BNE konkret: FMNR

ESD in practice: FMNR is the name of the educational project with which the ZLB aims to further strengthen the integration of the cross-cutting issue of education for sustainable development (ESD) into educational processes. Participants include six teacher training departments at the University of Kassel, eight schools, the city of Kassel, extracurricular educators in the region and the Bad Vilbel study seminar.

Using FMNR as an example, the project participants explore the ecological, socio-economic, cultural and political implications of reforestation methods in their local and global context and make them usable for subject-related and interdisciplinary teaching in schools and teacher training. To this end, students, trainee teachers, teachers and teacher trainers work together with children and young people to develop educational concepts and teaching/learning materials for subjects such as politics and economics, geography, French, mathematics, religion, biology and general studies. To ensure that the results adequately reflect the complexity of global sustainable development, they consult with teachers, activists and scientists who are rooted in Africa or have a high level of professional expertise on the topic.

Farmer Managed Natural Regeneration (FMNR) is a method of re-vegetating depleted and deforested soils that does not require the planting of trees. In the meantime, parts of the Sahel region have been successfully re-vegetated and over 240 million trees have grown back in the African state of Niger alone. The method is now used in more than 25 countries around the world. It helps to neutralize the climate, reduce famine and water shortages, increase biodiversity and develop new forms of sustainable economic activity. At the same time, its application as a principle promotes the empowerment of millions of people in both the Global South and the Global North. For more information on FMNR click here.

The ESD education project is scheduled to run for one year. At the kick-off event on May 2, 2023, the project participants - around 100 people - learned about FMNR first-hand: together with Tony Rinaudo, the Kenyan environmental activist Irene Ojuok and relevant scientists from the Right Livelihood College, they generated initial ideas for teaching concepts and materials.

The preliminary work results were discussed and further developed at another conference in fall 2023 with the aforementioned experts. An intensive discussion with Prof. Dr. Vanessa Andreotti (University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada), one of the world's leading academics in the field of Critical Global Citizenship Education, provided the project participants with further valuable suggestions for revising the concepts and teaching/learning materials.

We will inform you about the publication of the developed concepts and teaching-learning materials planned for early summer 2024 on this page.