Abstract/Summary

This chapter explores ways in which participants engaging in a critical pedagogy praxis in Nepal generated subjective learning themes related to their environment and society. Generative critical education stands in contrast to top-down methods of formal teaching and learning. To begin the discussion, let us consider two of the functions of environmental communication: to be pragmatic and to be constitutive (Cox 2013, 19). As human society deepens its understanding of the implications of life in the Anthropocene, the current geological age in which humans are the dominant influence on the environment, the need for strategic pragmatic environmental communication has become increasingly evident. Whether in the form of public awareness campaigns, direct action and protest, or consumer education, many diverse institutions are arising to answer the call. Among these is the university, charged with developing the future stewards of our planet. Ironically, the pragmatic nature of environmental communication messages has also made them vulnerable to cooption and dilution in the form of greenwashing, manufactured uncertainty, and a deceptive corporate environmental and social responsibility agenda. It is out of the matrix of higher education and into a world of competing ecological problem/solution narratives that today’s graduates emerge. Will the environmental crisis we are facing be solved by market-based mechanisms, technological innovation, or blunt regulations? Unfortunately, this question is indicative of an understanding of ecological justice that does not interrogate the system as a whole.