Global politics of the COVID-19 pandemic, and other current issues of environmental justice

Abstract

In 2020, the world was hit by COVID-19. Big data expeditiously travel around the world, having a performative effect on the way individuals, private enterprises, and local governments make decisions regarding the pandemic. As collective actions, symbolisms, and representations are (re)created or (re)constituted in the contexts of the pandemic, “new” questions can be formulated and “old” ones revisited regarding ecological justice in environmental education (research). Framing the special issue (SI) as an assemblage, we, as editors, challenged the authors to constantly return to the question of “What is in it for Nature?”, while presenting their findings on what pandemics reveal about the politics of global environmental issues. As individual contributions, each paper of the SI targets a particular context of the pandemic to (re)visit environmental (in)justice. As an assemblage, the SI assesses where we, as an international community, currently stand in relation to “new” and “old” issues of environmental justice.

Keywords:

• collective representations
• COVID-19
• ecological education
• environmental politics
• justice
• praxis

Histories of (in)justice…

May 25, 2020, Minneapolis, USA. The death of George Floyd during a police arrest ignited revolts and claims for justice. His last words became famous throughout the world: ‘I can’t breathe’ (The New York Times [Online], Race and America section, July 8, 2020). May 30, 2020, São Paulo, Brazil. An Afro-Brazilian woman, a widow and mother of five children, was beaten by military police (MP) as she tried to defend a friend who had been left unconscious by the police. The MP pushed the woman to the ground, stepped on her neck and dragged her across the street (BBC News [online], Latin America section, July 14, 2020). In the same day, in a different part of town, while attending to a domestic disturbance call in a known wealthy neighborhood of the city, a police officer becomes a top trending topic and makes the news across the nation as cameras capture the moment when he is verbally abused by the supposed suspect: “you may be the alpha male in the ghetto, but here you are shit. This is Alphaville brother!”, yells the suspect standing in front of his mansion, while holding the phone to his ear calling out for help from a high local authority¹ (Folha de São Paulo [Online], Cotidiano section, May 31, 2020). Earlier that spring, in Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada, the industrial hub of the tar/oil sands, Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation Chief Allan Adam and his spouse are stopped by Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers due to an expired license plate; when Chief Adam inquires into the reason for the stop, the situation, captured by the RCMP’s own dashcam footage, quickly escalates, leaving Chief Adam with significant physical injuries (CBC News, June 6, 2020). Subsequent charges of resisting arrest against Chief Adam are dropped while the primary officer in question, still on active duty, faces an internal inquiry into Adam’s arrest as well as unrelated assault charges from a separate off-duty incident (Canadian Press, June 24, 2020). Old questions are revisited: Who writes the laws, and who are they (in reality) for? Who is the law meant to protect, and who does it truly protect? How is education for on-the-ground interpretation of the law provided?

Justice and environmental education

Justice was inherent to environmental education (EE) from the beginning. The rise of the environmental movement walked hand in hand with other critical social movements from the 1960s and 70’s that agitated for a more just society. In some geo-cultural contexts, justice continues to be as fundamental a concept to EE as environmental protection and conservation, e.g., in Latin America, where (political; decolonial) resistance is a strong and lasting regional characteristic (Galeano, 1987), justice is an indissociable trait of EE’s identity (Carvalho, 2002). Meanwhile, a valid and sensible, yet sensitive issue remains central: To what extent is justice praxical in EE (see Rodrigues, 2020a), or just academic performative abstract theoretical textualism? What are environmental laws and environmental politics doing not only to assign ecological justice as a goal, but to ensure that it happens? Going back to the questions of who writes the laws and who they (truly) protect, adding a more-than-human perspective and acknowledgement for the agency of nature: How well would our current environmental laws and environmental politics respond to the question “what is in it for Nature”?

In 2020, the world was hit by the COVID-19 viral pandemic which unleashed a global crisis of unparalleled proportions. Never has an equivalently urgent lethal problem struck all corners of a digitally connected Earth, where information travels at the speed of light and the limits to global communication are fewer than ever. Big data about the evolution of the pandemic are collected daily and are made available to the public on the world-wide web—pretty much at the same rate and speed as all sorts of fake news and badly interpreted, or simply made up, data. Scientific discoveries are shared almost as fast as they have been proven. All of this data (including the “fake” data) have a performative effect on the way individuals, private enterprises, and local governments make decisions on how to deal with the pandemic. But even though the big data are shared globally, the local politics of the pandemic are still formulated in particular geo-cultural/historical contexts. In general terms, despite the shared cause of the COVID-19 global pandemic—the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)—geo-cultural/historical particularities are highly significant in the ways in which the pandemic affects specific localities; they are also significant in the way local/regional politicians respond to the problem.

For example, Indigenous communities along the path of the contentious Keystone XL pipeline that was, until a recent veto by US President Joe Biden, previously under construction across the Canada-US border, expressed serious social and health concerns about the persistent establishment of temporary “man camps” that house pipeline workers within and adjacent to their territories (Hegyi, 2018; Indian Country Today, 2020). Gendered violence against Indigenous women and girls by man camp residents is well-documented across Turtle Island/North America (Awasis, 2014; Lucchesi, 2019; Weber et al., 2014) and internationally (Carrington et al., 2010). Moreover, the medical facilities available to residents of these predominantly rural Indigenous communities were already undeserved, especially in the US, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The current crisis thus adds on to “old”, unresolved, problems, while simultaneously heightening concerns regarding local capacity to cope with an outbreak; it also reminds community Elders of the devastating impacts of the, often intentional, introduction of diseases such as smallpox into their communities by Settlers in previous generations (Indian Country Today, 2020). The severe problems caused by the pandemic in Indigenous communities around the world, often (un)assisted by “simulative politics” (Bluhdorn, 2011) that did little to help, is only one example of the range of complex relations between (geo-cultural/historical) context and local/regional politics that have flourished during the pandemic.

The politics of the pandemic becomes, thus, a window, or magnifying glass, through which “new” questions can be formulated and “old” questions can be revisited in different geo-cultural contexts. It is also one of those rare opportunities where a big volume of data can be collected on a phenomenon that is circumscribed by a specific, and relatively short, timeframe. As the actions, symbolisms, and representations are (re)created or (re)constituted in this context, an important question needs to be a constant: How much are these analyses also circumscribed to the contextual specificities of the pandemic, and how much can be transferred to future, post-pandemic contexts? Another possible related inquiry is if we have evidence that the pandemic is symptomatic of bigger environmental issues, such as climate and population. Future valuation, evaluation, and validation is key. For example: Regarding non-human agency and social change, do we have solid, empirically based examples where the agency of the non-human changed EE and environmental education research (EER)? Are there potential ecopedagogical drives in social change brought forth by non-human agencies? These questions can reach as far back as human history goes, but they can be objectively addressed within the specific timeframe of the COVID-19 pandemic: Firstly, is there a drive for long lasting social change brought forth by the COVID-19 pandemic? Or are the (fast) changes brought forth by the COVID-19 pandemic only provisional, being circumscribed to the timeframe of the pandemic? Secondly, in either scenario of long lasting or only provisional change, is it environmentally just?

Considering the key points above related to the politics of the COVID-19 pandemic, in this special issue (SI) we sought to formulate “new” questions and revisit “old” ones regarding ecological justice in EE and EER. In one example (among many possible) from Brazil, following the accusation by the former Justice Minister Sérgio Moro of possible interference from the current President Jair Bolsonaro in investigations by the Federal Police, the Brazilian Supreme Court made public a presidential meeting with his ministers. In this meeting, the (now former) Minister of the Environment Ricardo Salles stated it would be the perfect time to act on the flexibilization of environmental laws, as the media was busy reporting news about the pandemic. News channels around the world commented on the episode, published by Reuters under the title “Brazil minister calls for environmental deregulation while public distracted by COVID” (Reuters [Online], Environment section, May 22, 2020). It seems this is not an isolated event. Other government leaders, such as former US president Donald Trump and Jason Kenney, premier of the Canadian province of Alberta, home to the oil/tar sands, removed or suspended environmental restrictions on extractive industries during the pandemic under the guise of emergency health and economic measures (Dryden, 2020; Milman & Holden, 2020). As post-pandemic economic uncertainty haunts the world, we saw reports of Chinese pollution rates going up in relation to previous years (Reuters [Online], Environment section, May 20, 2020); Germany inaugurating new coal plants, after previously announcing plans for extinguishing them by 2038 (DW [Online], Top stories, May 30, 2020); and data reporting the rise of deforestation and fires in the Amazon region in relation to previous years coming out at about the same time that Brazil became the country with the highest daily death toll from the COVID-19 pandemic in the world (The New York Times [Online], World/Americas section, June 6, 2020).

At this point, a key question to be asked is: Do we see evidence of an international community that is prepared to deal with the pandemic as an ecological issue (systemic, composed of vital inter-relations), or rather as a discourse that is built around an economic, technological rationality that prioritizes saving the economy unfettered by concerns for saving lives? Would the confirmation of the latter be proof of the post-ecological turn identified by Bluhdorn (2011) in his previsions about the politics of unsustainability? In this context, sustainability discourses continuously prioritize the economy over social issues, and the environment remains last in that triad of pillars of the persistent politics of non-sustainability (economic > social > environmental). In EE/EER, where, why and when are such “non” representations allowed to persist powerfully? “New”, “post” (qualitative) theories seem to be dead ends, unless a decentering ecocentrism and praxis gets some performative traction within those abstractions (Rodrigues, 2020a).

“Old” problems… “new” promises of change

The Brazilian musician Chico Buarque sings in one of his most famous lyrics about how everything changed when the town received the visit of a band that sang of love: “My suffering people bid farewell to the pain, to watch as the band went by, singing melodies of love.” As the narrator daydreams about a different possible life, the band moves on. “But to my disenchantment, what was sweet is now over; everything returned to its place, after the band moved on.” Normality, as the reasonably unquestioned state of affairs, requires stability. A state of anomaly will always challenge the status quo. These are rare situations where change happens at a fastened pace, as quick adaptations are needed to deal with the state of anomaly. And when social structures are jolted by change (even if provisionally or contingently), latent social problems tend to become more visible, especially when economic structures are shaken.

As a state of anomaly, the pandemic has pushed (as an action of non-human agency) individuals, private enterprises, and bodies of government to promote changes that have caused distress in the social dynamics of the everyday. As the tissue of social cohesion is challenged, collective actions have unveiled what is primarily and urgently important to a particular society. In 2020 and 2021, a resounding question became highly relevant in local, regional, national, and global contexts: What do collective actions that respond to the COVID-19 pandemic unveil about what is primarily and urgently important in current societies?

For the purposes of this SI, that general question inspired a series of more specific questions, some of which deal directly with EE and others of which are tangentially related:

• How are (aesthetic-ethical-political) representations of nature changing as a result of COVID-19? How do collective actions that respond to the COVID-19 pandemic influence our relationship with nature?

• EE was founded in the 1960s to respond to a specific set of environmental issues. Since then, new issues have come to the fore and old ones have intensified (e.g., climate change; species extinction; air pollution). What should be expected from EE as a response to COVID-19? How do collective actions that respond to the COVID-19 pandemic deal with current environmental issues? Is there a danger that the collective response to COVID-19 will mute responses to other environmental problems?

• “Pandemic could decimate environmental, outdoor science education programs.” That is the title of an article published in the Berkeley News webpage on June 15, 2020. The article exposed how the COVID-19 pandemic is threatening the survival of organizations that provide outdoor environmental and science education to K-12 students, with a high number of them announcing uncertainty about their capacity to reopen. The pandemic is also a new challenge for outdoor and environmental education programs in various contexts (Quay et al., 2020), many of them already facing difficulties given the high cost of EE curriculum (e.g., cost of field trips and outdoor equipment). Simultaneously, educators in conventional K-12 settings are being encouraged to simply hold classes outside on a regular basis during the pandemic (CBC Radio, 2020). Although arguably promising, this trend may further highlight and exacerbate preexisting societal inequities; for example, schools in higher socioeconomic areas often have larger school grounds with higher student capacities and more natural features. What are the variations, adaptations, and adjustments of EE to overcome the restraints for outdoor and experiential education during the COVID-19 pandemic? And what could be learned from these examples, considering some of the older challenges, and the future, of EE praxis?

• How can EE theoreticians and practitioners incorporate COVID-19 and the topic of pandemics in general into their praxis to make EE more relevant to today’s world? How should experiential learning and interdisciplinarity be connected to environmental justice in the context of pandemics? What commonly occult/naturalized issues in EE and EER are unveiled by collective actions that respond to the pandemic?

• Another timely debate regarding ecological justice and COVID-19 relates to the digital world: (a) Under the pandemic, children and youth are spending more time than ever exposed to the digital world; how is this hyper-exposure to the digital world affecting their relationship to nature? Given that many environmental problems have continued unabated, how will children get to care about these issues if they are not exposed to them first-hand? Regarding the “privilege of access” to nature during the pandemic—who holds it; how is it different from pre-pandemic times; and under what conditions does it occur? (b) The other side of the coin relates to children from lower-socioeconomic backgrounds and from the Global South who have limited access to the digital world. This digital exclusion can become a new form of colonialism and social stratification. Tying (a) and (b), how will digital inclusion and exclusion affect EE and EER in the coming years? (c) Relatedly, in terms of pedagogy, what are we learning about the possibilities and limitations of online, remote teaching, and how does it help us rethink contemporary EE and the digital universe? How is technology (and the access to it) used to enact and ratify the “privilege of access” to nature? And how is technology being used to cope with the lack of access to nature?

These questions, and more, informed the myriad of intriguing submissions that we received from authors around the world as described below.

Back to “what is in it for nature?”

In Volume 51, Issue 2, of The Journal of Environmental Education (JEE), published in 2020, the authors of the SI “Global politics of knowledge production in EER: ‘New’ theory and North-South representations” collectively constructed a thorough critique of how increasingly influential theories in the global productions of knowledge in EE are ahistorical (see Payne’s (2020) account on the “amnesia of the moment” in EE) and caught up in the performative abstractionism of theory (Payne, 2020), which means the non-idealistic practical, or praxical, essence of EE (Payne et al., 2018) has gone missing (Payne, 2020; Rodrigues, 2020b; Rodrigues et al., 2020). This is where coming back to an objective and simple question, such as “What is in it for Nature”, as a central, historical, critical concern of why the field of EE exists in the very first instance, can be quite helpful in avoiding the idealisms of performative theory and (re-)establishing focus on the generative possibilities and acknowledged limits of praxis. The question also pierces right through the early histories of environmental movements, wherein justice was ecological (ecosomaesthetic ∼ environmentally ethical ∼ ecopolitical – see Payne, 2015) and ecocentric.

While formulating an SI as an assemblage,² it was important to have a guiding question, or schematic (e.g., the conceptual Mindmap used in the 2020 JEE SI – Rodrigues, 2020a), that could not only challenge, but also support, the authors. In this SI, while presenting their findings on what pandemics (can) reveal about the politics of global environmental issues, the contributors were invited to constantly return to the question of “What is in it for Nature?”. An invitation that heeds and attends to the history and to the narrative continuity of the field of EE. An invitation to expand thoughtfulness with regard to the more-than-human world, and to challenge anthropocentric rationalities. Importantly, not an invitation to create or to set “new” or “alternative” ways, but rather to revisit the essence of environmental justice and praxis deeply embedded in the (early) histories of EE and EER.

After the first round of full manuscript reviews, in addition to the more general and central question of “What is in it for Nature?”, the authors were invited to also think about a few other questions related to the overarching theme(s) of the SI:

1. How does the data presented in your research help us better understand the historical contexts of (environmental) injustices?

2. How do the (educational) politics of the pandemic highlighted in your research help us identify institutionalized/“naturalized” environmental injustices as they become more evident during the pandemic?

3. Is there any evidence from the data and critical analysis presented in your research that the identified environmental injustices/inequalities will change as a result of the pandemic? (a praxical and evidence based “What’s next?”).

4. Is there any evidence from the data and critical analysis presented in your research of a post-pandemic “new normal” that is more environmentally just? (Going back to “What is in it for nature?”).

5. Has the research identified any “new” (ways of doing) environmental education that has been implemented during the pandemic, and that might be generative in a post-pandemic future of a more environmentally just society, and of a more environmentally just education?

These five questions were asked to all the SI authors, serving as a contextual backbone for the assemblage (methodology) used in the construction of the SI.

Contributions

As noted above, our call for papers resulted in an excellent array of submissions from EE scholars around the world. Although each submission was unique, common themes soon emerged which lent themselves to the final assemblage within which authors were invited to read each other’s manuscripts to identify commonalities, distinctions, and opportunities for expansion.

Common themes included identifying connections between responses to climate change and COVID-19 through environmental education and communication (Casas et al., 2021; Forsythe and Chan, 2021); linking social, health, and environmental justice through interdisciplinary approaches to science, social studies, and environmental education (Forsythe and Chan, 2021); identifying and adapting pedagogical strategies related to inequitable access to both technology and Nature for children in various socioeconomic and geographic contexts (Rios et al., 2021; Román et al., 2021); exploring resilient community-based approaches that adapt and extend previous initiatives, collaborations, and established infrastructures (Casas et al., 2021; Lloro, 2021); and considering the socioenvironmental applications of theoretical insights from foundational educational scholars such as Paulo Freire, as ecopedagogy in praxis (Misiaszek, 2021).

The two matrices below (Tables 1 and 2) present an overview of the contributions for the SI assemblage. In the first matrix (A), we highlighted the main topic of the paper, and the theoretical and empirical backgrounds that support the overall discussion. In the second matrix (B), we highlighted how the discussions were linked to the SI’s main focus on environmental justice and the main critique presented by the authors/teams. In the last column are the challenges that we, as editors, presented to the authors/teams in the very beginning of the assemblage process, after reviewing the initial abstract proposals.

Table 1. Matrix A.

Article Id.	Main topic	Theoretical background	Empirical background
Lloro	Food activism and education during and beyond the Covid-19 pandemic	Feminist (intersectional feminism’s specific attunement to ontological equality for multiple categories of difference); feminist food justice activism, scholar-activism, and activist scholar work; critical geography of food	Feminist activist ethnographic work in activist community that does on-the-ground food justice work (pre- and during pandemic) to meet (growing) food insecurity needs
Casas et al.	Ways COVID-19 and extreme weather have both, in overlapping ways, changed our understanding of what constitutes just and empowering approaches to crisis risk communication	Justice-centered science education; Critical EE (empowerment; local knowledge production/transmission)	Two pilot studies of empowerment workshops where adults and young learners train in acquiring multiple stores of knowledge and translation of the same into narrative forms that they can, in turn, transmit within their communities; case study where a risk communication model, designed for storm surge/cyclone risks, was adapted and used for covid health promotion
Román et al.	Effects of the (politics of the) pandemic on teacher training and practice in EE	Culturally responsive and community-based approaches to EE; cultural-historical activity theory	Variety of qualitative data–surveys and interviews with teachers, parents, and community members from Galapagos during the pandemic
Rios et al.	Restriction of access to nature during the pandemic in educational settings/contexts	Ecomotricity; outdoor education; outdoor learning	Online data collection from 6 schools with environmental pedagogies (eco-schools, Waldorf, forest schools, Krishnamurti); Participant observation, in synchronous sessions, of activities on the environment; focus groups; autonomous works of free expression carried out by children and youth
Forsythe & Chan	Theory-practice idiosyncrasies in current guidelines of (science) education that are limiting praxis in (environmental) education	Justice-centered education	Pandemics as evidence of the critique that guidelines of mainstream (science/environmental) education are not aligned with how science works in practice; Document analysis of The Environmental Education Standards and The Next Generation Science Standards
Misiaszek	Need for teaching for deepened and widened critical reading of the politics of environmental violence for praxis	Ecopedagogy (grounded in the popular education models of Paulo Freire)	Pandemics as evidence of World-Earth separation/distancing ideologies

Table 2. Matrix B.

Article Id.	Link to environmental justice	Critique	Challenge
Lloro	Women, especially from traditionally marginalized backgrounds (women of color, queer women, working class women), disproportionately bear the burdens of food work during the pandemic; local emergency responses of intricate food security networks are critically important during the pandemic as a vital response to unemployment, hunger, and housing insecurity among vulnerable groups	Food insecurity among traditionally marginalized groups	Demonstrating, with empirical examples, how the pandemic has laid bare the necessity for research that impacts practice in myriad ways and involves collaboration with community activists from an explicitly intersectional lens
Casas et al.	COVID-19 has changed our understanding of what constitutes just and empowering approaches to crisis risk communication	The politicization of science leads people to having to make decisions for themselves in the middle of ambiguous, sometimes misleading, information; Members of the public have to deal with authorities with varying degrees of trustworthiness, with multiple and emergent knowledge in real time, and with ambiguity in the ultimate course of action	Focus on EE; Conceptualizing and contextualizing (including proposed pilot studies) affirmative that teaching for/through empowerment aiming for a better understanding of the environment and local action regarding local environmental problems can be considered (socio)environmentally just education; Providing empirical examples of how COVID-19 and extreme weather have both, in overlapping ways, changed our understanding of what constitutes just and empowering approaches to crisis risk communication
Román et al.	Lack of instructional materials and professional development for EE available to teachers in non-central geographies, including protected areas	Unequal access to instructional materials and professional development between teachers in different geo-cultural settings; impact of social-distancing mandates on teacher training programs have amplified unequal learning environments and lack of access to services	To demonstrate (including empirically) if and how Galapagueño teachers’ professional collective agency and individual actions have enabled them to mediate the challenges presented by the pandemics; drawing grounded possibilities for transference to post-pandemic settings
Rios et al.	Access (or lack of access) to nature in educational contexts as relevant issue of env. justice	Policies of lockdown and social distancing have worsened inequalities and social exclusions in educational settings/contexts	Critically (and empirically) conceptualizing and contextualizing the relation between environmental justice and access to nature, especially, in educational settings
Forsythe & Chan	EE guidelines and praxis to promote justice-centered (science/environmental) education	Current guidelines of mainstream K-12 (science) education are not aligned with how science works in practice	Detailing, with empirical evidence, what the pandemic has highlighted as needs in science and environmental education, the gaps in mainstream K-12 education around those needs, and how K-12 education could improve scientific literacy in this area by employing perspectives and praxis from justice-centered education
Misiaszek	Pedagogies that acknowledge and aim for change in contested terrains of globalizations, sociohistorical oppressions (racism, xenophobia, gendering), post-truthism, modality differentiation, North epistemologies that solidify world-Earth distancing, neoliberal individualism/nationalism	World-Earth separation/distancing ideologies and the politics of their existence inherited in/by education (in/non/formal models)	To present strong empirical examples from the (local/global) politics of the pandemic to sustain arguments of lessons (not) learned for teaching environmentalism

In, “An Intersectional Feminist Food Studies Praxis: Activism and Care in the COVID-19 Context”, Lloro (2021) draws upon ongoing and interrelated research and community activism to share inspiring insights and stories from her work with the Pomona Farmers Market in southern California, a long-established community initiative built on a strong, but inevitably imperfect, commitment to intersectional social and ecological equity. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the market continued such commitments through, for example, the rapid development of a food security program during COVID-19 to assist struggling community members.

In their article, “Environmental Education in a Time of Crisis: A Relational Approach to Learning about Pandemics and Climate Risks,” Casas et al. (2021) present insights from their adaptation of an initiative related to extreme weather and climate change communication to the sharing of key COVID-19 public health information in Tacloban, Philippines. Rather than focusing on information linked to the dangers of and appropriate responses to cyclones—which have increased in frequency and severity due to climate change—Casas et al. employed a similar model with schoolchildren to translate COVID-19 data and directives provided by the government into more easily understandable, memorable, and shareable phrases. Their overall aim is to increase the health, science, and environmental literacy of youth and adults to promote the rapid spread of scientifically accurate information during crises.

Through engagement with teachers, parents, and students in Ecuador’s Galapagos Islands, Román et al.’s (2021) research also revealed inter- and intra-societal inequities in the context of COVID-19 and the increasing ecological strain of tourism in Galapagos. In “Resilience, Collaboration, and Agency: Galapagos Teachers Confronting the Disruption of COVID-19,” Román et al. highlight the adaptive resilience of teachers, parents, and students alike in the face of challenges related to inequitable access to technology. For example, teachers who weren’t able to contact their students virtually would bring learning materials to their homes. Unexpected benefits are also highlighted such as the development and strengthening of virtual teacher support networks to share and adapt lessons for the Galapagos context in response to the persistent requirements of government mandated curricula.

In a recent study, Rios et al. (2021) also engaged with school-aged youth through a focus on environmentally-oriented programs in Portugal as described in their article, “COVID-19 and the Desire of Children to Return to Nature: Emotions in the Face of Environmental and Intergenerational Injustices.” Through online observations and focus groups, they explored children’s perceptions of the social, health, and environmental impacts of COVID-19. Rios et al.’s study revealed significant inequity in terms of access to Nature for children in a variety of socioeconomic and geographic contexts in Portugal.

How scientific knowledge changes; how decisions are made about science-based issues; and how the impacts of such decisions cascade in the environment. In “Justice-Centered Education Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic”, Forsythe and Chan (2021) focused on these three questions as case studies, to which the pandemic has drawn critical attention, while discussing how justice-centered pedagogies might equip (K-12) students to recognize and respond to injustices in local and global contexts. Highlighting how environmental education, science education, and social studies education are each somewhat limited in preparing the individual for making decisions amidst complex socio-scientific experiences such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the authors discussed how increased emphasis on justice-centered education can potentially be effective in overcoming some of the educational limits and sociopolitical constraints for personal decision-making in dealing with environmental issues and their diversified layers of (in)justice.

In “Ecopedagogical Literacy of a Pandemic: Teaching to Critically Read the Politics of COVID-19 with Environmental Issues”, Greg William Misiaszek (2021) used Freirean Ecopedagogy to contrast possibilities and challenges of post-COVID learning considering contexts of socioenvironmental “praxis and politics” of the pandemic. Critically questioning how “conscientization” (based on Freire’s concept of conscientização) from COVID-19 could occur in meaningful and widespread ways, the author dialogues with the central questions posed in this SI’s introduction throughout the manuscript, aiming to objectively answer them in his conclusions.

As individual contributions, each paper targets a particular context of the pandemic to (re)visit issues of environmental (in)justice. As an assemblage, this SI shines a light on persistent problems and challenges of EE(R). We were not searching for “new” or “alternative” solutions, even though the pandemic does offer insights for potential change (see plenty of strong examples in the papers in this SI). New and alternative solutions to environmental problems are abundant in the academic literature, and there’s something new every day (even though mostly new ∼ not new—see Rodrigues et al., 2020). And yet, historical problems seem to persevere. Environmental justice has been in the agenda of social movements since the early histories of EE, and, later on, a hot topic for EE researchers. As discussed early on in this introductory paper, the pandemic offers a rare and rich opportunity to assess where we, as an international community collectively living a global crisis (social gaps and chasms acknowledged), stand in relation to issues of justice. This is the main contribution of this SI as an assemblage. Insights for potential change in what has been socially, environmentally, and educationally projected (or fantasized) as the “new normal” (Quay et al., 2020; Rousell & Chan, 2021) are an (expected) bonus. So is the potential for analyzing, and possibly contesting, remaining silences.

Notes

1 In the 1979 book ‘Carnavais, malandros e heróis’, published in English in 1991 under the title ‘Carnivals, Rogues and Heroes: Interpretation of the Brazilian Dilemma’, Roberto DaMatta describes how the question ‘Do you know to whom you are speaking?’ is representative of how social dynamics are constructed in Brazil, where authority (symbolic capital expressed as power) commonly overweighs laws and other measures of or means to justice (DaMatta, 1979).

2 The assemblage metamethodology used in this SI, and previous SI’s in JEE (see Payne, 2016; Payne, 2018; Rodrigues et al., 2020a), aims to potentialize constructive dialogue and cross-referencing among authors in order to create a coherent and generative unity that is, indeed, a “special” issue.