30,000 hectares of coal – and a few glimmers of European hope future-european-forests – a long-term ERASMUS+ School project being developed as an example for promoting green competencies within the EU-GATE project.
As part of an autumn excursion from October 15th to 30th, 2026, 12 students from the Oberstufen-Kolleg Bielefeld and 7 Belgian students from the OLVP Sint Niklaas traveled to the partner school Monte da Vila in O’Grove, Galicia, to conduct a reforestation study following catastrophic forest fires. The students already knew each other from video conferences, and some had met in person before. This sub-project focused on the long-term planned establishment of a study in Froxán (2022: 12,500 ha forest fire; projects since 2023) and a survey of neighboring valleys in the Ourense region, which burned in August 2025 (a total of approximately 70,000 ha of forest fires), added to the program at short notice. The aim was to sow collected seeds in these areas.
For a video (German language), please use the link.
Where 30,000 hectares of forest burned in August 2025 – a bleak outlook…
Current developments, problems, and the possibility for schools to test their solutions.
One sometimes gets the impression that schools continue to teach curricula as if foreseeable global emergencies and acute political crises didn’t exist, and as if we had centuries to funnel millions more young people through schools so that sometime later – but not too soon, and certainly not all of them – they can begin to transform the world into a more sustainable one. We are allowed to continue trying our hand at problem-oriented learning, discussing academic solutions in practiced exam formats to earn points and grades. We learn to use artificial intelligence in its energy-consuming electronic simulations to paint a green and colorful picture of the world again, while our economic, social, and practical intelligence tends it to be gray, hot, and species-poor. Or we fly to places where it’s still beautiful and bearable – but please, not too foreign. Fortunately, there are still students who take breaks from these classes, invest large portions of their autumn break, and catch up on missed exam material to do something else, something real.
Implementing the “Regulation for the Restoration of Damaged Ecosystems”
future-european-forests, a long-term ERASMUS+ school project series
The Oberstufen-Kolleg, is involved locally, in Thuringia and Galicia, in projects that use the forest ecosystem as an example to explore and monitor small-scale, long-term studies on strategies for reforestation or forest conversion towards more resilient ecosystems (Oberstufen-Kolleg’s scientific departments yearbook). The students bravely—albeit sometimes vulnerably—face the problems of climate change and clear-cutting, forest fires and bark beetles, accepting them and then considering concrete, small-scale solutions, the effects of which we will monitor in the future.
Students from Belgium, Spain, and Germany are planting and sowing trees in burned areas where local seeds cannot be used anymore to ensure biodiverse natural regeneration.
Bringing the “GreenComp – the European Competence Framework for Sustainability” to life
Acquiring knowledge, skills, and attitudes for and within the project
Working on such a project presents a genuine, complex challenge that the learners have chosen voluntarily. Successfully managing this challenge requires in-depth knowledge of ecological, social, economic, and cultural aspects; knowledge of how to plan small-scale scientific investigations; skills for cooperation and practical work; the courage and patience to negotiate within the group as well as with political leaders in the local forestry administration; and, above all, a significant degree of vision and valuing for sustainability. This type of project thus fulfills the conditions for being genuinely challenged in the four areas of the EU’s green competences and for acquiring competencies through action.
Students who learn something new specifically to be able to contribute their new knowledge, who talk to and coordinate with affected people on site, who work together with other young people to restore small areas in a burned ecosystem with their own hands so that it might better survive the next fire and regenerate from within – these students embody sustainability values, embrace the complexity of sustainability, envision a sustainable future, and act for sustainability in this local project. All takes place in real-world contexts, making it worthwhile to invest learning and teaching time. The fact that parts of an ecosystem are simultaneously restored is, in our opinion, essential.
Education for Sustainable Development through the development of something sustainable!
The design and evaluation of studies in our projects ensures highschool-level work.
A significant problem with ESD projects is the often limited time allotted, as they can interfere with studying for the high school diploma (university entrance exam). However, when time is taken, upper secondary school-level depth is achieved. For example, one must not only learn the concept of resilience but also consider how to build and secure the resilience of a future ecosystem and how to experimentally investigate the effectiveness of the chosen strategy.
We are therefore planting ‚biodiversity islands‘ where, before the forest fires, a pine plantation stood and where no parent trees can provide species-rich seeds and natural regeneration. But which tree species might be suitable for a future climate there? And how do we plant them so that they can thrive under the already unfavorable conditions of a hot, summer-dry clear-cut area? Planning such a study, not just academically, but actually implementing it, requires deeply ingrained sustainability values, must consider complexity, demands vision, and cannot be achieved without real action. This is how Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and introductory science education go hand in hand.
Laura and Lucia from our partner school in O’Grove are planting cork oaks, Pyrenean oaks, and Portuguese oaks, among others, in the assisted migration study.
A drop in the ocean on an ever-heating, round stone in space – but hopefully, more will follow that can trigger change.
That there will be further catastrophic fires is as certain as death and taxes – as long as schools impart knowledge of yesterdays without being able or willing to use it today to shape a livable world of tomorrow and to transform themselves in the present. And as long as society doesn’t change. That’s what we’re working towards.
The Oberstufen-Kolleg (OS-BI) is developing and testing concepts within the ERASMUS consortium “GATE” for acquiring “green competences.” This involves education for sustainable development, which we aim to realize in these projects by developing something that will hopefully be sustainable and evaluating it in the following years.
Many thanks to all the college students and stuff members for your commitment to these projects!
Many thanks for the partial funding of this development work to:
- the management of the Oberstufen-Kolleg pilot school
- the Oberstufen-Kolleg’s academic department (WE-OS) for supporting the OS’s GATE project, for which Dr. Andreas Stockey works as an expert and Noah Wessendorf documents the project in pictures and sound.
- the national Erasmus agency at the German Pedagogical Exchange Service
- the EU Erasmus team
Literature:
Bianchi, G., Pisiotis, U., Cabrera Giraldez, M. GreenComp – The European Competence Framework for Sustainability. Bacigalupo, M., Punie, Y. (Eds.), EUR 30955 DE, Publications Office of the European Union, Luxembourg, 2022; ISBN 978-92-76-53213-2, doi:10.2760/161792, JRC128040
Schweihofen, C., Kirchhoff, T., Arkenau, C., Bekel, H., Stockey, A., Tennhoff, N., & de la Fuente Villar, J. (2022). Aufforstungsprojekte als Bürger*innenwissenschaft in der Oberstufe im Kontext „Bildung für Nachhaltige Entwicklung“ (AProBOS BNE): Projektbericht zur Entwicklung von Unterrichtsmaterialien für einen anwendungs- und methodenorientierten Unterricht. WE_OS-Jb – Jahrbuch Der Wissenschaftlichen Einrichtung Oberstufen-Kolleg, 5(1), 92–116. https://doi.org/10.11576/we_os-6138
Further information:
On ESD: https://www.oberstufen-kolleg.de/schule/bne/
Future-european-forests – some parts oft he projects history:
10_2022: https://www.oberstufen-kolleg.de/exkursion-bergwaldprojekt-zukunftswald-unterschonau/
02_2023: https://www.oberstufen-kolleg.de/suedtiroler-baeume-im-bielefelder-wald/
05_2023: Erasmus+Schule: “Das Wiederherstellen von Ökosystemen lernt man nicht (nur) im Klassenraum!“ OS-BI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Je9pnGr27os
07_2024: Anne-Katrin Wehrmann:https://www.gew.de/aktuelles/detailseite/raus-aus-dem-klassenzimmer
03_2025 https://www.oberstufen-kolleg.de/projekt-zukunftswald-nachhaltig-anpacken/
08_2025: “Neue Lernkultur: Bildung für nachhaltige Entwicklung”: https://www.boell.de/de/media/podcast-episode-podigee/neue-lernkultur-bildung-fuer-nachhaltige-entwicklung-46
Exploring and evaluating sustainable excursions of schools (2025): LINK