20
In response, APIEL strives to fi ll this gap by improving education for environmental
leadership with sustainability issues in mind. This chapter will review the concept of the
environmental leader through a discourse on leadership. As well, it will introduce the
authors’ experiences in fostering environmental leader by establishing and implementing environmental leadership education over the past four years. The discourse on environmental leadership illustrates how environmental leaders have been educated to cope
with emerging environmental issues. The concepts of transformational/transformative-,
eco-, collective, green, and communicative leadership provide a map to understand the
evolution of the theory and practice of environmental leadership education.
Keywords Discourse on leadership • Environmental issues • Environmental
leadership • Leadership experience
2.1 Discourse on Environmental Leadership
1
What is so different about environmental leadership from leadership in other areas? To
answer this question, this chapter begins with the fact that very little research has been
done on the issue of environmental leadership, although a comprehensive review of the
literature on leadership itself uncovers focuses on business, political, and public leadership. Books on business leadership typically contain neither a substantive analysis of the
psychology of future orientation nor a sense of the larger systemic constraints on future
activities that must be taken into account by leaders [ 1 ]. For instance, the idea of a leader
for the future contains little refl ection on the larger systemic constraint on future activity,
including climate change, as Heifetz [ 2 ] put it, “our focus on the production of wealth
rather than coexistence with nature has led us to neglect fragile factors in our ecosystem.” However, recently, scholarly textbooks on leadership have addressed the importance of the natural environment as a signifi cant context for leadership, or as an
“emerging issue” of interest [ 3 ], and Heifetz [ 2 ]’s theory of adaptive leadership provides
an important starting point for thinking about environmental leadership.
2.1.1 History of Environmental Education and the Need
for Environmental Leaders
Environmental education has traditionally focused on how to foster changes in individuals that are associated with pro-environmental actions and behaviors [ 4 ]. As Table 2.1
shows, environmental education has developed over the past 50 years from the perspectives of natural resource management or the management of environmental organizations. Few researchers have placed the relationship between leadership and the natural
environment at center stage and examined it from diverse viewpoints [ 5 ].
1 This section is written by one of the authors, Kyoungjin J. An from Department of Urban
Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Japan.
T. Akiyama et al.
In response, APIEL strives to fi ll this gap by improving education for environmental
leadership with sustainability issues in mind. This chapter will review the concept of the
environmental leader through a discourse on leadership. As well, it will introduce the
authors’ experiences in fostering environmental leader by establishing and implementing environmental leadership education over the past four years. The discourse on environmental leadership illustrates how environmental leaders have been educated to cope
with emerging environmental issues. The concepts of transformational/transformative-,
eco-, collective, green, and communicative leadership provide a map to understand the
evolution of the theory and practice of environmental leadership education.
Keywords Discourse on leadership • Environmental issues • Environmental
leadership • Leadership experience
2.1 Discourse on Environmental Leadership
1
What is so different about environmental leadership from leadership in other areas? To
answer this question, this chapter begins with the fact that very little research has been
done on the issue of environmental leadership, although a comprehensive review of the
literature on leadership itself uncovers focuses on business, political, and public leadership. Books on business leadership typically contain neither a substantive analysis of the
psychology of future orientation nor a sense of the larger systemic constraints on future
activities that must be taken into account by leaders [ 1 ]. For instance, the idea of a leader
for the future contains little refl ection on the larger systemic constraint on future activity,
including climate change, as Heifetz [ 2 ] put it, “our focus on the production of wealth
rather than coexistence with nature has led us to neglect fragile factors in our ecosystem.” However, recently, scholarly textbooks on leadership have addressed the importance of the natural environment as a signifi cant context for leadership, or as an
“emerging issue” of interest [ 3 ], and Heifetz [ 2 ]’s theory of adaptive leadership provides
an important starting point for thinking about environmental leadership.
2.1.1 History of Environmental Education and the Need
for Environmental Leaders
Environmental education has traditionally focused on how to foster changes in individuals that are associated with pro-environmental actions and behaviors [ 4 ]. As Table 2.1
shows, environmental education has developed over the past 50 years from the perspectives of natural resource management or the management of environmental organizations. Few researchers have placed the relationship between leadership and the natural
environment at center stage and examined it from diverse viewpoints [ 5 ].
1 This section is written by one of the authors, Kyoungjin J. An from Department of Urban
Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo, Japan.
T. Akiyama et al.