Community Psychology Commons^™

Fostering Critical Thinking About Climate Change: Applying Community Psychology To An Environmental Education Project With Youth, Livia D. Dittmer, Manuel Riemer

Centre for Community Research Learning and Action

This article argues for the participation of community psychology in issues of global climate change. The knowledge accumulated and experience gained in the discipline of community psychology have great relevance to many topics related to the environment. Practitioners of community psychology could therefore make significant contributions to climate change mitigation. To illustrate this assertion, we describe an education project conducted with youth engaged in a community-based environmental organization. This initiative was motivated by the idea that engaged and critically aware youth often become change agents for social movements. Towards this purpose, rather than using mass marketing strategies to motivate small …