Conference Program

One of the central issues in the sociology of education concerns inequalities: a democratic school system is expected to work towards reducing differences in terms of access, learning opportunities, skills, and outcomes. A still underexplored dimension, however, is inequality in access to green spaces. The territorial location of a school can have a significant impact: for some students, contact with natural environments may be almost absent, while for others it represents a genuine “green privilege.”

To what extent can municipalities, through their planning instruments (in particular the SECAPs – Sustainable Energy and Climate Action Plans), recognize and compensate for these inequalities by orienting their intervention priorities? (Carrosio and Cogliati Dezza, 2025) Is it possible, for instance, to prioritize the implementation of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) near schools located in peripheral or highly urbanized areas?

Urban climate adaptation measures, including NBS, are never neutral. They can certainly contribute to mitigation and adaptation to the effects of global warming (e.g., depaving, reduction of heat islands, water management, shading, climate shelters), but they can also address a less visible yet crucial phenomenon: the “extinction of experience of nature” (Pyle, 1993). However, when such measures are implemented unevenly—“green enough” in some areas and almost absent in others—they end up creating a structural advantage for certain schools over others.

This raises the question of whether a form of “positive discrimination” by municipalities is needed, especially in more fragile contexts, to rebalance profoundly unequal starting conditions.

Between recent regulatory frameworks such as the Nature Restoration Law (Regulation (EU) 2024/1991), which urges Member States to restore degraded ecosystems, and the urgency to also “restore” students’ attention (Kaplan & Kaplan, 1989; Kaplan, 1995) and protect their mental health through contact with natural environments, Europe—and progressively its Member States—are responding by recognizing a stronger role for young people.

In particular, Italy, with Law No. 167 of 10 November 2025, which introduces the Generational Impact Assessment (GIA) for legislative acts, aims to give greater substance to Article 9 of the Constitution in protecting future generations.

From this perspective, climate justice, social justice, and political action converge to strengthen students’ environmental identity (Clayton, 2003) and to restore space for youth activism, calling on young people not only to endure ongoing transformations but also to intervene in the public sphere with concrete and well-argued proposals (Mansion et al., 2025).

A case study is examined in the province of Monza, one of the most urbanized areas in Italy, where two schools, as part of the PAESC Giovani project (INDIRE – EuCliPa.IT), submitted a formal letter to their respective mayors with proposals for NBS to be integrated into the SECAP. In addition, another school asked its municipality to adopt the Covenant of Mayors and, subsequently, the SECAP: this would be one of the first cases in Europe in which a municipal administration is prompted by students from a public school to join the Covenant of Mayors.