Prioritizing Sustainability Education

A Comprehensive Approach

Joan Armon, Stephen Scoffham, Chara Armon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429664243
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Volkswirtschaftslehre
• Subtopic: Nachhaltige Entwicklung

Prioritizing Sustainability Education presents theory-to-practice essays and case studies by educators from six countries who elucidate dynamic approaches to sustainability education. Too often, students graduate with exploitative, consumer-driven orientations toward ecosystems and are unprepared to confront the urgent challenges presented by environmental degradation. Educators are prioritizing sustainability-oriented courses and programs that cultivate students' knowledge, skills, and values and contextualize them within relational connections to local and global ecosystems. Little has yet been written, however, about the comprehensive sustainability education that educators are currently designing and implementing, often across or at the edges of disciplinary boundaries.

The approaches described in this book expand beyond conventional emphases on developing students' attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors by thinking and talking about ecosystems to additionally engaging students with ecosystems in sensory, affective, psychological, and cognitive dimensions, as well as imaginative, spiritual, or existential dimensions that guide environmental care and regeneration.

This book supports educators and graduate and upper-level undergraduate students in the humanities, social sciences, environmental studies, environmental sciences, and professional programs in considering how to reorient their fields toward relational sustainability perspectives and practices.

PART I
Comprehensive sustainability education perspectives

1
THE CHALLENGE AHEAD

Prioritizing sustainability education

Stephen Scoffham

Sustainability is a relatively new term which first appeared in English dictionaries in the 1970s. It is derived from the Latin verb ‘sustinere’ which means to ‘maintain’, ‘hold’, or ‘endure’. On the one hand, sustainability focuses on the idea that humanity has to live within its means and that there are limits to economic growth. On the other hand, sustainability has a social dimension that is encapsulated in the notion of human health and well-being. Developing a sustainability mindset is about recognizing that people and nature are connected to each other and their surroundings in multiple ways through complex, overlapping networks. Disrupting these networks can cause damage to people and the biosphere and threaten the life support systems on which we all depend. Sustainability is thus about living in harmony with nature and each other in ways that respect natural limits. It involves developing a blueprint or narrative for the future which can respond to changes as they unfold and which will generate the conditions in which people and life can flourish. This is a highly creative endeavour which spans many aspects of human experience and engages students and educators on a spiritual as a well as a cognitive level.

Introduction

When the first astronauts ventured into space in the 1960s, they sent back images showing the Earth as a blue and white globe floating in a vast expanse of deep darkness. These extraordinary photographs not only illustrated the fragility and beauty of the planet we inhabit, they also captured the public imagination. For the first time in history, people were able to visualize the Earth in its entirety. The extraordinary sequence of events that enabled life to form and develop over four thousand million years was thrown into sharp relief. No other planet known to astronomers had benefited from the same particular combination of factors. It became abundantly clear that in many respects the Earth is a unique and closed system – the only home which humanity is ever likely to have – and that we need to treat it with respect (Figure 1.1).

The new understanding of the Earth that resulted from the moon missions fuelled the growth of the modern environmental movement. A number of publications voiced concerns about contemporary developments, and their implications for the future added further momentum. Three key texts stand out. Rachel Carson drew attention to the insidious effects of pesticides and the threats to biodiversity in Silent Spring (1962), Paul Ehrlich highlighted the problem of population growth in The Population Time Bomb (1968), and the Club of Rome commissioned The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al., 1972) to explore the finite nature of natural resources. With the benefit of hindsight, these early warnings of looming environmental crisis, although criticized on scientific grounds, have an almost prophetic ring. When set alongside Alvin Tofler’s Future Shock (1970), the challenges of living and adapting to a world of constant change became all too apparent.

FIGURE 1.1 The notion of planetary awareness was fuelled by images of Earth from space

Source: NASA

One of the scientists who worked at NASA during the 1960s was James Lovelock, who developed the notion that the Earth is a self-regulating system. The radical idea that life creates the conditions for its own existence (Gaia theory) provoked fierce opposition when it was first proposed but was increasingly acknowledged in the 1970s as Lynn Margulis investigated the mechanisms linking organic and inorganic matter. Along with Darwin’s theory of evolution, Gaia theory has heralded a key change in how we think about life on Earth. Crucially, it provides a way to understand how complex interactions, emergent properties, and chaotic events can combine to maintain a delicate and ever-changing balance which operates on a global scale.

Sustainability education

Sustainability education has evolved along with this growth of global consciousness. It began in the 1960s and 1970s by focusing almost exclusively on ecology and the natural world. In schools, lessons on nature study began to appear on the timetable, while universities developed courses on environmental science. As ideas about sustainability matured, the focus gradually shifted and broadened. Educational initiatives emanating from the ‘development education’ and ‘world studies’ movements during the 1980s and 1990s began to draw attention to socio-economic issues. It was argued that human activity, rather than natural processes, were the root cause of the environmental crisis. This meant that factors such as global inequalities, population growth, and the impact of industry and technology were key considerations in any in-depth analysis of contemporary problems. In the current century there has been an increasing tendency to include the term ‘global’ in school and university courses and to stress the importance of action as well as analysis. This has now found expression in the school strike movement (Thunberg, 2019), which has called for students around the world to take action on climate change and for politicians to tell the truth about the state of the environment.

One of the features of sustainability education is that while it does not command a discrete body of knowledge, it actually touches on just about everything. This presents considerable challenges for teachers, particularly those working at higher levels with significant subject specialism. Parkin (2010) acknowledges this problem and suggests a pragmatic solution. ‘Sustainability’, she proclaims, ‘is about having sufficient knowledge and understanding to make a good enough choice or decision’ (2010, p. 10, her italics). This practical wisdom goes straight to the heart of what it means to be sustainability literate. What matters most is not so much how much you know, but how you use the knowledge and understanding that you have at your disposal. It is about developing a mindset.

Sterling (2001), too, takes a broadly philosophical approach to sustainability education, which he sees as the process of maintaining a healthy system that draws on qualities such as creativity, self-reliance, self-realization, wholeness, and resilience. In a subsequent piece on ecological intelligence, Sterling extols the importance of a new, more participative worldview. “If we want the chance of a sustainable future,” he declares, “we need to think relationally” (2009, p. 77). Sterling argues that the practices which tend to dominate mainstream education are likely to meet with only limited success in addressing current challenges because they operate within existing mechanistic paradigms. Instead, we need to develop transformative approaches, which step outside current frameworks and established modes of thought. Such learning, he contends, needs to be critical, appreciative, and ethical. It will favor synthesis rather than analysis, integration rather than atomisation, and pluralism rather than dualism.

A further question is how pupils will choose to use and apply their knowledge and understanding of sustainability when they have completed their education and grown into adulthood. Will they use their new abilities to seek a more harmonious and equitable relationship with their surroundings, both human and natural, or use them in the pursuit of hyper-consumption and individualism? It can be argued that at the current time school and university education around the world is largely couched in terms of neo-liberal values, which aim to prepare students to play their part in the global economy. This leads David Orr to observe that without critical reflection about fundamental principles, sustainability education may simply lead graduates to be more effective vandals of the Earth (1994, p. 26). Sustainability in itself is morally neutral – it can be likened to a lens through which we see the world. However, the way that we interpret the information which it reveals and the actions that we take as a result will depend on our beliefs and value systems. The moral basis for education is not always so immediately apparent in other disciplines and areas of learning. Sustainability, being an emerging domain, tends to expose hidden beliefs and bring underlying assumptions to the fore.

Getting to grips with sustainability

For various reasons, sustainability education has been very slow to gain widespread traction in higher education. One explanation is that sustainability is itself an elusive and contradictory concept with many different definitions. Sustainability implies continuity but can also be seen as an aspiration or ideal. If sustainability is about conservation, we need to articulate what it is that needs to be conserved. If it is an ideal, then what form does it take? To make matters more complicated, sustainability is often harnessed to other terms to create multiple concepts which change its meaning, such as ‘sustainable living’ or ‘sustainable development’. In educational circles, the term Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is widely used but the implied tensions between stability and change are overlooked. A number of other terms, such as Education for Sustainable Futures (ESF) and Environment and Sustainability Education (ESE), provide alternative formulations but are also problematic and not so generally recognized. Finding the right language to express a new concept is crucial if it is to take root.

One way to make better sense of sustainability is think in terms of three key dimensions – social, environmental, and economic. These dimensions are sometimes shown diagrammatically as the columns on a temple but they are also portrayed as an overlapping Venn diagram (Figure 1.2). The idea that sustainability can be applied to different contexts, including human welfare, unlocks new levels

FIGURE 1.2 These diagrams show how sustainability can be represented in different ways

Source: Author

of meaning. However, it would be misleading to think that the three dimensions are given equal weight. In a globalized world committed to neo-liberal ideologies, economics dominates both government policy and business decisions. There are also problems in reducing sustainability to just three dimensions, as power, politics, culture, religion, and values also need to be taken into account. One form of words which takes a more holistic approach expresses sustainability in terms of local and global connections and defines it as a process of reconnecting with (a) the environment, (b) other people, and (c) ourselves. This definition has the advantage of emphasizing relationships – both inter-relationships between humans and relationships between humans and other forms of life. Another strength is that it draws attention to self-understanding and self-awareness. This is important as personal growth and development are fundamental to sustainability education (Capra & Luisi, 2014).

All these definitions recognize that sustainability addresses a range of complex, interrelated problems which are constantly changing. Rather than thinking of them as linear processes with a beginning, a middle, and an end, it may be more helpful to see them in terms of links and connections. Representing sustainability problems in this way suggests they have ‘wicked’ rather than ‘tame’ characteristics (Bottery, 2016). One of the features of ‘wicked’ problems is that they are difficult to define. They are unstable, involve unexpected links, and often contain internally conflicting goals. The very process of acting upon them changes their dynamics. It follows that there are a number of different ways in which they can be understood.

Given that sustainability impacts on the way that society is organized, it is also inevitable that it has a political dimension. The problem is that sustainability can easily become interpreted as a partisan issue. For example, the extent to which governments are willing to intervene in business varies among administrations. A concern for social welfare and global equity tends to be associated with left-wing political movements. Right-wing agendas often place greater emphasis on deregulation, wealth creation, and personal responsibility. Furthermore, labelling policies and practices as ‘green’ can suggest that they emanate from pressure groups which have their own specific, and perhaps unbalanced, agendas. The idea that sustainability is just one more issue that can be treated like a political football marginalizes questions of planetary care and well-being which are of over-riding importance to all humankind. Instead of shying away from teaching about sustainability because it is too controversial, schools, colleges, and universities need to engage with it wholeheartedly in order to better equip learners for the changes that lie ahead.

Constructing a better future

The global economy increased sevenfold in the period between 1950 and 2010 and it goes on growing. This is putting the natural environment under enormous strain and creating an urgent need to understand how natural systems are responding. Over the last few decades, a team of leading scientists has focused on collecting baseline evidence on safe boundaries for nine critical processes which together regulate the planet (Stockholm Resilience Centre, 2018). There is some very sobering news. Current levels of activity have already exceeded safe limits in four key areas – species loss, climate change, ocean acidification, and soil pollution (nitrogen and phosphorus loading). Meanwhile, four other areas are under significant pressure. The only good news is that international action on ozone depletion has reversed earlier trends.

Ensuring that people have healthy food, clean water, and fresh air is essential if humanity is to thrive. The relentless pursuit of economic growth is not only putting a huge strain on Earth’s natural resources, it has also had the effect of concentrating wealth in the hands of a few, leaving many others struggling for their everyday needs (Wilkinson and Pickett, 2009). This raises profound moral questions. The data on global inequality, for example, makes stark reading. Worldwide, one person in nine does not have enough to eat, one in eleven has no source of safe drinking water, and one in three still no access to a toilet (100 People Foundation, 2019). Meanwhile, air pollution has become a major public health issue in many cities around the world, causing thousands of premature deaths every year, while particles of plastic are now known to have polluted habitats around the globe.

FIGURE 1.3 Sustainability is about aligning human and natural systems to create “safe and just place for humanity” represented in this diagram by the light green area inside the doughnut ring

Source: Kate Raworth: 2017

Modern interpretations of sustainability see social deprivation and ecological overshoot as two facets of the same coin – the search for new ways of living that align human and natural systems. Kate Raworth (2017) uses the metaphor of a ring doughnut to illustrate this idea (Figure 1.3). The outer ring of the doughnut represents the ecological ceiling beyond which natural systems start to become dangerously destabilized. The inner ring of the doughnut represents the social foundations of well-being which, if breached, result in social deprivation and human misery. Sustainability is about finding ways of staying between these two rings, in what Raworth describes as a “safe and just place for humanity” (2017, p. 44). She sees this as an e...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• CONTENTS
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Foreword
• Contributors
• Introduction
• PART I Comprehensive sustainability education perspectives
• PART II Theory to practice
• Conclusion
• Index