Jukka Holopainen was seven years old when he first witnessed man’s arrogance towards the environment. While watching dolphins chase fish near the boat he was travelling on during a family vacation, his uncle’s friend pulled out a shotgun and – to the delight of the adults onboard – shot one of the dolphins. “I wanted to push the man into the sea,” Jukka recalls.

As a child he dreamed of becoming a park ranger so he could protect nature. Later, Jukka broadened his knowledge of conservation by joining the Haribon Foundation, an organisation dedicated to preserving biodiversity, while studying philosophy in university.

While teaching English at the Southwestern University in Cebu City, Philippines, in 1998, Jukka noticed that environmental groups often talked about the importance of environmental education but didn’t train teachers how to explain the issues in the classroom. “I gathered my teacher friends and we experimented on incorporating the environment into our lesson plans.”

But it wasn’t until he returned from a study trip to the United States in 1999 that he felt confident enough to take his message to the nation and formed the Centre for Environmental Awareness and Education (CEAE) in Manila. He and a friend visited schools across the Philippines, training teachers how to use the environment, wildlife and ecology to illuminate the subjects they were teaching. “You can use geometry to calculate the height of trees, or teach ratios...