PI: Maria Helena Saari

Multispecies Climate Change Education is an interdisciplinary research project exploring how multispecies perspectives could be better integrated into different facets of environmental education, including in disaster risk reduction and climate change education. Through a multidimensional approach that includes policy mapping and development of animal-inclusive pedagogies, the project explores how education could better attend to including multispecies perspectives in our understandings and analysis of climate change and sustainability. The project works in collaboration with the "Liminal Becomings: reframing human-animal relations in natural disasters". [CEECIND/02719/2017]", and is made possible with mobility funding granted by the Biodiverse Anthropocenes Research Program of the University of Oulu.

As part of the project, a pilot multispecies climate change education workshop is carried out in collaboration with a public school in Lisbon, where students explore diverse climate change events in Portugal from multispecies perspectives, meaning taking into consideration the interests of humans, animals, and nature. Animals are among the most vulnerable populations affected by the events, but are often overlooked in media coverage, public debate, policy, and emergency responses. Using a humane education-inspired pedagogical approach, the workshop aims to explore the causes and effects of natural disasters and specific environmental events in Portugal and explores possible ways of sustainable coexistence between humans and animals in the aftermath of disasters. Other educational activities of the project include exploring human-animal relations from diverse perspectives, including in relation to cultural practices and food systems.