This page contains information relating to two Environmental Education publications: Guidelines for Developing Individual Strategies (2006) and Education for Sustainable Development – Guidelines for Action in Botanic Gardens (2004).

Guidelines for Developing Individual Strategies

Botanic gardens have an obvious and vital role to play in conserving plants but conservation cannot succeed without education. Gardens are uniquely placed to teach people about the importance of plants in our lives and in the global ecosystem. By highlighting the threats that plants and habitats face, gardens can help people look at ways in which biodiversity can be protected.

The aims of these Guidelines are to:

• highlight the role of botanic gardens in implementing the major international strategies for biodiversity conservation
• outline ways in which botanic gardens can set up and implement environmental education programmes offer guidelines to botanic garden educators on marketing, fund raising and publicity
• offer suggestions and guidelines for setting up local national and international education network

These guidelines are available in English, French, Spanish, German and Portuguese.

Education for Sustainable Development – Guidelines for Action in Botanic Gardens

While few would dispute the fact that the world is facing an environmental crisis, the last 25 years have seen a growing awareness of the complexity of the problems we face. Causal connections have however been established between economic growth and environmental degradation and the central role of education is now, more than ever, recognised.

Botanic gardens have always been important centres for environmental education and in recent years there has been a growing interest in education for sustainable development (ESD) amongst botanic garden educators. As a holistic process, ESD attempts to represent the complex and dynamic relationships between the natural and social sciences thus providing a means of addressing the environmental and development issues of the 21st century.

BGCI has produced these Guidelines to support botanic gardens in developing and implementing ESD strategies. The Guidelines provide a rationale for why botanic gardens need to be involved in ESD, highlighting the importance of botanic garden education in implementing sustainable development initiatives and offering a range of ideas for educational approaches.

Case studies are included throughout the guidelines, focusing on the excellent ESD work already going on in botanic gardens, while the final section focuses on the botanic garden as a model for sustainability, proposing a framework for conducting a green audit.

These guidelines are intended for use by those responsible for education in botanic gardens and will lead educators through the process of developing an education for sustainable development strategy for their site. In particular, addressing issues such as; who should be involved, who is the audience, what the definition of sustainability is, the foundations of ESD, learning goals, educational approaches, using themes, resources and evaluation. The role of the botanic garden as a whole as a model for sustainablity is included, with details on conducting a green audit and implementing the priciples of sustainablity throughout garden policy and practice.

These guidelines are available in English.