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United Nations were keen because the core of the program is the
sustainable development goals. We’ll be working with the UN to
promote, develop and deploy those in Australia. We’re also looking
at the teaching benefits of integrating economics, geography and
science into a program for an outcome that’s good for Australia.
What support will students receive while they’re developing their
plans?
That’s been an important component. We’re linking up universities
with the schools in each of the eco-zones. For instance, in northern
Queensland, James Cook University will be linking in with the
[participating] school in that area. The universities will provide expert
research and development support for each region and nationally [so
that we’re not] looking at re-inventing the wheel. I found when we
were writing the book, Plan for the Planet, most of the answers, most
of the information, most of the resources were [already around]. It was
a matter of pulling them together and organising.
The schools will work with their regional university to identify
what’s already happening and pull all that together into a
framework that can be integrated into a national plan.
We’re also talking with the United Nations youth organisation to
plug that national team into each of the schools so they’ll have expert
support on the sustainable development goals. We’re looking at
business management expertise as well, either from consultancies, or
potentially from the business schools in the universities.
How much understanding do these students generally have about
issues surrounding climate change and sustainability before they
join the program?
We’ve done much work over the last couple of months to test
the viability of this approach with students, with schools, with
the universities.
I was working about two weeks ago with more than 60 Year 9
students at what turned into a two-hour workshop. I gave them
an overview of the types of things we’d approached for Plan for
the Planet and then asked them to talk about the challenges they
thought we were facing on the planet. They [mentioned] probably
90 per cent of those, in a five-minute discussion. In 10 minutes,
they’d covered all of the global issues.
It was clear that even at Year 9, students have a good handle on
what we’re facing. The second challenge was how those issues
were interrelated and it was clear after another 10 minutes of
discussion, they had a good handle on the fact that you couldn’t
just tackle one or the other. I talked a litt