I have to confess when I received my copy of Green Schools Globally – Stories of Impact on Education for Sustainable Development I was not expecting a page turner but doing an initial quick flick I found myself an hour later deeply engrossed and indeed still turning pages relentlessly. For someone who has worked tirelessly for twenty years now in environmental education with no foot or weight in either academia or the education department but hands deep in the soil and devoted to helping prepare the next generation for systemic change and uncertainty, this book has been both insightful and reiterated my concerns about education. It is the first book that intentionally draws together the historic and current green schools experiences of a wide range of countries as told from within those countries. It aims for and achieves a lot. I welcomed the Series Editors Annette and Noel Gough’s invitation to approach the book transversally setting aside my own preconceptions and judgements of green schools movements and looking to find the connections across the stories and with my own experiences. The stories did reaffirm many of the difficulties and frustrations I have had working alongside and within green schools programmes in my home country Australia, but also revealed the meaningful and scrupulous dedication of so many individuals in so many countries over so many years which has left me heartened and filled with a sense of solidarity. I believe this is a satisfying and important read for anyone involved in environmental education. It provides a comprehensive yet concise and well-formatted compilation of accounts that will be useful for new and existing educators as well as education policy developers. The book provides a readable mix of reports, theory, policy, practice and vision, making it an important resource for educators to start and continue conversations around green school movements and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

Part one of the book provides a general history of green school movements including an in-depth chapter on the first official international green school movement, Eco-schools. In this Chapter 2, we hear about Eco-schools historical origins, methodology as well as the connections and the impacts on the implementation of ESD on a global scale through this platform. Chapter 1 in this section outlines the broader political and social background to greening the education system and the key ideas and characteristics of green schools. This was a surprisingly emotional journey for me. For anyone working in this field or about to enter it this section of the book provides an accessible account of the history of green schools approaches and programmes, where you may locate your own place in it as well as indications of where we need to go with it. It provides an invaluable contribution to understanding where we have come from which is critical for moving forward. It also discusses the relationship and tension of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to green schools. Being someone who works on the periphery in grass roots environmental education, a relatively siloed experience, reading this section was like having the landscape of my career come to life as I read it. It wasn’t necessarily all pretty but was like revisiting a well-trodden familiar path with the broader context finally exploding into view. I could place myself in this ongoing process and definitely develop a clearer sense of being and becoming part of something bigger.

Part 2 gives you a taste of stories and experiences from different countries. From Australia to Kenya, Turkey to Canada and the UK to Mexico we are given clear and succinct chapters covering the history of the movement, current status, achievements, obstacles and broader impact within individual countries. It’s like a Lonely Planet guide for environmental educators packed full of just the right amount of policy and projects, examples and evaluation. Each of these chapters presents the ‘country stories’ and discusses how they each have either implemented the Eco-schools approach or developed their own green school movements. It is an impossible task to capture the complete experience or measure the impact of such varied and far-reaching programmes but I feel the authors have done a thorough job in setting the scene, outlining their methodologies and discussing their challenges while also revealing something of the different character and passions of their country’s approaches. There is so much to learn and unlearn from the experiences shared.

Part 3 is a short conclusion that identifies some of the most prevalent experiences around the impacts, challenges and opportunities for green schools. Included in this is a call for a reevaluation of the focus of ESD. It also explores the need to overcome tensions in the ways we approach ESD whilst reiterating the necessity to drive it forward as an educational priority. This Chapter confirmed many of my own impressions of the challenges facing the green schools movement and I personally chose to read these as revealing the opportunities for broader systemic and pedagogical change as well as an opening to critique the fundamental premise of ESD. For me, one of the main successes of the book is the way it holds a space for acknowledging the achievements of the green schools movement whilst creating a space for confronting the obstacles. These are stories in process, and in some ways, this is a new beginning. The conversations we need to be having we need to have with urgency, clarity, creativity and rigour and this book brings a significant level of awareness to our collective experience to date in ESD which will contribute to enabling us to do that.