In October 2019 the Australian Association for Environmental Education, NSW Chapter (AAEE NSW) declared a climate emergency.
In response to the climate emergency all of AAEE NSW business, activities and decision-making will now address the climate emergency.
OUR MISSION
Support and collaborate with environmental educators and climate advocates to communicate a hopeful and inspiring vision of the regenerative future our global community can create.
OUR GOALS
- Support and learn with our members and networks to help their communities believe it is worth doing something about the climate emergency, so they are mobilised to take action.
- Acknowledge our climate grief with fortitude and hope, to focus upon our climate emergency plan.
- Support our First Nations peoples climate justice movement and learn from their insights and approach to healing by listening and valuing their sharing of knowledge.
- Collaborate with our partners and create new alliances to increase the scale and pace of our own and others’ climate emergency responses.
- Lead with courage and humility and use our voice and leadership to grow NSW and Australia’s climate emergency response.
- Seek new collaborations with community, industry, non-government and government organisations to share our resources, skills and networks for climate action.
- Heal by acting on our climate emergency plan collectively and restore our wellbeing through our connection with nature.
THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY
We acknowledge that time is running out to solve the climate crisis and what we collectively do this decade as citizens, communities, businesses and governments will determine humanity’s future.
This decade is our last chance to limit global heating to 1.5 degrees to prevent further irreversible climate tipping points from being reached.
These tipping points will cause runaway catastrophic global heating that will make large areas of our planet uninhabitable for our current human population.
The western world has benefited the most from the development achieved by the burning of fossil fuels, yet it is our sisters and brothers in the global south who are suffering most from climate change.
This inequity is already causing Australians in the Torres Strait and our Pacific neighbours to suffer the loss of their homelands due to rising sea levels and other climate disruptions.
GLOBAL COMMUNITY OF HOPE
We join the millions of people around our planet who are working to prevent dangerous climate change and regenerate the natural systems on which all life depends.
We draw hope and optimism from knowing that we are part of this global community who care and are taking action to rapidly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and drawdown carbon from our atmosphere.
COME TOGETHER FOR OUR FUTURE
We will enact our climate emergency response by implementing the actions in the Australian Association for Environmental Education, NSW Chapter Climate Emergency Response Plan.
If our climate emergency response aligns with your ambitions, please get in touch.
By working together with courage, we can increase Australia’s ambition to solve the climate crisis.
Our climate emergency response has been guided by the following resources:
- Project Drawdown– the world’s leading resource for climate solutions, founded by Paul Hawken
- Climate Reality Check 2020– the report by Breakthrough, the Australian National Centre for Climate Restoration
- Global Optimism– the organisation founded by Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac- and their book The Future We Choose and podcast Outrage + Optimism
- TED Countdown talk by Johan Rockstrom 10 years to transform the future of humanity- or destabilise the planet
- Our 10 Communication Tips to Change the Climate Story…and be a climate leader during your day job
- Our Climate Crisis Resources Hub