Five questions for Thijs Bosker about Local Actions
Sustainability challenges don’t just call for environmental scientists – they require expertise from many academic fields. Thijs Bosker and Paul Behrens have made it easier for university lecturers to integrate sustainability into their courses. Their initiative, Local Actions, offers ready-made teaching materials that provide concrete support. Five questions on how it works.
What is Local Actions and what does the website offer?
‘Many university lecturers want to include sustainability in their courses, but it takes time and effort. Local Actions is an initiative that helps integrate environmental and climate issues into a wide range of academic programmes using ready-to-use teaching packages.
The goal is to support lecturers and engage students by encouraging them to take small, local actions connected to their field of study. A key part of this is that students actually carry out a practical activity. This gives them a sense of agency – something that’s important when tackling large and often overwhelming environmental problems. The idea is to focus on what is possible.
On the website, you’ll find teaching materials and inspiring examples of such local actions – like collecting plastic waste in your neighbourhood or mapping biodiversity around your home.’
What kind of impact are you hoping to achieve?
‘We hope that a broad group of lecturers will find it easier to bring environmental topics into their teaching – and that students will become more aware of sustainability issues and feel motivated to act. In recent years, students have enthusiastically taken part in a variety of projects, such as collecting plastic waste or analysing the environmental impact of their diet. That kind of engagement leads to greater awareness and more active involvement in environmental initiatives.’
What disciplines is the material designed for?
‘The materials are currently designed for International Law, Communication Science and Psychology. At this stage, we don’t plan to expand right away – we first want to evaluate how it’s working. Is it effective? Do lecturers need additional resources?’
How can lecturers and students use the teaching materials?
‘Our main focus is on lecturers. We want to make it as easy as possible to integrate the materials into existing curricula, by linking local actions to subject-specific content. That’s why we’ve chosen topics that are commonly discussed in each discipline.
Take International Law, for example: what happens to state sovereignty when a country disappears due to climate change? Or in Psychology: how do people cope with cognitive dissonance – that uncomfortable feeling when your beliefs and actions don’t match – like knowing air travel harms the environment but flying anyway?
By focusing on these kinds of familiar topics, we hope as many lecturers as possible will be able to use the materials – whether they’re teaching in the Netherlands, Nairobi or Nicaragua.’
Where can lecturers find more information?
‘On the Local Actions website. You can also get in touch with us there.’
Visit the website at local-actions.com.