Welcome to the Environment Reporting Education Resource

Meet Zoe, our State of the Environment reporting (SoE) friend. Zoe will take you on a journey through the education resource for the State of the Environment Report for South Australia 2003. The types of information provided include:

• Fact sheets; lots of up-to-date information about South Australia's environment.
• Case studies; find out about environmental projects at other schools.
• Research ideas; explore the environment by asking some important questions.
• Community and internet resources; find out what other information is available to learn more about our environment.
• SACSA Framework tools; an environmental reporting guide for educators.
• Tools for planning and delivering actions for the environment.

You can use the education resource to find out what is happening to the South Australian environment, learn about the kinds of environmental care projects you can participate in and even how to develop your own environmental action project. If you want more information about the state of our environment you can find it at the environment reporting site.

The full State of the Environment Report for South Australia 2003 is available here, including access to comprehensive monitoring and evaluation information about South Australia's environment.

What is State of Environment Reporting (SoE)?

State of Environment reporting is a process that has been in place around the world for 10 years. Reporting about the environment shows what is happening in the environment and provides information to government, industry, non-government organisations and all sections of the community. The reports help to:

• raise public awareness about environmental issues
• educate about the impacts of human lifestyle on the environment
• provide information about developing policy for the environment
• assess the performance of environmental policy and programs
• establish scientific information about the state of our environment.

Australia's first SoE report was published in 1988 with the second in 2001. In South Australia, the Environment Protection Authority (EPA) is required to produce an SoE Report at least once every 5 years. The Environment Minister then presents the report to Parliament. Many local governments also undertake SoE reporting.

An important function of an SoE report is to compare how the environment is changing over time. The 2003 report is therefore a comparison of the current environmental situation to that of 5 years ago in South Australia.

What is the Structure of an SoE Report?

The most common structure used in SoE reports is the 'Pressure - State - Response' (PSR) model. Using this model, the state of the environment is assessed by looking at what pressures are impacting on the environment, what condition (or state) the environment is in, and what is happening in response to the issues.

Environment Reporting Themes

The State of the Environment Report for South Australia 2003 is divided into themes to help classify the environment. In South Australia, the 7 themes are: atmosphere, inland waters, coasts and the sea, land resources, biodiversity, human settlements and heritage. Each environmental theme reports on a number of environmental issues. These have been chosen for the report as the main topics of concern within each theme. For example, under the atmosphere theme, the major issues are air quality, ozone depletion and the enhanced greenhouse effect. For each issue, environmental indicators are used to measure the condition of the environment.

Each theme is represented in the education resource with an icon:

Atmosphere		Land resources
Biodiversity		Human settlements
	Coasts and the sea	Heritage
Inland waters

What is an Indicator?

Environmental monitoring and reporting helps to track major trends and changes within a system. Indicators help to make the monitoring and reporting process simpler. The same indicators can be measured and compared over time so that reporting remains uniform and relevant. In relation to the PSR model (or adaptations of the model), there are 3 types of indicators:

• Pressure indicators describe the pressures from human activity that affect the environment

• State (or condition) indicators measure the quality of the environment and the functioning of important environmental processes

• Response indicators identify the human actions or efforts that have been made to address pressures on the environment.

How Does Sustainability Relate to SoE Reporting?

Sustainability is the ability of the earth and its ecosystems and resources being maintained into the future and keep providing a healthy home for humans and all other species of plants and animals. Environmental management and monitoring is a very important part of building a sustainable world. SoE reporting helps us to measure whether or not our actions are achieving sustainability. For example, we can measure how much water we are using from the River Murray and work out if we can keep using that amount in the future. Close study of the SoE Report for South Australia 2003 will show us that the way we are using water from the Murray can not be sustained into the future. When we work out that our actions are unsustainable, we need to think of ways to achieve sustainability.

Linking SoE with Teaching

The Environmental Reporting Education web site is designed to connect with learning and learning outcomes in the South Australian Curriculum Standards and Accountability (SACSA) Framework. The environmental reporting education web-site includes comprehensive and up-to-date information on the state of our environment, provides multiple pathways to access information, identifies resources and demonstrates possibilities for taking environmental action.

The information is designed so that teachers and students can construct learning opportunities in different ways, accounting for diversity of approaches to teaching and learning. Multiple levels of complexity built into the web-site provide the opportunity for learners to continually extend and deepen what they have already learned. Therefore, the environmental reporting education web-site is designed to be used with Essential Learnings, Enterprise and Vocational Education (EVE), and Cross Curriculum Perspectives.

Environmental reporting education supports children and students to develop understandings, capacities and dispositions to engage with changing times as thoughtful, active, responsive and committed local, national and global citizens.

Acknowledgments

The Environmental Education Unit of the Department for Environment and Heritage would like to acknowledge many contributors from the Department for Education and Children's Services, the Office of Sustainability, the DEH web unit and Corporate Profile for the development of this site.

Special thanks goes to Simon Kneebone for his illustrations.