Sustainability, education and sharing: from Italy to Finland

Despite the difficulties, the international Erasmus+ GEOclimHOME Pro project is continuing: behind the scenes, preparations are under way for remote activities with Italian and Finnish students, including the virtual meeting in February, as well as work on subsequent meetings and the final stages of the project, which is due to conclude in December.

The exchange involves secondary school pupils from three geoparks; in February, it specifically involved the Sesia Val Grande Geopark and the Rokua Geopark in Finland. The meeting took place online, using the distance learning format with which we are now all familiar, focusing on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals.

The pupils from Vaalan Lukio in Vaala and the Istituto Cobianchi in Verbania therefore focused on the theme of sustainability, which formed the centrepiece of three days’ work during which they took part in lessons, data analysis, interviews and online presentations on the topics of climate change and sustainable tourism.

On the first day, the programme kicked off with a lecture by Outi Kulusjärvi, who holds a PhD in Tourism Studies from the University of Oulu, on sustainable travel.

The Finnish students then focused on the lectures given by Mari Kuukasjärvi, Head of Planning at the North Ostrobothnia Regional Council, who spoke about sustainable land-use planning in Northern Ostrobothnia, and by Vesa Krökki, CEO of Humanpolis and Rokua Geopark, who spoke about sustainable development in the tourism sector. The activities continued with the construction of the CanSat – a simulation of a real satellite, integrated into the size and shape of a soft drink can – thanks to Sari Niitty Lampi, a maths and chemistry teacher, and Jarmo Kamula, a maths and physics teacher.

The Italian students, on the other hand, worked in groups on two topics: the sustainable development of mountain areas and the analysis and interpretation of meteorological data.

During the first activity, the pupils interviewed Federico Tognetto, a geologist and ski instructor, and Cristina Viani, a geographer specialising in glaciology, both of whom are involved in research projects at the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Turin, as well as Ilaria Selvaggio, a naturalist who works as a science communicator and nature guide with the Sesia Val Grande Geopark; The pupils asked questions with a view to reflecting on and assessing which tourist activities are best suited to the sustainable development of mountain areas.

The second activity, on the other hand, was devoted to analysing the meteorological data collected at the Cobianchi Institute’s own weather station from 1898 to 1920; in a second phase of the work, the analysed data were compared with that collected by a nearby research centre from 1998 to 2020 to highlight similarities and differences and assess how climate change has affected the area under study. The scientific and educational nature of the project was undoubtedly enhanced by the added value of the dataset collected by the very institute the pupils attend, during its long history of technical, scientific and educational work.

On the third day of the workshop, the students worked on their presentations of the results of the activities they had carried out, which were shared with all participants during the final plenary session.

To follow the project, here is the official blog: https://geoclimhomeblog.wordpress.com/