Ecological Footprinting

Taking Action on the Environment – An School Action Project

Ecological footprints are an interesting individual exercise, but they can also be used as a platform for debating environmental issues. Sion Hill Dominican College, a school in south Dublin (Ireland), hosted such a project throughout 2007/8 through its development education group “Alive”. Below, Alive describes their project:

“ALIVE” SION HILL - ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT PROJECT

‘Alive’ is a development education group which operates as an extracurricular activity in our school and has been active since 1996.

The group campaigns and raises awareness about topical development issues such as:

  • Child slavery
  • Refugees
  • Debt
  • Fair Trade
  • Make Poverty History campaign
  • Millennium Development Goals

Alive also carries out fundraising activities for groups around the world with whom they have direct contact.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are crucial if the world’s poorest people are to be provided with their basic needs. It is simply their basic human right. As students living in one of the world’s richest countries (Ireland), we felt we should try to raise awareness of these goals.

We began our project by asking 80:20 Educating and Acting for a Better World (http://www.8020.ie) to work with us in exploring the MDGs and shared ideas about how we could take action and contribute in raising the profile of the Goals. As a group, we decided to focus on the 7th Millennium Development Goal (The Environment Goal):

Goal 7: Cut in half the number of people who lack clean water, improve the lives of people who live in the slums and promote policies that respect the environment.

As an An Taisce (www.antaisce.org) certified Green School (http://www.greenschoolsireland.org/), we felt that this goal was in keeping with Sion Hill’s ethos. We also chose this goal as it does not seem to get the same attention as some of the others, despite the fact that it has a major impact on most of the Goals.

The Importance of Goal 7

  • The environment provides resources, which can generate jobs to lift people out of poverty. (Goal 1)
  • A degraded environment makes it more difficult and time-consuming to collect firewood and drinking water, especially by women and children – leading to less time for literacy, education and income-generating activities. (Goals 2 & 3)
  • Unclean water and poor sanitation leads to poorer maternal health, higher child mortality and an increase in major diseases. (Goals 4, 5 & 6)
  • Global warming will be most devastating in some of the world’s poorest regions that cannot afford the necessary precautions (Goal 8)

With all of the above in mind, and considering Sion Hill’s recognition as a Green School, we decided to particularly focus on campaigning for a reduction of our school’s Ecological Footprint.

The Project – what we did: (See photo gallery)

  • We generated significant interest by putting up paintings of footprints, some with question marks, around the school.
  • We then followed this up by sticking up footprints containing questions or a challenge
  • We organized a word-hunt. We placed letters around the school which spelt out the ecological footprint website address www.myfootprint.org. Small prizes (such as a lollipop in the shape of a foot!) were given to those who could access information on that website.
  • We put up stencils with 4 key facts linked to the 7th Millennium Development Goal
  • We got each class to test and record their ecological footprint.
  • We organized a workshop with Tom Roche of Just Forests (http://www.justforests.org) looking at sustainable forestry
  • We planted a dozen trees on the school grounds
  • We organized a debate with a neighbouring school. The motion was 'Ending Poverty and Averting a Global Warming Disaster are Compatible’. We proposed the motion.
  • We worked with our Green School’s Group in setting out a number of practical steps to help to make a small contribution in the fight to avert global warming.
  • We placed a number of relevant articles on our notice board - from local and national newspapers, the book 80:20 Development in an Unequal World, The New Internationalist magazine, information from the Stern Report on Climate Change, facts dealing with the EU 15 Greenhouse Gas Emissions

What we learned

Sharing our ideas with the school:

  • We discovered that staggering the footprint posters over two phases – first bare and subsequently together with challenges and questions over them – generated a great deal of discussion and interest throughout the school.
  • It was good to get the entire school actively involved in the project. Encouraging different classes to calculate their ecological footprint was a simple yet effective way of raising awareness of the issues. Many students were surprised to find out how much higher their footprint is compared to the global average, and they subsequently were interested in finding out how to reduce their individual ecological footprints.
  • Students took an ecological footprint quiz (on www.myfootprint.org) , which, besides expressing their individual ecological footprints in hectares, it also showed the students just how many ‘planet Earths’ would be needed if everyone in the world consumed as much as they do.
  • We learned just how important it is to present the key facts in a stimulating way in order to stimulate discussion. Facts and information tend to get lost unless they are put into a relevant context.
  • The debate we organised helped both sides discover the issues surrounding MDG 7 and the link between development and ecology. Although we disagreed on certain points, listening to the various viewpoints helped us appreciate just how layered the issue really is.
  • We recognised how simple ‘taking action’ could be. Organising a tree-planting school activity was not only fun, but also a simple way of creating awareness while making a tangible difference for years to come.

Benefits for the group:

  • The campaign process taught us about the importance of planning and having a working strategy to follow throughout the campaign. We realised that being organised and structured helped us to raise awareness amongst our fellow students.
  • Researching for our debate was enjoyable as well as informative. We learned a lot from the initial organising stages right through to the debate itself.
  • The entire campaign process was a team building exercise in itself. We shared out all the tasks, each choosing those best suited to their individual strengths - some of us were better at photography or art work, others felt that their strengths lay in debating, while others were good at collecting and presenting information.
  • Although we divided the work according to our individual strengths, we constantly shared ideas and consulted each other before setting out and doing any of the work. Besides learning about the MDGs, ecological footprints and development in general, we also learnt a great deal from each other.
  • The ecological footprint campaign also proved to be a great opportunity to work with our Green Schools group. This helped make our message more effective. Sion Hill is currently working towards obtaining its second Green Flag for its energy use – the Alive group’s Ecological Footprint project helped draw more attention to energy use. Some students are now involved in both Alive and the Green schools groups.

In Conclusion

The pressure that we, in the developed world, are putting on the environment is extreme. It is already killing humans, other animals and ecosystems. Unless we lift that pressure the damage will increase. Individually and collectively we are responsible for preventing this damage

Within our school communities we can generate awareness of the problem and its solutions. In Dominican College Sion Hill we have begun to do this. We plan to do more. We urge other schools to join us in learning about our ecological footprints and making those footprints smaller.

In saving the environment for present and future generations, actions speak louder than words.

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