Education for Sustainability

Stephen Sterling, John Huckle

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781853832567
• eBook ISBN: 9781134170333
• Topic: Economics
• Subtopic: Development Economics
• Index: Economics

Now with new Introduction and additional new chapter.

At a time when polls suggest that a majority of young British people believe that the future will offer a worse quality of life than the present, it is becoming imperative that children are introduced to principles of sustainability through the educational system from an early age, and that these principles are regularly reinforced and built upon. The government's own Panel on Sustainable Development has called for a 'comprehensive strategy for environmental and training', and NGOs frequently point to education as a key policy instrument in the transition to sustainable development. This is the first book published in Britain to provide an overview of the theory and practice of these issues. It brings together contributions from environmental educators working in the formal and informal sectors and in continuing education, and provides perspectives on the philosophy, politics and pedagogy of education for sustainability, as well as case studies and pointers towards good practice. Part I establishes some initial perspectives on sustainability, education and the role of NGOs; the potential for education for sustainability in the formal and informal sectors is assessed in Parts II and III; Part IV discusses its development as part of the greening of business and local government; and Part V looks at the way forward.

Part I

Perspectives on Education for Sustainability

Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and a continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our wellbeing. However, integration of environment and development concerns and greater attention to them will lead to the fulfilment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems and a safer, more prosperous future. No nation can achieve this on its own; but together we can — in a global partnership for sustainable development.

(UNCED, ‘Preamble’, Agenda 21, Regency Press, London, 1992)

Sustainable development means improving the quality of life whilst living within the carrying capacity of the supporting ecosystems.

(IUCN, UNEP and WWF–UK, The World Conservation Strategy: Caring for the Earth, Earthscan Publications Ltd, London, 1991)

There are 13 general indicators of a sustainable community: (1) Resources are used efficiently and waste is minimized by closing cycles; (2) pollution is limited to levels which natural ecosystems can cope with and without damage; (3) the diversity of nature is valued and protected; (4) where possible local needs are met locally; (5) everyone has access to good food, water, shelter and fuel at reasonable cost; (6) everyone has the opportunity to undertake satisfying work in a diverse economy; the value of unpaid work is recognized, whilst payments for work are fair and fairly distributed; (7) people’s good health is protected by creating safe, clean, pleasant environments and health services which emphasize prevention of illness as well as proper care for the sick; (8) access to facilities, services, goods and other people is not achieved at the expense of the environment or limited to those with cars; (9) people live without fear of personal violence from crime or persecution because of their personal beliefs, race, gender or sexuality; (10) everyone has access to the skills, knowledge and information needed to enable them to play a full part in society; (11) all sections of the community are empowered to participate in decision-making; (12) opportunities for culture, leisure and recreation are readily available to all; (13) places, spaces and objects combine meaning and beauty with utility. Settlements are ‘human’ in scale and form. Diversity and local distinctiveness are valued and protected.

(LGMB, Educating for a Sustainable Local Community, LGMB, Luton, 1994)

Education is critical for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of the people to address environment and development issues. … it is also critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development.

(UNCED, Agenda 21, Regency Press, London, 1992, Chapter 36)

We see ‘easing down’ from unsustainability not as a sacrifice, but as an opportunity to stop battering against the earth’s limits and to start transcending self-imposed and unnecessary limits in human institutions, mindsets, beliefs and ethics.

(D H Meadows, D L Meadows and J Randers, Beyond the Limits: Global Collapse or a Sustainable Future, Earthscan Publications Ltd, London, 1992)

Chapter 1

Realizing Sustainability in Changing Times

John Huckle

Like liberty, justice and democracy, sustainability has no single and agreed meaning. It takes on meaning within different political ideologies and programmes underpinned by different kinds of knowledge, values and philosophy. Its meanings are contested and a key function of education for sustainability (EFS) is to help people reflect and act on these meanings and so realize alternative futures in more informed and democratic ways. This chapter promotes such reflection by relating debates about sustainability to the changing nature of modern societies, different political ideologies and utopias, and contemporary environmental politics.

If sustainability is socially constructed and contested then so too is nature. While most of us are taught to believe in an external nature separate from society there is today little if any nature which is untouched or unaltered by people. We ourselves are nature and so too are the objects and environments which surround us. Nature does have objective properties and causal powers which limit social development, but these are mediated by social processes. The social use and construction of nature lies at the heart of our environmental predicament and of debates surrounding sustainability, and it is with this process that we begin.

To survive and develop people must work with the human and nonhuman parts of nature to produce the goods and services they need and to reproduce those things that make this production possible. Maintaining a society in the long term requires not only a secure and continuing supply of the raw materials, human labour and technology used directly in the production process, but also a similar supply of the conditions that make the process possible. These conditions include resources, like clean water and genetic material from the wild, and services such as the climate stabilization and nutrient recycling carried out by forests and wetlands. They also include the health and education of workers and their families, a reasonable level of social stability, and the provision of sufficient well-planned urban and rural space to avoid congestion and promote human wellbeing.

At different times and in different places societies organize people differently to produce goods and services, to reproduce people and to reproduce the conditions of production. The social relations between people, in the workplace, the household, the school and elsewhere generally reflect different patterns of ownership and control of the means and conditions of production. They govern how production and reproduction take place and the kinds of technology that mediate people’s relations with the rest of nature. Such relations are more or less harmonious and democratic and therefore more or less conducive to ensuring that prevailing forms of political economy (economic production and social reproduction) meet the common interest in human wellbeing and long-term survival. A sustainable political economy will be both ecologically and socially sustainable. It will protect and enhance the life support systems on which it depends and develop social institutions that generate social harmony and commitment to shared values (Robinson et al, 1990).

Different societies regulate political economy in different ways and these modes of regulation are threatened at times when there are problems of maintaining economic output and/or reproducing the conditions of production. We are currently living through such a time. Dominant forms of economic production and distribution are failing to meet the needs of millions of the world’s people and are seriously damaging the conditions of production on which they depend. We have created forms of nature we can no longer regulate and control and there is an urgent need to move towards more sustainable forms of political economy that meet everyone’s needs while conserving the means and conditions of production. Education for sustainability is one way of encouraging such change. It helps people and communities to examine critically the technologies, systems of economic production, cultural systems of reproduction, laws and politics, and ideas and ideologies they currently employ for living with the rest of nature. It also helps them to reflect and act on viable alternatives. Such education is far-reaching and should start from an understanding of modernity and the way in which it has changed the way we use and think about nature.

Modernity and our Environmental Predicament

Modernity is the form of social organization that now dominates most societies in the world. It has its origins in seventeenth-century Europe and its evolution involved interrelated economic, political, cultural and social trends (Hall et al, 1992). The end of feudalism and the rise of capitalism saw the enclosure of much common land and the break-up of the social institutions that ensured its cooperative and sustainable use. Land became a source of private wealth and, as production for trade and the market replaced subsistence production, nature was increasingly capitalized and treated as a commodity. Capitalism requires economic growth or capital accumulation and has an inbuilt tendency to discount present and future environmental costs. It has no coordinated internal mechanisms for maintaining the conditions of production; the trend away from organic raw materials and renewable sources of energy to inorganic and non-renewable sources has hastened the arrival of ecological limits to growth.

The rise of capitalism facilitated the rise of nation states and governments to create and protect property rights, enforce contracts and regulate social relations in ways that encouraged capital accumulation. Modern nation states are characterized by centralized and bureaucratic forms of administration and liberal democratic forms of government. They claim to regulate democratically the social use of nature, but environmental politics reveals an uneven distribution of power that favours business interests, the disaggregation of problems that prevents coherent action and a short-term horizon that reflects the electoral cycle. Departmentalism, bureaucracy, instrumental rationality and a lack of information limit the state’s response to complex environmental problems; the need to sustain capital accumulation and the living standards of a majority of the electorate often constrains moves towards more sustainable forms of development. At the same time, international environmental politics is dominated by issues of national sovereignty and conflicts over who is to pay for necessary policy changes.

As far as culture is concerned modernity resulted in and was the product of revolutionary change. This involved a break with traditional world views that emphasized the interconnectedness of all living and non-living things, the importance of divine will and provenance, and the virtue of things remaining the same. Greek and Renaissance Europe regarded the cosmos as a living organism with a nurturing female earth at its centre. Such organic world views generate respect for nature and contain much traditional and local wisdom that serves to limit its non-sustainable use. Over the last 300 years they have largely been replaced by a mechanistic and scientific world view which sees the earth as dead and nature as a machine that can be transformed, improved and managed in the human interest. Newtonian science eliminated concepts of hierarchy, value, purpose, harmony, quality and form from older organic descriptions of nature, leaving only matter and force. A cosmos of passive matter and external force then provided a subtle sanction for the domination and manipulation of nature, which is central to modernity’s grand narrative of development (Merchant, 1992). This suggests that science is a universal and value-free form of knowledge or rationality and that its application, via technology and bureaucracy, to the transformation of nature and society will bring continuing human emancipation and progress.

The process of modernization also produced new divisions of labour, new social classes and new forms of voluntary association. Numerous groups sprang up to form an increasingly vigorous civil society; some of these promoted private interests and others sought to protect and extend collective rights against individual property rights. Trade unions, amenity groups and other NGOs have long been concerned with people’s collective rights to a safe and healthy environment and access to nature; and their work illustrates the role of NGOs in channelling interests and energies outside government and acting as a counterbalance to central state power. Socialism grew within civil society because it promised an alternative modernization that better realized liberty, equality and fraternity. Socialists sought to democratize the social relations of production and distribution so that problems of poverty and alienation could be reduced. When they gained control of government they therefore set about creating municipal water companies and parks, public housing, state-run education and health services, and land-use planning systems. Social democratic and state socialist governments rarely realized socialist goals, however, for they embraced technocracy uncritically and so failed to give people real control over their lives. State socialism was particularly instrumental in its use and construction of nature and generally had profound environmental consequences.

While socialists sought to change the material construction of nature, countercultural movements within modernity focused their attention on the limitations of scientific rationality and its impact on the cultural or ex...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Introduction to the 2014 eBook Edition
• Part I: Perspectives on Education for Sustainability
• Part II: The Formal Sector
• Part III: The Informal Sector
• Part IV: Continuing Education
• Part V: Making Progress Towards Sustainability
• Acronyms and Abbreviations
• Index