Community Environment Education Centers: Facilitating Community Created Ecoscapes

摘要

This study focuses on designing a community environment education center (CEEC) for Chillingham, as a hub for community transition to sustainability. This center aids in redressing social fragmentation, youth unemployment, a high eco-footprint, and economic rural decline due to globalization. The "ecological sustainability" framework was delivered by integrating "environmental education " and "community development" through project-based experiential learning. The development of Chillingham Community Center involved case study research and incorporated participatory design charrettes, transformative learning, eco-positive development, and community-public-private partnerships. This process evolved from community strategic planning in a small rural village buffered by world heritage rainforests and impacted by a rapidly expanding urban conurbation on Australia's east coast. This community space encompasses socio-environmental flows connecting people to each other and the ecoscape to grow natural capital, integrate community cohesion, and empower eco-governance. Modelling passive solar design, on-site renewable energy, water and nutrient cycling, community garden, market, and environmental education programs sowed the seeds for a "green local economy, " demonstrating community capacity to participate in a transition toward sustainability. A small rural community can demonstrate to other communities that a CEEC enables people to meet their socio-environmental and economic needs locally and sustainably. The ecologically sustainable solution is holistic; settlements need to be richly biodiverse, locally specific, and globally wise.