Environmental education within the Regional Ruhr Biodiversity Strategy

The Ruhr Regional Biodiversity Strategy of the Ruhr Metropolitan Area in Germany includes environmental education as one of its nine focus areas. The aim of the Strategy's activities in this field is to establish environmental education programs in all communities and for all age groups. Another goal is to establish a consistent public relations work to raise awareness among citizens, politicians and administrations for the protection of species and biotopes. The Ruhr Regional Biodiversity Strategy was adopted in June 2022 by the assembly of the Ruhr Regional Association (RVR). The overall aim of the Strategy is to formulate regionally coordinated goals and measures for the protection and enhancement of biodiversity and to guide future measures in the Ruhrgebiet (Ruhr area), Europe's third-largest conurbation, with more than of 4,438 km² and over 5 million people living in 53 cities and municipalities.

Overview

Type of instrument:

Knowledge, communication and innovation instruments›Communication/awareness raising

Challenges addressed

Social cohesion
Nature appropriation / stewardship
Reconnection to the biosphere / environmental education

Consideration of nature-based solutions:

In the structurally weak and sparsely greened urban districts of the Ruhr area, many children and young people have hardly any contact with the local nature. The goal of environmental education as set out in the Strategy and in the dedicated position paper is therefore to bring people of all age groups closer to the local nature. This includes imparting knowledge as well as experiencing nature with all senses. The Strategy specifies a number of further goals in relation to awareness-raising. These include the establishment of a consistent actions to raise awareness among citizens, politicians, administrations for the protection of species and biotopes. It also foreseen to increase the deployment and support of rangers and guards in protected areas. Another goal is to establish a comprehensive network of environmental education centers. Of high priority is also the integration of the importance of species and biotope protection, including the connections to human health, into the training and studies of planners, urban planners, architects, as well as educators, teachers, and farmers and foresters. The Strategy foresees that the content for these programs is designed individually for each target group. For each of these goals, specific measures for implementation are described in the position paper

Targeted (peri-)urban areas:

Parks and (semi)natural urban green areas

Allotments, community gardens or agricultural areas

External building greens

Urban green space connected to grey infrastructure

Good practice characteristics:

Support multifunctional NBS

Sustainable in the long-term

Potential to be replicated / upscaled

Inclusivity

Governance

Government body/bodies

Initiating body:

Regionalverband Ruhr (RVR)

Instrument design:

Details about how the instrument was designed:

The Strategy has been funded by the state government since mid-2020 as a sub-project of the "Green Infrastructure Offensive 2030" of the Ruhr Regional Association (RVR) on the basis of a project proposal. The Strategy was developed by a consortium of the Biological Station Westliches Ruhrgebiet (BSWR) as well as the University of Duisburg-Essen and the Ruhr University Bochum under the leadership of the Regionalverband Ruhr (RVR). The Regional Biodiversity Strategy Ruhr Area is the result of an intensive analysis and discussion process lasting more than two years. The development of the strategy was divided into four steps. First, the position papers were developed for nine fields of action, highlighting the fundamental problems, development opportunities, proposed solutions and examples of best practice. They represent the content-related and structural concept of the biodiversity strategy. Based on this, the Regional Biodiversity Strategy Ruhr Area was developed in close exchange between the project team, the municipalities, NGOs and specialized authorities. Experts, NGOs and interested citizens participated in over 10 workshops (over 200 participants). Subsequently, political consultations and decisions on the biodiversity strategy took place in the region, in particular in the RVR association assembly. The resulting biodiversity strategy will be implemented by different actors and a set of measures in the region.

Involvement of non-governmental actors:

Public sector institution (e.g. school or hospital)

Researchers, university

Citizens or community groups / NGOs

Type of actor involvement:

Expert task force consultation

Civil society consultation through e.g. workshops, surveys

Instrument implementation:

Type of involvement:

The strategy promotes environmental education through a set of measures, all aiming at increasing the environmental awareness and stewardship of citizens, children and specific stakeholder groups. At the core of these participatory activities lies the establishment of environmental education centers throughout the Ruhr area. The position paper details how these centers should be set up (e.g. in terms of requirements of the facility). Concrete additional participatory measures mentioned in the Strategy include implementing nature experience areas ("Naturerfahrungsräume") for citizens as well as organising excursions, social media activities and information campaigns, competitions, plant-exchange-formats and expert exchanges. In addition, the creation of citizen science projects ("Biodiversity Days" or comparable events such as BioBlitz events that take place worldwide) and community gardens as well as participation offers in the design of parks are foreseen.

Type of non-governmental actors involved:

Citizen councils or consultation for co-planning (e.g. workshops, surveys)

Co-design of NBS, implemented by government

Implementation of NBS (e.g. with government funds)

Citizen monitoring and review

Targeted actors:

Public sector institution (e.g. school or hospital)

Private: household, real estate developer, business , financial

Researchers, university

Citizens or community groups (CBOs), NGOs

How the instrument fits within the wider policy framework:

The awareness raising and environmental education activities are embedded in the Regional Biodiversity Strategy, which was derived from overarching biodiversity strategies of the EU, the federal government and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia. The EU's Biodiversity Strategy calls for the integration of biodiversity and ecosystem relevance into school, university and vocational education. The German national government has set more general goals and thus focuses on an increased appreciation of nature including nature-friendly behavior of visitors. In addition, within the educational system, it is aimed to expand the educational and experiential offers at suitable teaching centers. The state of Northine-Westfalia, in turn, has set short-, medium- and long-term goals, e.g., the establishment of at least two nature experience areas per county or city. Biological diversity further should be integrated into the core curricula of all types of schools and ecology should be integrated into university studies. Following on from this, the NRW state government has developed the state strategy "Landesstrategie BNE - Zukunft Lernen in NRW 2016-2020", which aims at a structural anchoring environmental topics in educational practice. Education for sustainable development (ESD) is seen as paving the way for a transformation of society, politics, communities and the economy in North Rhine-Westphalia in the sense of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals of the UN Agenda 2030. Against this background, the Ministry of Environment of North Rhine-Westphalia has established a state-wide ESD network in the field of extracurricular environmental education, in which 25 regionally significant environmental education institutions are currently involved. With financial support from the state budget, they perform concrete educational and networking work as so-called ESD regional centers on site in their catchment areas for a wide range of target groups. The NRW ESD Agency, as the central specialist and coordinating body, ensures the overarching cooperation of the regional centers in the state network and works towards further qualitative development of the centers' offerings, including by means of ESD certification. Following the establishment phase of the network structure in the last five years, the priority in the future will be to consolidate and stabilize the network at the level it has now reached.

Financing

Sources of funding:

Public regional budget

Budget:

Unknown

Details about instrument financing:

The overall Regional Biodiversity Strategy Ruhr Area has been funded by the state government.

Monitoring, evaluation and impacts

Is a monitoring framework in place?:

Yes

The position paper describes how the intended impact of environmental education activities can be measured through a differentiated methodology for monitoring & evaluation. In ongoing projects, indicators and monitoring programs are currently being developed. As a first step, an evaluation of the learning successes is carried out by a targeted questioning of the participants of the environmental education projects by the project executing agency. The education centers could interview the teachers about the behavior, progress and learning success of the students. In a further step, uniform and adapted questionnaires will be developed, e.g. by the universities of Duisburg-Essen (didactics of biology) and Bochum (didactics of geography). These can then be used by all partners for environmental education projects throughout the Ruhr region. In addition, the evaluation of the results can also take place within the framework of university theses. For a target-oriented and analyzable evaluation, concretely observable and measurable characteristics and behaviors must be used as indicators. The indicators can be measured quantitatively and qualitatively and their assessment requires coordination between all actors and the ESD centers. The position paper also provides a selection of potential qualitative and quantitative indicators, such as the number of environmental education facilities.

Did an evaluation take place?:

Yes

See Monitoring section.

Achieved outcomes and impacts:

As the Strategy was only adopted in 2022, there are no outcomes or impacts available yet.

Success factors and lessons learned:

The central feature of the environmental education activities foreseen in the Strategy is that it is based on an coordinated and interconnected approach, not only for one individual city, but for the Ruhr region as such. The activities have been defined taking into account linkages to strategic environmental education approaches at the level of North Rhine-Westphalia to ensure the coherence and complementarity of activities. Furthermore, one of the key elements of this strategy is to foster broad participation, which already started in the design phase of the strategy and includes a wide range of innovative participation processes during its implementation. This involves, inter alia, the initiation and establishment of citizen science projects ("Biodiversity Days" or comparable events such as BioBlitz events that take place worldwide), participation offers in the design of parks, nature experience spaces, etc. Whether the implementation of the activities will be a success remains to be seen. However, with complimentary and differentiated actions for different age and target groups, the environmental education stream of the Strategy has large potential to enhance awareness on biodiversity and restoration issues in the Ruhr area.

Sources and further information

References

List of references:

Netwerk Urbane Biodiversität (2022). Regionale Biodiversitätsstrategie Ruhrgebiet. Available at: https://urbane-biodiversitaet.de/biodiversitaetsstrategie.html (Accessed: 30 August 2022)

Wikipedia (2022). Ruhr. Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruhr (Accessed: 30 August 2022)

Keil, P.; Hering, D. & Bothmann, F. (Hrsg.) (2022). Regionale Biodiversitätsstrategie Ruhrgebiet - Netzwerk Urbane Biodiversität Ruhrgebiet. Oberhausen, Essen. 92 S.

Keil, P.; Hering, D.; Schmitt, T. & Zepp, H. (Hrsg.) (2021) Positionen zu einer Regionalen Biodiversitätsstrategie Ruhrgebiet - Studie im Rahmen der Offensive Grüne Infrastruktur 2030. Oberhausen, Essen und Bochum. 228 S.

Photos

@T. Thejus