About Understanding Food and Climate Change
The Center for Ecoliteracy offers a no-cost suite of digital education resources that explore the fundamental relationships between climate change and the food systems that sustain human life. These publications consider the potential for food systems-oriented climate change mitigation and adaptation. The first two resources in the suite are Understanding Food and Climate Change: An Interactive Guide and Understanding Food and Climate Change: A Systems Perspective.
Understanding Food and Climate Change: An Interactive Guide incorporates text, video, photography, and an array of interactive experiences to deliver climate science alongside multicultural, interdisciplinary viewpoints. Its aim is to promote awareness and understanding of global climate issues, their intersection with food systems, and promising strategies for addressing climate change. This resource includes suggested activities and connections to both the Next Generation Science Standards and the National Curriculum Standards for Social Studies Thematic Strands.
The companion publication, Understanding Food and Climate Change: A Systems Perspective, is a collection of essays that addresses topics that educators will encounter when teaching about food and climate change. These essays offer subjects for class discussion or student research and provide extensive resources for further investigation. This resource applies systems thinking to inspire readers to think in terms of systems, both human and natural.
Used together, these publications serve as a strong foundation for developing and deepening our understanding of how we interact with nature. They are valuable resources for anyone engaged in shaping a more positive future.
About The Center for Ecoliteracy
The Center for Ecoliteracy is an internationally recognized leader in systems change innovations in education for sustainable living. The Center offers publications, seminars, curriculum development, and coaching for teaching and learning, keynote presentations, and technical assistance. Since 1995, the Center has engaged with thousands of formal and informal educators from across the United States and six continents. Its website features scores of resources on ecological education, food and sustainability, and systems change. Books authored or coauthored by the Center for Ecoliteracy include Ecoliterate: How Educators Are Cultivating Emotional, Social, and Ecological Intelligence (Jossey-Bass); Smart by Nature: Schooling for Sustainability (Watershed Media); and Ecological Literacy: Educating Our Children for a Sustainable World (Sierra Club Books).
The Center’s Rethinking School Lunch initiative integrates systemic school food reform and learning about food systems and choices. Through its California Food for California Kids® initiative and California Thursdays® statewide network and program, the Center offers statewide conferences, work with individual districts, strategic consultations, and numerous resources for serving healthy, freshly prepared meals using regionally sources foods. The Center’s food-related publications include the Understanding Food and Climate Change suite of materials; the cookbook and professional development guide Cooking with California Food in K–12 Schools; the conceptual teaching framework Big Ideas: Linking Food, Culture, Health, and the Environment; and discussion guides to the Oscar award-nominee, Food, Inc. and the PBS-aired documentary, Nourish.