flagging up the interdependence between environmental problems and personal behaviour.

After the celebration of the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development, also known as Rio+20 (United Nations -UN-, 2012) the indicators show that in the 20 years since the Conference took place in Rio de Janeiro (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development -UNCED-, 1992), the majority of the countries have not done their “homework”. The objectives specified in Agenda 21, the strategic action plan to achieve a more sustainable society in 21st Century have remained as a list of good intentions, verifying the failure of the macro-political level which is unable to take effective action following the traditional model of above-below decision making (Purkey and Smith, 1983).

From another more scientific perspective, in the Living Planet Report (WWF, 2014) the state of the Planet has been evaluated, documenting the changes in biodiversity, ecosystems and humanity's consumption of natural resources. The report announces that the state of biodiversity of the Planet is worse than ever. It provides figures such as the fact that between 1970 and 2010 we have lost more than 50% of the world's biodiversity and that the pressure exerted by humanity is in excess of what the earth can regenerate. These results indicate that sustainability in all its perspectives – ecological, economic and social- (Lozano, 2008) is still a key element required in education at all levels from infant school to higher education.

At the beginning of the 1990s, in a context in which adequate tools were not available to quantify the environmental impact that our habits of consumption had on the Earth, Rees (1992) and his advocate Wackernagel (1994) developed the EF, an integral biophysical indicator of sustainability. This indicator relates the demands of a specific lifestyle, at the national, regional, town or individual level to the ecologically productive capacity of the area (land and water) occupied; it includes measurement of the resources consumed, and of assimilation of associated waste in a defined population unit living and consuming at its current levels. The way this indicator is calculated brings a very important methodological novelty with it: consumption is transformed into (and equated with) biologically productive territory. Thus the resultant ecological balance (surplus or deficit) can be obtained by subtracting the EF (consumption) from the bio-capacity (available productive land and water) (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). The synthetic and integrative nature of the EF makes it easily comprehensible and a very valuable way of raising awareness of the environment and reflecting on the limits the sustainability of the planet places on human behaviour.

The EF can be measured at different levels, for example, in 2010 global EF was 2.6 global hectares (gha) per person. In Spain in the same year it was 4.2 (gha) per inhabitant; while each Spanish person should have a gha which is less than half of the amount they consume (WWF, 2014). There are many studies in our country about the EF of businesses and institutions, for instance those of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Jorge and Busquets, 2002) and the University of La Coruña (Soto and Pérez, 2010), among others. However, it is the development of online programmes for the calculation of personal EF by NGOs, that has provided a very useful tool for working with students in the lecture theatre. This tool also illustrates very clearly the impact an individual's lifestyle has on the Planet (Franz and Papyrakis, 2011).

The WWF report (2014) outlines specific priority actions which will reduce the EF if implemented. These actions, which have been classified in different fields, all aim to preserve natural capital, produce better and consume more wisely. Through the education given at University it is possible to have a special influence on objectives linked to responsible consumption. This is so, because for a person to be responsible about sustainability, he or she must firstly be made aware of environmental problems and their causes, as well as knowing what can be done to minimise their personal impact. He or she must also be convinced that their actions can contribute to the improvement and changes in society and not feel that these actions are insignificant and that only those in power can do anything (Kollmuss and Agyeman, 2002). We need to change mentalities, values and attitudes so that a society can be created in which everyone leads a healthy life, with basic needs covered and in which each one of us assumes a responsible attitude towards the consumption of resources and the equal access of all to these resources (Cortese, 2003). Higher Education has a key role to play in this endeavour. It bears the responsibility for supplying professional people with knowledge and understanding regarding their connexion with nature and the rest of humanity, as well as the nature and origin of the products and services they consume, the waste produced and the consequences which this has for the Planet (Murga, 2008).

In the educational context in which we find ourselves, and taking into account the fact that Europe defines generating and consolidating attitudes, knowledge and enrichment in sustainability as one of the drivers of change (European Commission, 2010), the main objective of our study was to provide a sustainability training for our students, future Primary School teachers, by their active participation in a multidisciplinary educational programme (Lozano, 2006). This programme was designed to lead them to change their consumption habits and make them much more aware of sustainability via the great challenge of analysing and trying to reduce their EF. The rest of the University community was involved in a transversal manner, through carrying out a project in which the students played an active role, both as leaders and through their participation. This double immersion made it possible for the students to become emotionally, as well as intellectually involved, which paved the way towards reflection (Sipos et al., 2008). Work was planned so that the messages about sustainability were not simply criticisms or good intentions; instead realistic educational scenarios suited to the working environment were created which were effective in really changing attitudes.