Demonstrating the Earth Charter as a unifier of global voices on social and environmental justice

Based on the experience of over two decades of involvement with social and environmental justice education and activism in the Global South, in this paper I argue for the possibility of using the Earth Charter to bring together global voices and actions for reimagining education. I start by making three observations. One, given the imminent existential threats and even civilizational collapse, the lack of urgency in addressing these challenges through education so far has been shocking. Two, the Sustainable Development Goals have failed to create a bottom-up people’s movement for action based on praxis – theory-based action. Three, educationally our voices have become fragmented due to the many different and competing ‘educations’, such as: Environmental Education; Education for Sustainable Development; Global Citizenship Education; Peace Education; and Futures Education, to name a few. I argue that the Earth Charter is ideally placed to create synergies across the globe and create a unified instead of a fragmented movement of educators to meet the social and environmental justice challenges we face. This has not happened yet. Finally, I present a research -based case study of how the Earth Charter was used at Canterbury Christ Church University, UK, to test this out.