Climate Change Solutions: National Parks

Abstract

Climate change has become an increasingly pressing issue. In spite of this, climate change education continues to fall short of the urgent need. National parks are the perfect place to raise awareness and reduce climate change overall due to their 300 million visitors each year. Not only do they provide a unique public space with the opportunity to educate and inform a wide variety of people spanning socioeconomic, ethnic, religious, and geographic groups, but they also allow for a vital tactic in teaching: place-based education. Place-based education is the process of using the local environment as a starting point to teach concepts, which is perfect for National parks as they are directly involved with climate and environmental factors. To determine the best strategies for education, I will explore each of the 63 national park websites in the U.S. using place-based education. I will also interview a minimum of ten people, each from different national parks spanning various geographic regions. Professors at place-based education universities will also be contacted and interviewed. The end goal is to consolidate the best education methods to highlight the most important practices and contribute to continued improvements in methods for educating the general public regarding climate change. As it currently stands, we do not have consolidated information on practices and challenges related to education on climate change in national parks or similar politically neutral and non-academic settings. This analysis will thus try to create a framework to better understand climate change education in these settings.