Phoebe Godfrey, Laina Sanders-Hancock, Juan Pablo Yepes Tobón, Victoria Zucco, Desalegn Yayeh Ayal, Ulisses M. Azeiteiro, Henri-Count Evans, Inga Grinfelde, José Baltazar Salgueirinho Osório de Andrade Guerra, Jasenka Gajdoš Kljusurić, João Carlos Correia Leitão, Chunlan Li, Newton R. Matandirotya, Bethwel Mutai, Gustavo J. Nagy, Thierry Razanakoto, Jame Schaefer, Goran Trbic, Roberto Ariel Abeldaño Zuñiga, Sane Pashane Zuka, Charles Galdies, Adriana Consorte-McCrea, Francisco Platas, Mittul Vahanvati, Pedi Obani, Safwatun Nida, Lucas Gabriel Zanon, Mayara Régia Sousa de Melo, Alison Glover, Roman Vakulchuk
Since 1995 when the first Conference of the Parties (COP) was held in Berlin, CO2 emissions have increased by 60%. One way to make sense of this irony is that we have focused mainly on technology, as opposed to changing cultural ideologies, and thus individual behaviors/collective practices. Additionally, the areas of emphasis for university research, including those listed for this edited volume (such as “carbon storage” or “using artificial intelligence to support climate forecasts”), are in STEM. In fact, when it comes to research funding from 1990 to 2018, only 0.12% was spent on the social science of climate mitigation (Overland and Savacool, Energy Res Soc Sci 62:101349, 2020). This is even more ironic given that the essential role of indigenous knowledge (IK) (Hernandez et al., PLoS Clim 1(5):e0000032, 2022), combined with other cultural shifts (Lazrus et al., PLoS Clim 1(2):e0000005, 2022), are being increasingly recognized. This chapter therefore critically analyzes ways I, Phoebe, an environmental sociologist, teach and practice aspects of IK (Jacobs, Teaching truly: a curriculum to indigenize mainstream education. Peter Lang, New York, 2013), mindfulness (Berila, Integrating mindfulness into anti-oppression pedagogy: social justice in higher education, 2nd ed. Routledge, London, 2023), radical compassion (Brach 2019), and what I have referred to as intersectional compassionate pedagogy (ICP) (Godfrey et al., J Perspect Appl Acad Pract 6(3):57–65, 2018), as well as several works by other authors as a point of comparison. Exploring the concept of the pluriverse, through collaboration with students and their (our) plura-voices, we place universities within their hierarchical social, political, and economic contexts, while nevertheless offering insights into how radical cultural change, as well as institutional and personal transformation, is happening and can happen in university classrooms. © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2026.
Center for Food Security Studies, College of Development Studies, Addis Ababa Univesity, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; The Centre for Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM) and Department of Biology, University of Aveiro, Aveiro, Portugal; Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Eswatini, Manzini, Kwaluseni Campus, Matsapha, South Africa; Institute of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Engineering, Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, Jelgava, Latvia; Center for Sustainable Development (Greens), Universidade do Sul de Santa Catarina (Unisul), Santa Catarina, Florianópolis, Brazil; School of Urban and Regional Sciences, East China Normal University, Shanghai, China; Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Centre, Beitbridge, Zimbabwe; Kgotso Development Trust, Beitbridge, Zimbabwe; Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de la República Uruguay, Montevideo, Uruguay; CERED, University of Antananarivo, Antananarivo, Madagascar; Marquette University, Milwaukee, United States; University of Sierra Sur, Oaxaca, Mexico; University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland; Department of Land Economy, University of Malawi, The Polytechnic, Blantyre 3, Malawi; Institute of Earth Systems, University of Malta, Msida, Malta; Academy for Sustainable Futures, Canterbury Christ Church University, Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom; Casa de Cultura de la UAEMéx en Tlalpan, Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, Ciudad de México, Mexico; School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia; University of Bradford, Bradford, United Kingdom; Science Education Department of Universitas Negeri Malang, Malang, Indonesia; University of São Paulo, São Carlos, Brazil; State University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil; The Open University, Cardiff, United Kingdom; Norwegian Institute of International Affairs, Oslo, Norway; Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States; University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, United States; AmeriCorps and CLiCK Willimantic, Willimantic, CT, United States; Common Ground High School, New Haven, CT, United States
