A More Sustainable Campus, A More Sustainable Role Model, and A More Sustainable Education System

Abstract

Referring to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals: 3. Good health and well-being, 4. Quality education, 9. Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure, to cultivate a sustainable campus for the primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong will not only help the region to achieve UN SDG 3 & 9, having more sustainable buildings and better living condition for its citizens, with lower energy consumption and public health expenses, but also nurture the encouragement and knowledge of our students towards sustainability in long-run while reaching UN SDG 4. This article will look into an existing example in Hong Kong, Ta Ku Ling Ling Ying Public School, to demonstrate its strengths and to initiate a possible perspective for the primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong.

Content

A Terrific Achievement

Ta Ku Ling Ling Ying Public School is one of the very few local schools in Hong Kong that is constructed and designed to have a lot of space and huge green areas with gardens, fields and even an awarded mini tropical forest inside the campus and the campus is about 10,000 square meters with over 400 students and 40 staff. (Schooland 2022) The campus is rather horizontal than the typically vertical in Hong Kong with only three floors and the third floor has another sky garden which is described by the local media as a unique campus in Hong Kong with the absolute sign of mother nature. Moreover, Ling Ying has achieved many local awards for its own gardening design. It is the only primary school in Hong Kong which has the Worm Farm Septic Tank System (Natural Wastewater Treatment Systems) (A&A Worm Farm Waste Systems 2022; Naturalflow NZ 2022) for a sustainable campus operation. It is as well one of the only few primary schools in Hong Kong that can organise and practise Forest Education (FSA 2022) at its own campus. (灼見名家 2020; Ling Ying Public School 2022)

The Challenge for Hong Kong

The climate change problem on our earth, is becoming worse every day. The greenhouse, carbon dioxide and other toxic emission levels are increasing consistently. (Rogner, H.H.; Zhou, D.; Bradley, R.; Crabbé, P.; Edenhofer, O.; Hare, B.; Kuijpers, L.; Yamaguchi, M. 2007) According to Emami, N.; Marteinsson, B.; Heinonen, J. (2016), one of the most serious areas that generates massive emissions and pollutants, is the buildings of our living environment. This indeed destroys the connectedness between human and nature in result of poor living environment, diseases and mental issues. For instance, in Hong Kong around 60% of the total energy consumption comes from buildings (including building up new ones and demolishing old ones) and its daily operations. (EMSD HKSAR 2010)

Therefore, by following the United Nation 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, Goal 3 & 9 ought to be addressed heavily regarding our school campus enhancement in Hong Kong which are to run our schools economically efficient, socially and environmentally friendly to improve students’ and teachers’ physical and mental health; to have a sustainable community for human settlements, thus more green areas and natural settlements are needed for our students as they need to grow up with a more suitable environment. (UN 2022)

Theories To Address The Challenges

Referring to the benefits of Permaculture and Horticulture, Ceballos et al. (2017) and IPBES (2019) state that as people are living in a less sustainable life in the past decades, climate crisis and the loss of biodiversity have been worsened to further destroy the relationship between nature and human. By following ‘The Pathways to Nature Connectedness’ (Lumber R., Richardson M & Sheffield D. 2017), Richardson et al. (2020) has illustrated in their research with numerous empirical results and real case studies, to encourage and rebuild the connectedness between human and nature, thus the mistakes causing climate changes and environmental destruction can be reversed and corrected so human development can be sustainable then. Hence, we have to face the challenge of losing connectedness between human and nature which causes poor living conditions and various harms to the sustainable growth of human communities and this also shows us the opportunity to reverse negative impacts on all the students and teachers in Hong Kong.

More importantly, most of the primary and secondary schools in Hong Kong are lack of spaces and greenness and the Horticultural and Permacultural influences are extremely limited in many cases that many schools do not even have a standard playground to conduct daily PE lessons but to use the public basketball courts and football fields. Furthermore, the sizes of existing playgrounds of some schools are smaller than a normal badminton court and almost all the subsidized schools in Hong Kong need to share the district public sport center for their sports days. These existing campuses with limited facilities and space are called ‘Matchbox schools’, thus there is a need to upgrade the school campuses in Hong Kong today. (Oriental Daily 2016; HKGBC 2014)

To address this issue, we also need to take a look at Edward O. Wilson’s theory called ‘Biophilia hypothesis’ (Kellert 1993), meaning that human has the inborn preference to be connected to the nature to cope with their survivals. Respectively Lumber R., Richardson M. and Sheffield D. (2017) have surveyed participants with 9 nature indicators adapted from Kellert and Wilson (1993) to prove the need for human to have natural connectedness (sensory contact, emotion, meaning, beauty and compassion). Moreover, Wilson (1992) states that younger human (e.g. pupils) is comparatively more connected to the grassland-like environment (the birthplace for human in Africa). Hence, we can look into the school campuses in Hong Kong, in order to seek for the possibility of sustainability towards their operations to lower the carbon emissions and to generate well-being for all stakeholders inside the school along with Horticultural and Permacultural approaches.

Opportunities To Make Better Schools

The opportunity as we can see is that Ling Ying Public School can possibly be a role model for other primary schools or even secondary schools and institutes in Hong Kong. A campus integrated with nature can not only enhance the environments for both teachers and students to speed up and modify their studying and working processes and progresses, but also make them healthier in long-run to lower the cost of medical expenses. Moreover, the natural environment can be used as a living textbook (forest education) for better education whereas ordinary schools in Hong Kong cannot conduct these lessons in regular school settings. Eventually the Horticultural practice and Permacultural approach of Ling Ying will become a positive circle that the appreciated environment will help students to be educated to love it back and be able to live with it (the nature), thus a sustainable cycle occurs in that community.

It is understood that firstly green space and sustainable urban area can refine human well-being, especially towards children, secondly Biophilia hypothesis and the Connectedness between human and nature are crucial towards our living environment and particularly children and teachers spend more than half of their time at schools almost daily and thirdly permacultural and horticultural approaches to school settings will help all involved parties to achieve the first and second practices in reality.

Furthermore, some recommendations can be made towards future improvements: firstly, Ling Ying ought to be able to review its current permacultural and horticultural practices for minimizing the cost of doing it and maximizing the optimal utility of permaculture and horticulture in practice such as reviewing the structures of its existing gardens and building new ones. Secondly, the righteous actions regarding using permaculture and horticulture of Ling Ying should be promoted, to let other schools be aware of such an approach and finally the government shall raise this concern in the public to attract private enterprises and taxpayers to contribute to develop these practices in the schools with extra funding as the outcome will eventually help the entire society to gain by lowering the public medical cost.

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