All Hands on Deck: Solutions-Based Pedagogies for Global Environmental Politics

Given the severity of climate change and environmental degradation, we might need to take the stance that our students can contribute to solutions for environmental problems. In this forum article, we propose a solutions-based pedagogy for global environmental politics in which we take students as experts and a potential source of innovation, akin to how students are treated at technical universities. We believe this approach to hold the promise of creating solutions as well as an empowered generation of future problem solvers. We think that international politics students are uniquely placed to find solutions to pressing environmental problems with their state-of-the-art knowledge on international politics in combination with idealism and an ability to think outside the box. We propose a course that harnesses this potential. This article provides a theoretical underpinning for a solutions-based pedagogy and places it within the wider pedagogical traditions in international relations, in particular critical pedagogies.