Israel's Environment – 2014: Characterizing Paramount Educational Changes

1. Determining the ecological footprint as a measure of personal environmental responsibility for Israel's pupils and their families;
2. Increasing direct contact with nature as an emotional/ethical basis for ecological harmony, and developing leadership by bolstering the youth movements and upgrading the annual school trip;
3. Sustainable food and healthy nutrition as issues that are linked to global balance, personal health, and animal welfare;
4. Placing educational emphasis on environmental justice and acknowledging the implications of the existing gaps within Israeli society;
5. Demography as a central environmental/social challenge that emerges from an understanding of the concepts of long-term thinking, and intergenerational responsibility.

Biography:
Prof. Tal's career comprises a balance between academia and public interest advocacy. He is presently a visiting professor at the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, and holds a faculty post in the Department of Desert Ecology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer Sheva, Israel. He has held faculty appointments at Tel Aviv University and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, and was a visiting professor at the University of Otago in New Zealand. Between 1990 and 1998 he served as an adjunct faculty member at Harvard University. Prof. Tal was the founding director of Adam Teva V'din (the Israel Union for Environmental Defense), a leading public interest law group in which he was active ​