Institutional Environmental Sustainability Research at FGCU
The Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education is committed to advancing the Florida Gulf Coast University Mission of environmental sustainability. We conduct research and develop educational materials related to sustainability within the institution. For example, we believe that the Earth Charter is a valuable educational tool and an inspirational guide toward sustainability in our institutional life. Accordingly, we are developing a guide to teaching the Earth Charter at Florida Gulf Coast University.
Humane and Sustainable Food Systems at FGCU
Our first major research program is in sustainable food systems at FGCU. This research is undertaken in cooperation with The Humane Society of the United States in Washington, D.C. The Earth Charter has been particularly significant to our work with food systems. Since eating is an ethical act, the Earth Charter's ethical vision is helpful in examining the often overlooked consequences of our food choices. For example, we might ask, when preparing for a meal, do we participate in food systems that work in synergy with the life processes of Earth or in those that are exploitative of human labor and the environment?
The Center's "Food Working Group" is using Earth Charter Principles as an ethical framework for a humane and sustainable food system at Florida Gulf Coast University. Center staff have undertaken a study of the centralized process of agribusiness distribution that brings food to campus dining halls. Inspired by the Earth Charter's call for "quality of life and material sufficiency in a finite world (Earth Charter Subprinciple 7.f), the Food Working Group has also examined ways in which the University can provide students with food that is locally sourced, organically grown, fairly traded, and produced with care for animals and the environment.
In addition, we are working to prepare a guide to eating humanely and sustainably with the Earth Charter. This guide will be based on research and experience at Florida Gulf Coast University and is intended to be broadly useful among many other institutions of higher education.
Earth Charter Meal
The Center for Environmental and Sustainability Education seeks to be a creative conduit for the dissemination and practice of Earth Charter ethics. Toward this end we are developing a guide to conducting an Earth Charter Meal. The Center has used the Earth Charter Meal as a beginning exercise in linking Earth Charter ethics to sustainable living in our everyday food choices. The Earth Charter Meal demonstrates how we can eat in ways that support farmers and food system workers, protect the environment and public health, treat animals humanely, and provide food security for all.
We have used the Earth Charter Meal at Florida Gulf Coast University as an educational methodology to bring together student leaders from a diverse range of campus groups and organizations – and to unite them around the common goal of working toward a humane and sustainable campus food system.
We are partnering with The Humane Society of the United States to develop this guide for an international audience at the Tbilisi+30 conference in Ahmedabad, India, 26-28 November 2007. The conference will serve as a forum which will reformulate environmental education to support education for sustainable development (ESD) and help bridge gaps; share good practices and experiences in ESD and develop strategies for progressing ESD in the world. It will also help set the roadmap for progress through the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development.
A draft text of the Guide to Conducting and Earth Charter Meal is available for download:
Download the Guide (PDF, 120 kb)
American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment
Interim President Richard Pegnetter recently signed the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, a new initiative to move institutions of higher education to climate-neutrality. President Pegnetter has asked the Center to serve in a leadership capacity on the President's Environmental Stewardship Advisory Council management group tasked with creating institutional structures to guide the development and implementation plan to achieve climate neutrality at Florida Gulf Coast University.
