Enabling students to face the environmental crisis and climate change with resilience: inclusive environmental and sustainability education approaches and strategies for coping with eco-anxiety

Abstract

As university educators, we should educate students to be able to address the challenges presented by the environmental crisis and climate change by being responsible eco-citizens, and creative, solution-oriented thinkers. We have a responsibility to create inclusive environmental and sustainability educational (ESE) approaches that are enabling, emotionally supportive, engaging, and praxis-oriented. Herein we describe ESE approaches that are considered beneficial and provide specific strategies to cope with eco-anxiety, to help students develop emotional resilience in the face of this crisis. We then explore aspects that are mutually complementary between inclusive ESE and the proposed coping strategies for eco-anxiety followed by a discussion on the implications for postsecondary teaching and learning.