Dr. Peter Makwanya

Climate Change Communication

Zimbabwe Open University, Zimbabwe

Let nature speak, exploring the language of the environment as a laboratory for learning One of the reasons to preserve nature, keep it intact and sufficiently groomed is not only to restore it, manage effects of erosion and avoid the overall environmental collapse. The main goal is to tell a good story for people to live by, including making the environment the cradle of knowledge transfers and, above all, a natural laboratory. An intact and complete bouquet of the environment has one instrumental impetus, that of facilitating lifelong learning in children and conditions in which they can learn and retain more than 75% of what they actively visualise and practice, against the background of what they are told, lectured and read. The environment being everything that surrounds us, is where peace dwells, reciprocating with humans, animals, all creatures great and small, plants, forests and surrounding infrastructure. There has been a strong relationship between humans and the environment since time immemorial but the gesture of good will has fallen by the way side, children do not know that nature and humans are inseparable due to amount of recklessness and destruction unfolding, contributing to negative impacts of climate change. Therefore, the idea of seeing, doing, exploring and believing is central and key, not just for children, but for the crop of young people seeking productive learning and meaningful transfer of knowledge and natural skills for transformative new-knowledge economy. Research is qualitative based influenced by ecosystemic theories and ecological discourse analysis (EDA) and multimodal discourse analysis become essential as approaches to unravel essential components that bind nature and their interactions to contribute to human knowledge and understanding.