Education has long been heralded in sustainable development discourses as pre-requisite for macro-economic development. The idea is that the intellectual and practical development of a population should lead to technical progress while fostering the cultural conditions favorable to social and economic change. Similarly, development paradigms increasingly embrace the notion that sound ecological management is critical for the provision of the ecosystem services so important for rural livelihoods, as well as services of interest to a broader set of beneficiaries. Payment schemes and markets for ecosystem services (erosion control, conservation of productive habitats, and carbon sequestration) are lauded by economists, development agents, and natural scientists alike as mechanisms for providing income to rural residents while conserving biodiversity. A significant challenge to rural people who could potentially benefit from these ecological markets is their lack of information and knowledge not only of the policies and markets related to these services, but also in some cases about the finer details related to the ecological basis for their provision and technical basis for measurement.

Results/Conclusions

At the intersection of these two development discourses lies ecological education which can help to reduce these conceptual and semantic barriers. Here we consider the role of ecological knowledge as a tool for empowerment, self-governance and access to these ecological markets. Second, we consider how rural people can acquire both ecological and market knowledge that enables sustainable management of their own natural resources and engage equitably in markets and payment for environmental service schemes.

Specifically, we critically examine the role of ecological education in helping rural communities engage more knowledgably in natural resource management practices and markets and payment schemes for environmental services. The two learner groups we focus on are development agents and the rural people themselves. We discuss three distinct approaches to environmental education of these learners: environmental education for conservation, technical training for rural producers, and community-based rural education. The first two are top-down approaches, where outsiders tend to dictate curricula to local communities with the goal of promoting conservation and/or economic development. The third approach is internally driven by communities with the goal of maintaining local economic and ecological integrity, and changing the perception of rural areas as inevitably impoverished. Examination of the three types yields recommendations for effectively empowering rural populations in negotiating conservation and development schemes.