Editorial: De-distancing ‘us’ from the rest of Earth: ecopedagogical analysis and approaches

Abstract

This editorial is an ecopedagogical reading of a double special issue on environmental justice and education. Discussed is how the different scholars argued, in diverse and coinciding ways, how environmental teaching can, and must, de-distance environmental violence upon the othered (often coinciding with socio-historical oppressions) and the rest of Nature. Environmental teaching to identify, deconstruct and then disrupt ideological distancing “their” socio-environmental oppressions from “our” wellbeing and distancing the world (i.e., all humans and human populations) from the rest of Earth is essential in environmental pedagogies. Ecopedagogy is grounded for praxis emergent from such disruptive de-distancing. This editorial argues with the scholars through the following themes: de-distancing humanization and planetarization to counter fatalism, de-distancing “development” and citizenships (i.e., local-to-planetary citizenship spheres) with the othered and the rest of Nature, and de-distancing world-Earth throughout all schooling levels.