may be interwoven in a web of relationships. Understanding and acting within these, in an
engaged and supportive way, makes us truly global citizens.
It is the complexity of relationships within and between these worlds that makes
understanding environmental issues so difficult. We are not comfortable with complexity;
we tend to prefer simple answers, recognize fewer choices (e.g. the dichotomies of
right/wrong, liberal/conservative, North/South) and readily delegate responsibility to
others.
To help unravel this complexity I have used two strategies. The first is a structured
analysis of environmental issues that helps clarify their complexity—The Four Domains
Analysis. The second is an Internet exploration of global environmental issues that puts
students in contact with local issues and stakeholders-– The Global Citizen Project.
The Four Domains Analysis
“We did not weave the web of life; we are merely a strand in it. Whatever we do to
the web we do to ourselves.”
--Chief Seattle
This strategy recognizes that the natural environment is the base upon which human
social and cultural constructions are ultimately dependent. Hence, environmental issues
have both scientific (empirical) bases and policy (normative /values based) implications,
involving multiple components and relationships across ecological, individual and
social/political boundaries.
Using this approach we visualize the interactions of natural systems and human
social structures as domains of interacting components; and four domains are identified
(modified from Clapham 1981). Each of these plays a role in describing the full context of
contemporary environmental issues. Models like these are always oversimplifications, but
Convention