Integral Approach to Environmental Leadership Education : an Exploration in the Heihe River Basin, Northwestern China

An education program called Asian Program for Incubation of Environmental Leaders (APIEL) was established in 2008 by the University of Tokyo. The need arises to equip the students with a wide knowledge base and practical skills related to global and regional environmental issues. This paper explores an integral framework for environmental leadership education, and show how this framework has been used to conduct one of the APIEL field exercises in the Heihe River basin, Northwestern Arid China. The framework was developed by modifying Ken Wilber’s 4-quadrant approach. Our conclusion is that the use of an integral approach is effective in not only understanding environmental issues of complexity, but also development and management of environmental leadership education programs.