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Publications
Griffith University and the Department of the Environment, Sport and Territories, 1997
Originally Teaching for a Sustainable World: International Edition was published as a book and distributed to educators working in professional development and teacher education at workshops held in all the state capitals in 1996.
This WWW version has been published to provide a wide range of people access to the material. Additionally, the ability to download the workshop modules onto a disk will enable workshop facilitators to make changes to or adapt the modules to suit the needs and interests of their workshop participants.
The uploading of Teaching for a Sustainable World: International Edition onto the WWW has been made possible with funding from the Commonwealth Department of the Environment, Sport and Territories.
In the middle of the 20th century, we saw our planet from space for the first time. Historians may eventually find that this vision had a greater impact on thought than did the Copernican revolution of the 16th century, which upset the human self-image by revealing that the Earth is not the centre of the universe. From space, we see a small and fragile ball dominated not be human activity and edifice but by a pattern of clouds, oceans, greenery, and soils. Humanity's inability to fit its doings into that pattern is changing planetary systems, fundamentally. Many such changes are accompanied by life-threatening hazards. This new reality, from which there is no escape, must be recognised - and managed. (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, p. 1)
Schools and teachers are often called upon to help assuage society's problems. This is to be expected given the government funds allocated to education and the desire for schooling to be relevant to social questions, issues and problems. Thus, there are demands that school programmes be vocationally relevant, promote intercultural appreciation and harmony, develop personal and interpersonal skills, encourage active and informed citizenship, and so on. Hazlettt (1979) has described the policy process through which social problems in society become educational ones when:
The nation tends to reduce political, social, and economic problems to educational ones and claims to expect schools to cure present ills and provide for a brighter tomorrow for individuals and the collectivity. (p. 133)
Multicultural education, school-industry links, consumer education and political education are curriculum responses to this process. There is justifiable debate about the ethics and ideological motivations of this process and about the style of political and administrative decision making often involved. However, there can be little dispute over the fact that such "educational problems" and associated curriculum developments in schools place additional demands on teacher education programmes.
Environmental education and development education are other such "educational problems" which requires a response in schools and in teacher education. The rising levels of public awareness of the problems of environmental degradation and global inequalities in recent decades are manifested in growing concerns over the stability of ecosystems, the sustainability and equity of present patterns of development, and the quality of life to be enjoyed by present and future generations. Many schools have been motivated by student, parent, teacher and government interest in these issues to incorporate environmental and development education into their programmes and have developed a range of innovative programmes and activities. These have been supported by the policy processes within education systems and the provision of guidelines, resources, and opportunities for professional development. Teacher educators, especially in geography, social education and science curriculum courses, have responded in a number of ways to the growing need for professional development in environmental education at both the pre-service and in-service education levels, also.
The last decade of the twentieth century is a time of heightened public awareness of the scale, severity and complexity of many global problems. Numerous reports indicate that public concern for the environment is at unprecedented levels throughout the world (Dunlap, Gallup and Gallup 1992). Concern has been growing since the early 1960s over problems as diverse, yet global in impact, as atmospheric warming and climatic change, the destruction of rainforests and threats to biodiversity, accelerating rates of land degradation and desertification, population-resource imbalances, urban decay, nuclear accidents, the disposal of toxic wastes, and a range of other threats to the quality of human life and the sustainability of ecosystems.
There are also rising levels of concern about the problems associated with global inequalities in standards of living and human well-being. These problems include regional conflicts, great imbalances in the consumption of resources between countries and regions, droughts and famine - sometimes on near-continental scales - the increasing marginalisation of women, ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, the unemployed and the physically disabled, accumulating foreign debt, the failure of the world to solve the trade and transport problems that still cause hunger and malnutrition, and the necessity for many people to over-exploit the resources of their local environment for daily survival.
The United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) recognised the interdependence of these environmental and development issues. It noted that:
Until recently, the planet was a large world in which human activities and their effects were neatly compartmentalized within nations ... and within broad areas of concern (environmental, economic, social). These compartments have begun to dissolve. This applies in particular to the various global 'crises' that have seized public concern, particularly over the last decade. These are not separate crises: an environmental crisis, a development crisis, an energy crisis. They are all one (p. 4).
The Commissioners reported that this realisation made them focus on one central theme: many present development trends leave increasing numbers of people poor and vulnerable and at the same time degrade the natural environment. As Elizabeth Dodswell, the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has stated:
One point is of pivotal significance. No long-term strategy of poverty alleviation can succeed in the face of environmental forces that promote persistent erosion of the natural resources upon which we all depend. And no environmental protection programme can make headway without removing the day-to-day pressures of poverty that leave people little choice but to discount the future so deeply that they fail to protect the resource base necessary for their own survival and their children's well-being. (Dodswell 1995, p. 2)
The conclusion of the World Commission was that humankind requires new, more ecologically sustainable and socially just, approaches to development. In fact, many of these approaches are not "new" but are to be found in the wisdom and values that inform the principles of living sustainably that have characterised indigenous and farming peoples in many parts of the world for thousands of years. They are also to be found in the programmes and campaigns for appropriate and sustainable development of the ecology movements around the world, and especially in the women's ecology movement in the South (Shiva 1989; Rodda 1991).
People and their governments are yet to realise the full implications of the message of sustainable development. However, they are becoming increasingly aware of the links that exist between human development and the environment. Instead of seeing the environment as nature and natural systems alone, we are coming to see it in an holistic sense as the totality of our surroundings and existence which results from the way we use nature and its resources to satisfy our needs and wants. This means seeing the environment as a complex web of global social, cultural, economic and political as well as geo- and bio-physical components. It also means realising that environmental and development problems cannot be understood without reference to social, economic and political values, and that managing the global crisis will depend upon changes in personal values, lifestyle choices, and global patterns of development and trade.
Relating the indivisible nature of these dimensions of the environment with the quality of life and living conditions of people all over the world, Dodswell has stressed the wisdom of the outcomes of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (the Earth Summit) which tied the achievement of environmental sustainability with overcoming the problems of poverty, illiteracy and militarism. She writes:
... the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro saw the essential indivisibility of environment, peace and development. It also recognized that global interdependence could no longer be conceived only in economic terms. Alongside, there was the recognition that the root causes of global human insecurity reached far below the calculus of military parity. They were related to the instability spawned by widespread poverty, squalor, hunger, disease and illiteracy. They were connected to the degradation of the environment. They were enmeshed in inequity and injustice. (Dodswell 1995, p. 2)
To help bring about the changes in social and economic thinking, practices and institutions that can promote this view, Schleicher (1989) writes of the need for a new "ecological ethic, ... an ecologically oriented value system" based upon "fundamental change(s) in human attitudes and actions towards ourselves and the environment" (pp. 277-278). The scope of such a change in social values has been likened to a change in social paradigms or world views. This would involve a process of change towards social systems, institutions and practices guided by values such as: empathy with other species, other people and future generations, respect for natural and social limits to growth, support for careful planning in order to minimise threats to nature and the quality of life, and a desire for change in the way most societies conduct their economic and political affairs (Milbrath 1989, pp. 58-87).
While there is debate about particular directions and the pace of this "paradigm shift" and about the effectiveness of different strategies for social change, there seems to be wide agreement, both in Australia and internationally, that education has an important role to play in motivating and empowering people to participate in environmental improvement and protection. Indeed, as early as two decades ago, education was described by one commentator as "the greatest resource" in this endeavour (Schumacher 1973, p. 64).
The four major international environment reports of recent years have emphasised this also. The common theme of these reports is the search for sustainable patterns of development and living that can redress present day environmental decline without jeopardising the ecosystem or resource base for future generations.
The Brundtland Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) argued that "the world's teachers ... have a crucial role to play" in helping to bring about the "the extensive social changes" needed for sustainable development (p. xiv). The 1980 World Conservation Strategy was quite explicit about the role of education in bringing about such changes. It argued that:
Ultimately, the behaviour of entire societies towards the biosphere must be transformed if the achievement of conservation objectives is to be assured. A new ethic, embracing plants and animals as well as people is required for human societies to live in harmony with the natural world on which they depend for survival and well-being. The long term task of environmental education is to foster or reinforce attitudes and behaviours compatible with this new ethic. (IUCN, UNEP and WWF 1980: Section 13)
This message was repeated in Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable Living which was prepared as the World Conservation Strategy for the 1990s (IUCN, UNEP and WWF 1991). Caring for the Earth argues that education has a vital role to play in ensuring that people learn, accept and live by the principle that "living sustainably depends on accepting a duty to seek harmony with other people and with nature" (p. 8):
Sustainable living must be the new pattern for all levels: individuals, communities, nations and the world. To adopt the new pattern will require a significant change in the attitudes and practices of many people. We will need to ensure that education programmes reflect the importance of an ethic for living sustainably. (IUCN, UNEP and WWF 1991, p. 5)
Agenda 21 is the internationally agreed report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development or "Earth Summit" which was held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 . Agenda 21 devotes a whole chapter to the role of environmental education in relation to sustainability:
Education is critical for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of the people to address environment and development issues.... It is critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development and for effective public participation in decision-making. (UNCED 1992, Chapter 36, p. 2)
The theme of ecologically sustainable development which is central to all these calls for environmental education is also central to the vision of a desirable society held by many people today. For example, a recent Australian study of alternative futures and educational objectives, Visions of a Future Australian Society: Towards an Educational Curriculum for 2000 AD and Beyond found that ecological sustainability ranked second only to social justice in a priority listing of twenty-two societal and educational goals (Campbell, McMeniman and Baikaloff 1992).
It is important to understand what is meant by ecologically sustainability in such an expectation of education. Unfortunately, definitions of sustainability do vary (Fien 1993a; Orr 1992). However, at the heart of sustainable development is the mitigation of the impacts humans make on the earth and the way we organise the flows, production and distribution of resources and wastes, which in turn affect what political scientists define as the essential issues of politics: "Who gets what, when, and how?" (after Orr 1992, p. 145).
When sustainability is bracketed with social justice in visions of desirable futures, it is possible to identify a definition of sustainability - and a range of related issues - that education should address if those visions are to be achieved. Such a definition of sustainable development sees it as a process which requires that the use of environments and resources by one group of people does not jeopardise the environments and well-being of people in other parts of the world or destroy the capacities of future generations to satisfy their reasonable needs and wants. Issues of ecological sustainability and social justice that flow from such a view include the following:
How can the over-consumption, waste and misuse of resources by some people be reduced? How can the severe poverty that causes many to exploit the earth just to survive be eliminated? How can the pressure on the environment from both causes be overcome?
How can economic activity be made of benefit to the communities and the companies involved, and without critical damage to the environment?
How can the resources consumed by such luxuries be redirected to aid the poor or be conserved for future generations?
How can the nexus between the environment, social development and population growth be formulated to ensure the sustainable use of resources?
How can the rights of these people be maintained and the knowledge and wisdom they possess be shared with others in all parts of the world?
How can the wisdom, courage and talents of women and young people be used as a model for sustainable development policies and practices?
How can people best organise themselves locally - and liaise with others nationally and globally - to collaborate in the movement towards sustainable development?
(after Beddis and Johnson 1988)
Reading 1 and Reading 2 provide an overview of the key principles of sustainable development from the World Commission on Environment and Development (1987) and the recommendations of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED 1992).
These are issues that educationalists in many countries have been slow to address. In concentrating on issues of class and economic reproduction and the reproduction of racial and gender inequalities, educationalists have been slow to analyse the relationship between education and the processes of the world economy, the nature of the dominant model of what counts as economic development, and the environmental destruction upon which it is based. D'Urso (1990) has described the environmental crisis and educational responses to it as "curiously neglected by socio-cultural theorists of education" and urges them to strike "beyond the bounds of current educational concerns" to establish environmental education as "a new and vitally important discourse" (p. 92).
Only recently has this analysis been extended to consider the relationship between education and the reproduction of the environmental values and practices of global capital. For example, Trainer (1990) has argued that both the overt and the hidden curricula of schools play a major role in reproducing the ecologically unsustainable values of "industrial, affluent, consumer society" (p. 105), including the unquestioned desirability of economic growth and a competitive economy, the importance of individual self-advancement over community well-being, and the correctness of allowing the profit motive and the market to determine economic and social priorities (p. 107).
Issues of environment, social justice and sustainable development pose important questions for the future of human society. They are also important for those who wish to teach for a just and sustainable future and those who are involved in the education of such teachers. This means that those involved in environmental and development education, at whatever level, need to activate the socially critical or reconstructionist tradition in education and promote approaches to curriculum planning and pedagogy that can help integrate social justice and ecological sustainability into a vision and a mission of personal and social change. Orr (1992) argues that such an approach to education is "unavoidably political" but that to attempt to "stand aloof from the decisions about how and whether life will be lived in the twenty-first century ... is to condemn ourselves to irrelevance" (p. 145).
The social, economic, political and ecological imperatives of the concept and processes of sustainable development outlined in this section have established a renewed agenda for environmental education which links it very closely with development education. The World Conservation Union (IUCN) has described this new direction for environmental education as "education for sustainable living". To obtain a clear definition of education for sustainable living, it is helpful to define environmental education and development education and to uncover the links between them.
According to Stevenson (1987), environmental education involves:
.. the intellectual tasks of critical appraisal of environmental (and political) situations and the formulation of a moral code concerning such issues, as well as the development of a commitment to act on one's values by providing opportunities to participate actively in environmental improvement. (p. 69)
A 1975 UN definition of development education states that:
The objective of development education is to enable people to participate in the development of their community, their nation and the world as a whole. Such participation implies a critical awareness of local, national and international processes.
Development education is concerned with issues of human rights, dignity, self-reliance and social justice in both developed and developing countries. It is concerned with the causes of under-development and the promotion of an understanding of what is involved in development, of how different countries go about undertaking development, and of the reasons for and ways of achieving a new international economic and social order (quoted in Hicks and Townley 1982).
There are strong similarities between these two definitions and, together, they may be seen as the core of education for sustainable living. Education for sustainable living is defined by the IUCN Commission on Education and Communication (1993) as a process which:
... develops human capacity and creativity to participate in determining the future, encourage technical progress as well as fostering the cultural conditions favouring social and economic change to improve the quality of life and more equitable economic growth while living within the carrying capacity of supporting ecosystems to maintain life indefinitely. (p. 6)
The British Environment, Development, Education and Training Group's report, Good Earth-Keeping: Education, Training and Awareness for a Sustainable Future have such goals in the light of contemporary thinking on the role of environmental education in promoting a sustainable environment. This groups calls this "education for sustainability":
We believe that education for sustainability is a process which is relevant to all people, and that, like sustainable development itself, it is a process rather than a fixed goal. It may precede - and it will always accompany - the building of relationships between individuals, groups and their environment...
We argue here that education for sustainability is a process which:
The NGO Forum at the Earth Summit endorsed a treaty on Environmental Education for Sustainable Societies and Global Responsibility (NGO Forum 1992) which developed a number of principles to guide the future direction of environmental education so that objectives such as these may be attained: These principles are:
These principles are beginning to become important in reframing conceptions of environmental education (Robottom 1994). In Canada, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy has sponsored the Learning for a Sustainable Future organisation which has published a framework for implementing the principles of education for sustainability in the school curriculum (Learning for a Sustainable Future 1993). These are set out in Figure 1.
Many aspects of traditional approaches to environmental education contribute to education for sustainable living. For example, the UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Programme has sought to integrate issues of ecological sustainability and social justice. The preamble to The Belgrade Charter (UNESCO-UNEP, 1976), upon which many international developments in environmental education within the global movement for a New International Economic Order directed at solving the social and environmental problems that flow from poverty, hunger and exploitation:
Inequality between the poor and the rich among nations and within nations is growing and there is evidence of increasing deterioration of the physical environment in some forms on a world-wide scale....
What is being called for is the eradication of the basic causes of poverty, hunger, illiteracy, pollution, exploitation and domination. The previous pattern of dealing with these crucial problems on a fragmentary basis is no longer workable....
Like the society it serves and will shape, today's education is in transition, searching to identify elements of change, to preserve the cornerstones of traditional values and to test tentative and optimistic assumptions about the world of future generations. It is time to reflect, to remember, to set contexts and to develop viable plans so that the transition can be made as smoothly as possible into a more sustainable 21st century. The clearest, most urgent and riveting context that education has ever been presented with is that of its contribution to the survival of society and its planetary environment, and beyond that, its contribution towards a sustainable future.
This perception of the future suggests what knowledge, skills and values are central to education for sustainable development.
This framework (of objectives) ... in no way intended to impose a model for curriculum planning, rather it is a perspective for reflection on the implications of education for a sustainable future and for curriculum approaches to attain it. In this context, a solid foundation of the basic skills of literacy, numeracy, geographic perceptions and methodologies for scientific enquiry is needed. It has never been more crucial to have a literate and trained population. We believe the framework incorporates the idea that change will continue to take place all over the world and that we must constantly reassess the knowledge, skills and values that students must learn.
Knowledge
Skills
Values
Figure 1: A framework of objectives for implementing the principles of education for sustainability in the school curriculum (Learning for a Sustainable Future 1993).
It is absolutely vital that the world's citizens insist upon measures that will support the kind of economic growth which will not have harmful repercussions on people; that will not in any way diminish the environment and their living conditions....
We need nothing more than a new global ethic - an ethic which espouses attitudes and behaviour for individuals and societies which are consonant with humanity's place within the biosphere ....
It is within this context that the foundations must be laid for a world-wide environmental education programme that will make it possible to develop new knowledge and skills, values and attitudes, in a drive towards a better quality of environment and, indeed, towards a higher quality of life for the present and future generations living within that environment (UNESCO-UNEP 1976, pp. 1-2).
However, education for sustainable living requires a reconceptualisation of some aspects of environmental education and some of the assumptions upon which it has often been based. Much of the dominant discourse in environmental education, even some of the prescriptions for environmental education objectives, content and teaching methods that have emanated from the International Environmental Education Programme and other sources of legitimation in environmental education, such as journals and textbooks, have been based upon a technocentric approach to environmentalism which favours initiating young people into the concepts and skills needed for finding scientific and technological solutions to environmental problems without addressing their root social, political and economic causes (e.g. see Huckle 1983; Fien 1993b).
Approaches to environmental education which ignore the issues of justice and ecological sustainability are guided by a technocratic rationality and behaviouristic goals of reductionist Western science and Western approaches to development (Robottom 1989; Greenall Gough 1993). Ecofeminists such as Carolyn Merchant (1980) and Vandana Shiva (1989) have traced the patriarchal assumptions and attitudes to nature, women and development upon which Western science is based as a major cause of environmental exploitation and the increasing marginalisation of many of the world's people. Environmental educators need to be aware of this critique of the assumptions upon which environmental education has developed and examine the call made by Shiva (1989) for a new environmental science. In directing us towards a new environmental "science", she urges us to consider the knowledge base and goals of the women's ecology movement in the South as a model. She writes:
A science that does not respect nature's needs and a development that does not respect people's needs inevitably threatens survival. In their fight to survive the onslaughts of both, women have begun a struggle that challenges the most fundamental categories of Western patriarchy - its concepts of nature and women, and of science and development. Their ecological struggles are aimed simultaneously at liberating nature from ceaseless exploitation and themselves from marginalisation. They are creating a feminist ideology that transcends gender, and a political practice that is humanly inclusive; they are challenging patriarchy's ideological claim to universalism not with another universalising tendency, but with diversity; and they are challenging the dominant concept of power as violence with the alternative of non-violence as power. (pp. xvii-xviii)
Viewed from this perspective, environmental education and environmental education policies need to reflect an alternative epistemology which values diverse ways of knowing, identifies with the people and communities they purport to serve, and respects community-based approaches to social change. Education for sustainable living is one such reconceptualisation of environmental education.
Despite the rising interest in environmental and development education in schools and the expectations of governments, several studies indicate cause for concern. They indicate that good practice in environmental and development education is not widespread, that few teachers appreciate the full range of objectives, resources and strategies in these fields, and that few have received either pre-service studies or undertaken in-service professional development in them. These concerns make it timely that comprehensive attention be given to the place of environmental and development education in pre-service and in-service teacher education programmes. The role of environmental education in teacher education is well developed in the international literature, chiefly as a result of the UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Programme. There has been no comparable programmes for development education by UNESCO to date although this is changing with the formation of an integrated Environment and Population Education and Information for Human Development (EPD) programme. However, development education - like environmental education - is an important aspect of global education, an area in which there has been concerted work in recent years at least in the in-service education domain of professional development.
Much needs to be done at all levels to foster professional development opportunities to enhance the integration of development and environmental education as the central role of the teacher in the diffusion of any innovation means that teacher education, at both the pre-service and the in-service levels, is vital.
Two quotations are commonly referenced in discussions of environmental education and teacher education. Both come from publications of the UNESCO-UNEP International Environmental Education Programme (IEEP), the process that seems to have done most work over the last decade to promote environmental education and teacher education. The first quotation states that teacher education is the "priority of priorities" for action to improve the effectiveness of environmental education
The role of environmental education in the care of the environment is crucial. What of the role of the teacher in environmental education ... ? Is it not, arguably, the priority of educational and, certainly, environmental priorities, as experience increasingly instructs us? (UNESCO-UNEP 1990, p.1)
Unfortunately, the second quotation laments an international pattern of neglect in addressing this priority:
Few, if any, teacher training programmes adequately prepare teachers to effectively achieve the goals of E.E. in their classrooms. (Wilke, Peyton and Hungerford 1987, p. 1)
However, few commentators pause to note that Hungerford and his colleagues were referring to an IEEP survey conducted in the mid-1970s in their report. This neglect on our part may stem from a belief that little has changed since the UNESCO survey two decades ago. Certainly, a range of national and international surveys in recent years reveal important deficiencies and a lack of co-ordination in the provision of appropriate teacher education for environmental education in many parts of the world (see Bowman and Disinger 1980; Williams 1985, 1990; Ballantyne and Aston 1990; Spork 1992; UNESC0 1993a, 1993b; Education Network for Environment and Development n.d.). Data from one of these studies serves to summarise this point. The study by Spork (1990, 1992) was chosen because it relates the neglect of teacher education to its impact on the styles of environmental education being practised in classrooms.
This study involved an extensive and rigorously sampled survey of the teaching of environmental education by 300 primary school teachers in the Australian city of Brisbane. Spork focused her data collection and analysis on perceptions and practices of seven aspects of environmental education: teaching about natural systems, teaching about people-nature interactions, teaching skills to investigate the environment, teaching positive attitudes to the environment, teaching skills for investigating and clarifying environmental issues, teaching problem solving, and teaching through and for environmental action. The first three of these relate most closely with education in and about the environment whilst the last three are essential aspects of education for the environment (Fien 1993b). When asked to report on their own practices in these seven aspects of environmental education, the teachers said that education about and in the environment were most common approaches to environmental education they followed. Teaching information about the natural environment (98.2%) and positive attitudes to the environment (91.2%) were the most commonly reported aspects whilst teaching through investigating and clarifying environmental issues (28.1%) and through taking environmental action (19.7%) were the least common. This pattern of pedagogical practice occurred despite the fact that almost all the teachers in the survey rated all seven aspects of environmental education as "important" or "very important" in another part of the survey. The sharp drop-off in attention to the critical aspects of education for the environment means that the end purposes and full educational potential of environmental education are being lost - and that environmental education is not being implemented according to international or local guidelines in the schools in the city surveyed.
A major factor in the explanation of these patterns proved to be a lack of teacher education and professional development. When asked about their pre-service teacher education experiences, only 4.9% of the respondents said that they had undertaken any studies in environmental education whilst over 85% claimed that they had received no training at all in environmental education through pre-service, inservice (only 6.6%) or post-graduate studies (3.1%).
This neglect of environmental education in teacher education occurs despite the fact that the 1977 Tbilisi Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education (at which the voting delegates were government and ministerial delegates not environmental education specialists) emphasised "the establishment at the national level of a programme of action, with the aim, on the one hand of familiarising teachers and educational administrators and planners with different aspects and problems of the environment and on the other hand, giving theme a basis of training which would enable them to incorporate environmental education effectively into their respective activities. This action should take the form of both pre-service and inservice training" (UNESCO 1978, p. 24). Ten years later, the "Tbilisi Plus 10" International Congress on Environmental Education and Training in Moscow in 1987 resolved that:
Teacher training is a key factor in the development of EE. The application of new environmental education programmes and proper use of teaching materials depends on suitably-trained personnel, as regards both the content and the methods specific to this form of education. Teachers well trained in the contents, methods and process of EE development can also play a crucial role in spreading the impact of EE at the national level, thus increasing the cost-effectiveness of the efforts made by member States to develop environmental education.... There is a need to identify the national objectives of the training of teachers and to develop plans for the training of teachers which can be implemented by the training authorities. (UNESCO-UNEP 1988, p. 12)
Much can and has been written about the reasons for the importance of teacher education in promoting the effectiveness of environmental education. However, two things are lacking in the literature: reports on research to seek explanations for the pattern of historical neglect and action, and reports on large-scale co-ordinated projects to address the problem. Tilbury (1993a, 1993b) has begun to trace reasons for the problem in the United Kingdom with her case studies of environmental education provision in three colleges of education. Her indications that factors such as the beliefs of lecturers, course priorities and structures, and the wishes of students may also help explain the neglect of environmental education in teacher education in those countries in which individual institutions choose their own curricula. However, it does not explain the neglect in those many parts of the world in which teacher education curricula are mandated or, at least, centrally determined. However, apart from survey reports on the impact of mandatory environmental education training in Wisconsin (e.g. Champeau 1990) we are yet to see reports on large-scale co-ordinated projects to redress the problem. A start is being made, but research and published reports are generally descriptions of action at the level of the individual institution, and most focus on pre-service education and neglect inservice initiatives.
Fortunately, a number of projects to address this need are being developed in several parts of the world. Examples include the Toolbox in-service education project conducted by the National Consortium for Environmental Education and Training in the United States, the Environmental Education Initiative in Teacher Education in Europe (Brinkman and Scott 1994), the UNESCO Learning for a Sustainable Environment - Innovations in Teacher Education Project in the Asia-Pacific region (UNESCO-ACEID and Griffith University 1994), the Indian national in-service education programme conducted on a "cluster - model" (and incorporating workshops delivered by satellite) by the Centre for Environmental Education in India (Ravindranath 1993), and the Environmental and Development Education Project for Teacher Education in Australia (Fien 1995) from which this manual was developed.
This manual is a contribution to this overall effort. Teacher educators and others charged with the professional development of teachers and environmental educators are invited to consider the arguments presented in this introduction; to examine the elaboration of the arguments in the two readings which follow; to critique, trial and evaluate the workshop modules; and to interact with members of the environmental education and development education communities in their countries in order to find ways of addressing the global crisis of development, environment and sustainability. Perhaps, then, as teacher educators, we will be able to stand with those who have refused to "stand aloof from the decisions about how and whether life will be lived in the twenty-first century" (Orr 1992, p. 145) and will be able to say with Kirk (1977) that our work has contributed to the task of education as:
... the catalyst that not only saves the human race from extinction, but (which) also ... serves to unite all the people of the world in a common effort to find solutions to the perplexing and difficult problems that threaten life on the planet. (p. 350)
Beddis, R. and Johnson, C. (1988) Only One Earth: A Multi-Media Education Pack, World Wide Fund for Nature, Godalming.
Bowman, M. and Disinger, J. (1980) Environmental Education in Action IV: Case Studies of Teacher Education Programs for Environmental Education, ERIC Clearing House for Science, Mathematics and Environmental Education, Ohio State University, Columbus.
Brinkman, F. and Scott, W., eds. (1994) Environmental Education into Teacher Education in Europe: The State of the Art, Association for Teacher Education in Europe Cahier No. 8, Brussels.
Campbell, W.J., McMeniman, M.M. and Baikaloff, N. (1992) Visions of a Future Australian Society: Towards an Educational Curriculum for 2000 AD and Beyond, Consultation and Research Series No. 6, Ministerial Consultative Council on Curriculum, Brisbane.
Dodswell, E. (1995) Editorial, Our Planet, 7 (2), 2.
Dunlap, R., Gallup, G. and Gallup, A. (1992) The Health of the Planet Survey, The George H. Gallup International Institute, Princeton, NJ.
D'Urso, S. (1990) Editor's note, Discourse, 10 (2), p. 92.
Fien, J., ed. (1993a) Environmental Education: A Pathway to Sustainability?, Deakin University Press, Geelong.
Fien, J., ed. (1993b) Education for the Environment: Critical Curriculum Theorising and Environmental Education , Deakin University Press, Geelong.
Greenall Gough, A. (1993) Founders of Environmental Education, Deakin University Press, Geelong.
Hazlett, J. S. (1979) Conceptions of curriculum history, Curriculum Inquiry, 9 (2), 129-135.
Hicks, D. and Townley, C. (1982) The need for global literacy, in Hicks, D. and Townley, C. (Eds) Teaching World Studies: An Introduction to Global Perspectives in the Curriculum, Longman, London.
IUCN Commission on Education and Communication (1993) Education for Sustainability - A Practical Guide to Preparing National Strategies (draft), International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Gland.
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Source:Developing a Co-operative Framework for Sustainable Development Education, Learning for a Sustainable Future, Ottowa, 1993, 10-11.
To Retrieve Growth
Economic growth must be stimulated, particularly in developing countries, while enhancing the environmental resource base. The industrialised countries can and must contribute to reviving world economic growth. There must be urgent international action to resolve the debt crisis; a substantial increase in the flow of development finance; and stabilisation in the foreign exchange earnings of low-income commodity exporters.
Change the Quality of Growth
Revived growth must be of a new kind in which sustainability, equity, social justice and security are firmly embedded as major social goals. A safe, environmentally sound energy pathway is an indispensable component of this. Education, communication and international co-operation can all help to achieve those goals. In their reckoning of national wealth, development planners should take into account not only standard indicators, but also the state of natural resources. Better income distribution, reduced vulnerability to natural disaster and technological risks, improved health and preservation of cultural heritage all contribute to raising the quality of that growth.
To Integrate the Environment into Decision-Making
Environmental and economic goals can and must be made mutually reinforcing. Sustainability requires the enforcement of wider responsibilities for the impact of policy decisions. Those making such policy decisions must be responsible for the impact of those decisions upon the environmental resource capital of their nations. They must focus on the sources of environmental damage rather than the symptoms. The ability to anticipate and prevent environmental damage will require that ecological dimensions of policy be considered at the same time as economic, trade, energy, agricultural and other dimensions. They must be considered on the same agendas and in the same national and international institutions.
Ensure a Sustainable Level of Population
Population policies should be formulated and integrated with other economic and social development programmes: education, health care and the expansion of the livelihood base of the poor. Increased access to family planning services is itself a form of social development that allows couples, and women in particular, the right to self-determination.
Reorient Technology and Manage Risks
Technology creates risks, but it also offers the means to manage them. The capacity for technological innovation needs to be greatly enhanced in developing countries. The orientation of technological development in all countries must also be directed towards a greater regard for environmental factors. National and international institutional mechanisms are needed to assess potential impacts of new technologies before they are widely used. Similar arrangements are required for major interventions in natural systems such as river diversion or forest clearance. Liability for damages from unintended consequences must be strengthened and enforced. Greater public participation and free access to relevant information should be promoted in decision-making processes relative to environmental and developmental issues.
To Conserve and Enhance the Resource Base
Sustainability requires the conservation of environmental resources such as clean air, water, forest and soil; maintaining genetic diversity; and using energy, water and raw materials efficiently. Improvements in the efficiency of production must be accelerated to reduce per capita consumption of natural resources and encourage a shift to non-polluting products and technologies. All countries are called upon to prevent environmental pollution by rigorously enforcing environmental regulations, pro-enforcing environmental regulations, promoting low-waste technologies and anticipating the impact of new products, technologies and wastes.
To Reform International Economic Relations
Long-term sustainable growth will require far-reaching changes to produce trade, capital and technology flows that are more requitable and better synchronised to environmental imperatives. Fundamental improvements in market access, technology transfer and international finance are necessary to help developing countries widen their opportunities by diversifying their economic and trade bases and building their self-reliance.
To Strengthen International Co-Operation
The introduction of an environmental dimension injects an additional element of urgency and mutual self-interest since a failure to address the interaction between resource degradation and rising poverty will spill-over and become a global ecological problem. Higher priorities must be assigned to environmental monitoring, assessment, research and development, and to resource management in all fields of international development. This requires a high level of commitment by all countries to the satisfactory working of multilateral institutions; to the making and the observance of international rules in fields such as trade and investment; and to constructive dialogue on the many issues where national interests do not immediately coincide, but rather require negotiation to be reconciled. It requires also a recognition of the essential importance of international peace and security. New dimensions of multilateralism are essential to sustainable human progress.
Source:Developing a Co-operative Framework for Sustainable Development Education, Learning for a Sustainable Future, Ottawa, 1993, 10-15.
The principal product of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development is Agenda 21. This Agenda is not a binding convention, such as the one on climate, it is rather the expression of the agreement on what needs to be done about the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems, the worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy.
Agenda 21 responds to the understanding that the earth cannot much longer sustain a human species divided into rich and poor. It describes and prices out the actions necessary to bring human numbers and appetites into adjustment by the middle of the 21st century, using the finite resources of the earth. The following is a summarised version of the 40 chapters included in Agenda 21.
Section I
Social and Economic Dimensions
Chapter 2 - Accelerating Sustainable Development
Agenda 21 calls upon the global partnership to provide a dynamic and growing world economy in support of sustainable development in poor countries. An open, equitable, secure, non-discriminatory and predictable multilateral trading system, in which the commodity exports of developing countries can find markets at fair prices free of tariff and non-tariff barriers, is the first requisite of sustainable development. Environmental protection measures must not be allowed to restrain trade, and vice versa, with such vexed questions to be settled each on its own terms.
Chapter 3 - Combating Poverty
The long term objective of enabling all people to achieve sustainable livelihoods should provide an integrating factor that allows policies to address issues of development, sustainable resource management, and poverty eradication simultaneously. This objective is to be sought by improving the access of the poor to education and health care, to safe water and sanitation, and to resources, especially land, by empowering the disadvantaged, especially women, youth and indigenous peoples.
Chapter 4 - Changing Consumption Patterns
The equitable distribution of income and wealth results in conspicuous unsustainable consumption. Social research and policy should bring forward new concepts of status and lifestyle which are less dependent on the Earth's finite resources and more in harmony with its carrying capacity. Greater efficiency in the use of energy and resources must be sought through new technology and new social values.
Chapter 5 - Demographic Dynamics and Sustainability
Rapid population growth places severe stress on the life-supporting capacities of the planet. Agenda 21 urges governments to develop and implement population policies integral with their economic development programs. Health services should include women-centred, women-managed, safe and effective reproductive health care and affordable, accessible services, as appropriate, for the responsible planning of family size. The objective is to stabilise the world population at a sustainable number by the end of the century.
Chapter 6 - Protecting and Promoting Human Health
Within the overall strategy to achieve health for all by the year 2000, health service coverage should be achieved for population groups in the greatest need, particularly those living in rural areas. The preventive measures suggested included reckoning with urban health hazards and risks from environment pollution.
Chapter 7 - Sustainable Human Settlements
In industrialised countries, the consumption patterns of cities are putting severe stress on the global ecosystem, while settlements in the developing countries need more raw materials, energy and economic development simply to overcome basic economic and social problems. Investment is needed to supply the missing urban infrastructure. Rational land-use planning must reduce the irreversible environmental devastation of urban sprawl.
Chapter 8 - Integrating Environment and Development
Agenda 21 calls on nations and corporate enterprises to integrate environmental protection, degradation and restoration costs in decision-making at the outset - to mount, without delay, the research necessary to reckon such costs and to develop protocols bringing these considerations into procedures at all levels of decision-making.
Section II
Resources for Development
Chapter 9 - Protecting the Atmosphere
Constraint and efficiency in energy production and consumption, development of renewable energy sources, and promotion of mass transit technology and access for developing countries is needed. Conservation and expansion of all sinks for greenhouse gases is extolled and transboundary pollution is subject to international controls.
Chapter 10 - Planning and Management of Land-Use
An increasingly populated world has been learning to bring the competing uses of finite land resources under zoning and planning by public agencies. We must now learn to integrate environmental considerations into decisions that may irreversibly upset ecosystems.
Chapter 11 - Combating Deforestation
There is a need for concerted international research and conservation efforts to control harvesting of forests and uncontrolled degradation and conversion to other types of land use; to develop the values of standing forests under sustained cultivation by indigenous technologies and agro-forestry, and to expand the shrunken world-forest cover.
Chapter 12 - Combating Desertification
Agenda 21 calls for intensive study of the process in its relation to world climate change to improve forecasting, study of natural vegetation succession to support large-scale revegetation and afforestation, checking and reversal of erosion, and small and grand scale measures. It is also recommended that preventive measures be applied to critical zones facing desertification. The General Assembly, in its current sessions, is urged to initiate negotiation of an international convention to combat desertification for signature in 1994.
Chapter 13 - Mountain Development
Mountains are important for their role in the modulation of climate, in retarding run off and in the governing of the water supply. This chapter calls for study, protection, and restoration of these fragile ecosystems and assistance to populations in regions suffering degradation.
Chapter 14 - Agriculture and Rural Development
Traditional agriculture can no longer sustain the population in crowded villages of the pre-industrial world. New technologies must be introduced into and adapted to lands in order to increase development in the rural area.
Chapter 15 - Conservation and Biodiversity
Our planet's essential goods and services depend upon the variety and variability of genes, species, populations and ecosystems. The Convention on Biodiversity, as well as Agenda 21, recognise the sovereignty of nations over the genetic resources of their ecosystems and the right of indigenous people to participate in exploitation by biotechnology of the genetic resources they have husbanded. National strategies on conservation and biodiversity should be implemented.
Chapter 16 - Sustainable Biotechnology
The comprehension and control of life processes acquired in the present half century gives the human species unprecedented means to increase the availability of food and renewable raw materials to improve human health and to enhance the protection of the environmental. With science and technology so largely in the possession of developed counties, Agenda 21 calls for the transfer of biotechnology to the developing countries and the creation of the infrastructure of human capacity and institutions to put it to work here.
Chapter 17 - Protection of the Oceans
Exploitation and abuse of the oceans now places this continuing essential resources of human existence in peril. This Chapter sets out goals and programs in order to integrate the management and sustainable development of coastal areas, including exclusive economic zones. It also addresses critical uncertainties for the management of the marine environment and for the climate change.
Chapter 18 - Water, its Protection and its Management
Water is the primary necessity required to sustain life. The contamination of water endangers health. Agenda 21 sets out measures, from the development of long-range weather and climate forecasting to the clean-up of the most obvious sources of pollution, to secure a supply of fresh water for the next doubling of human population.
Chapter 19 - Management of Toxic Chemicals
The industrial revolution has brought no less than 100,000 man-made chemicals into the world commerce. Not enough is known about the long or even the immediate or short-term effects of exposure of humans and the environment to these chemicals. Agenda 21 seeks such objectives as the full evaluation of 500 chemicals before the year 2000 and has the willing co-operation of all concerned.
Chapter 20 - Hazardous Wastes
Certain of the 100,000 man-made chemicals make a hazardous contribution to the 2 kilograms of solid waste per capita per day generated in the industrial countries. Crowding of the land-fills in those countries has started up a dubious new branch of international trade. Developing countries have come under pressure to accept these unpleasant imports. Agenda 21 seeks international support in restraining trade and for containing the hazardous cargoes in safe sinks.
Chapter 21 - Solid Wastes and Sewage
Apart from its hazardous content, the sheer volume of solid waste generated by industrial civilisation calls for modes of control and disposal that reduce the burden it lays upon the environment. The minimising and recycling of waste are urged as strategies to make it possible to arrive, finally at environmentally sound waste treatment and disposal. "Life cycle" management of the flow of material into and out of manufacturing and use is encouraged.
Chapter 22 - Radioactive Wastes
Nuclear power production presently generates 200,000 tons of low and intermediate-level radioactive waste and 10,000 tons of high-level waste. Mainly a problem for the developed countries, its management calls for stricter observance and enforcement of the Code of Practice on the Transboundary Movements of Radioactive Waste, propounded by the International Atomic Energy Agency and giving teeth to the London Dumping Convention that now calls for voluntary restraint of ocean dumping.
Section III
Strengthening Major Groups
Chapter 23 - Preamble
The commitment and involvement of all social groups will be critical to the effective implementation of the object, policies, and mechanisms agreed to by Governments in all program areas of Agenda 21.
Chapter 24 - Women
In the poor countries, women bear the cruellest burdens of poverty, including the hardest and most lowly tasks, the pain of childbirth and the anguish of infant mortality. They suffer further the humiliation of status that accords with the meanness of their existence. Governments, principally male, are urged to face the status question, to give girls equal access to education, to reduce the workloads of girls and women, to make health-care systems responsive to female needs, to open employment careers to women and to bring women into full participation in social, cultural and public life. Without such participation, development is unsustainable.
Chapter 25 - Children and Youth
Governments are urged, by the year 2000, to ensure that 50% of their youth, both male and female, have access to secondary education or the equivalent of a professional education. This formation should include basic sensitisation on matters related to the environment and sustainable development. On the other side of the coin, they are urged to combat abuse of the rights of youth, especially females, endemic in certain cultures.
Chapter 26 - Indigenous People
Indigenous people have much to teach the industrial world about sustainable development. Agenda 21 urges their enrolment in full global partnership, beginning with measures to protect their rights and conserve their patrimony.
Chapter 27 - Non-Governmental Organisations
Non-governmental organisations in developed countries are reinforced by counterparts in developing countries. Development is finding its place on their agendas alongside the environment. Human compassion of the largely young militants is fortified by their increasing sophistication in the economics and politics of underdevelopment. Agenda 21 urges governments to accept the inevitable and to work constructively with this new opposition, even against the impression, conveyed at times by its militancy, of uncertain loyalty.
Chapter 28 - Local Authorities
Because so many of the problems and solutions being addressed by Agenda 21 have their roots in local activities, most local authorities should, by 1996, have undertaken to promote a consensus in their local population on a "local Agenda 21". By 1993, the international community should have initiated increasing co-operation among local authorities. By 1994, such co-operation should be fathering full momentum. At all times, local authorities should be inviting women, and youth into full participation in the decision-making, planning and implementation process.
Chapter 29 - Workers and Trade Unions
Measures of sustainable development must necessarily impinge upon the workplace and on the nature of occupations. For their own protection and in promotion of socially responsible economic development, workers, through their elected representatives, must have a voice. Relevant organisations await ratification.
Chapter 30 - Business and Industry
Through the Business Council on Sustainable Development, a number of enterprises have taken the lead in demonstrating life-cycle accounting and in reflecting environmental costs of their input and production and of the uses, recycling and disposal of their products. While they looked to market compulsions and incentives to close most of the distance to sustainable development, they accept the necessity for regulatory measures by the governments to speed the way.
Chapter 31 - Science and Technology
The Montreal Ozone-Layer Convention and the Climate-Change Convention signed at Rio both argue for closer communication and understanding between the scientific and technological community and the decision-makers who determine public policy. A code of ethical practice agreed upon by scientists and recognised by society as a whole would facilitate the monitoring of their accountability.
Chapter 32 - Farmers
Farmers are stewards of sustainable development, directly responsible for one third of the land surface of the Earth. They require economic and technical assistance that will encourage them in self-sufficient, low-input and low-energy agricultural practices. The market should adopt pricing mechanisms that internalise environmental costs. Women, who do much of the world's farming, should have access to tenure and use of land, to credits, and to technology.
Section IV
Means of Implementation
Chapter 33 - Financial Resources and Mechanisms
Eradication of poverty is essential in order to meet national and global sustainability objectives. The cost of inaction could outweigh the financial cost of implementing Agenda 21. The huge sustainable development programs of Agenda 21 will require the provision of substantial new and additional financial resources to developing countries. The initial phase will be accelerated by substantial early commitments of concessional funding. Further, developed countries reaffirmed their commitments to reach the accepted United Nations target of 0.7% of GNP for concessional funding as soon as possible.
Chapter 34 - Transfer of Technology
Developing countries would be assisted in gaining access to technology and know-how in the public domain and to that protected by intellectual property rights, as well, taking into account developments in the process of negotiating an international code of conduct on the transfer of technology proceeding under the United Nations Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. To enhance access of developing countries to environmentally-sound technology, a collaborative network of laboratories is to be established.
Chapter 35 - Science for Sustainable Development
The sciences link fundamental understanding of the Earth system to the development of strategies that build upon its continued health functioning. In the face of threats of irreversible environmental damage, lack of full scientific understanding should not be an excuse for postponing actions which are justified in their own right.
Chapter 36 - Education and Public Awareness
Because sustainable development must ultimately enlist everyone, access to education must be hastened for all children; adult illiteracy must be reduced to half its 1990 level, and the curriculum must incorporate environmental and developmental learning.
Chapter 37 - Capacity Building
Building endogenous capacity to implement Agenda 21 requires the strengthening of human, scientific, technical, administrative, institutional and financial capacities of a country in order to deal with environmental problems on a long-term basis. Agenda 21 will require the efforts of the countries themselves in partnership with relevant United Nations organisations and developed countries.
Chapter 38 - International Institutions
Agenda 21 proposes to add a Commission on Sustainable Development to monitor its implementation which would report to the General Assembly through ECOSOC.
Chapter 39 - Legal Instruments and Mechanisms
Implementation of Agenda 21 will require further development and strengthening of international law. Existing international agreements, having been negotiated without adequate participation and contribution of developing countries, need to be reviewed. Sustainable development will require the extension of international law into new realms of human activity.
Chapter 40 - Bridging the Data Gap
Internationalisation of environmental costs and amortisation of indicators of sustainability all require not only new data but also new thinking. The Global Environmental Monitoring System and Global Resource Information Database of the UN Environment Program represent a first step towards this end.
