Analyze

Educating young people in Indigenous Ways of Knowing, and about Indigenous approaches and relationships with the natural environment, has a potential multiplicative advantage in the context of environmental justice. At Royal Military College of Canada (RMC) in particular, where learners will graduate and immediately take on leadership roles within the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF), presenting learners with harmonious, non-extractive environmental philosophies has huge potential benefits. As educators, we labour with the objective that our classroom efforts will carry over into our learners’ individual spheres of influence during their military careers and in their civilian lives, when they are deployed across Canada from coast to coast to coast. Considering the arguably poor track record of the CAF in interacting respectfully with the environment, educating officers into symbiotic environmental philosophies may serve to motivate institutional change in the CAF, the Department of National Defence, and the Government of Canada, leading to more sustainable and respectful environmental relationships. (Image: Stainless steel pans of maple sap boiling over an open fire during an urban land-based learning/outdoor classroom session with RMC learners. Kingston, Ontario, Canada, February 2023). 

Lussier, Danielle and Gregg Wade. 2023. "Environmentally sensitive education at Royal Military College of Canada." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

The authors offer a review of themes within occupational health and environmental public health surveillance over the past decade. In reviewing the history of public health surveillance, the authors highlight key acts of Congress in the 1970s that have made the development of “modern” occupational health and environmental health surveillance possible—but which also failed to develop into a cohesive and well-connected data management systems across federal agencies. Separate agencies were tasked with different data collection, management and intervention tasks in ways that fragmented the surveillance system to the point of ineffectiveness.

The authors argue that effective surveillance for occupational and environmental health demands development of a clear purpose for collecting data and having the data available to make meaningful analysis possible. They turn to the CDC’s childhood lead prevention program to demonstrate these points.

"What does the lack in prominence of environmental coverage in German TV tell us about the general state of environmental journalism in Germany? It is almost impossible to draw con- clusions based on hard facts and numbers.There is no national organization of professionals in the media dealing with this topic like the Society of Environmental Journalists in the USA, for instance.That means there are also no statistics about how many editors, reporters, or producers would count themselves as environmental journalists; nobody is keeping track. Communications scholars, when asked about the number of environmental journalists in Germany, reply with: “That’s something I would also like to know; tell me if you find out.”There is no formal educa- tion, and only a few training opportunities are offered for established writers and editors who want to specialize in the field. In recent years, some well-qualified and experienced reporters on newspapers with influential voices have departed (or been made to depart) the publishing houses or even journalism per se, leaving a noticeable gap." (Schrader 2020)

"Summarizing, environmental journalism in Germany appears to be in a transition phase. Many traditional media and press outlets are struggling to keep their business model or find a new one. And reporting on air quality, biodiversity, or the climate beyond their often-superficial implications for national politics is not high on the list of priorities. Much of the work might be shifting to online publishing in new contexts and organizations, but those are still forming and far from settled."