(Un)learning anthropocentrism

an ecojustice framework for teaching to resist human-supremacy in schools

John Lupinacci

Alison Happel-Parkins

pp. 13-30

in: Suzanne RICE, A. G. Rud (eds), The educational significance of human and non-human animal interactions, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016

Abstract

In the Living Planet Report 2014 by the WWF (formally known as the World Wildlife Fund), researchers introduce a new index that considers "10,380 populations of 3,038 species of mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish from around the globe" (p. 136). This report indicates that since 1970 the planet has experienced a 52% loss in species (WWF, 2014). Further, this index states that the world's freshwater species have dropped by 76% in that same time span. These statistics come to us amid an ongoing debate among scientists as to whether the designation of our current time period, the Holocene (meaning entirely recent), is outdated, and whether Anthropocene (combining human with the new) might be a more accurate identifier. Despite the continued contestations, scientists agree that "human-kind has caused mass extinctions of plant and animal species, polluted the oceans and altered the atmosphere, among other lasting impacts' (Stromberg, 2013, para. 3).