Abstract
This article discusses what Japanese environmental educators can learn from “resilience theories” as reevaluating the basic values and objectives of environmental education in Japan after the big quake and the nuclear power disaster in Fukushima in 2011. The authors introduce the development of resilience study and the basic concepts of socio-ecological system theory, summarizing key studies on “resilience” which appeared in European and North American environmental education journals. The following three issues are discussed in this article. (i) Incorporating the concept of “risk” in the context of environmental education. (ii) Reevaluating ideas surrounding socio-ecological system from the historical perspectives of social system and ecological system so as to remain critical to the history of human exploitations of nature. Also, critiquing the worldview of system theory while respecting the locality of each unique community. (iii) Creating resilience learning theory in the context of Japan, as examining diverse lessons learned in the disaster stricken Tohoku areas. Environmental educators can define “resilience” as “the power of local community facing disasters.” Japanese environmental educators have always highlighted the importance of the “power of local community” as a response to environmental risk, but the authors insist that it is now crucial to take problems of social exclusion into account.
