Education for Sustainable Development
October 2004
Banner photo: © SEKAI BUNKA PHOTO
A Decade of Opportunity
Education for Sustainable Development, often referred to as ESD, is about learning for change. It provides the opportunity for individuals and social groups to reflect, learn and change so that we can move closer toward a sustainable world. As a process it not only informs but also motivates and more importantly engages people in decision-making relating to matters of quality of life.
ESD has crystallized as a result of international agreements and the global call to actively pursue sustainable development. Originally perceived as education about sustainability, it is being increasingly recognized, through the influence of Agenda 21 and the more recent World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002, as more than the dissemination of knowledge.
Sustainable Development
Sustainable development means different things to people from different cultures, backgrounds and interests. Many people understand sustainable development to be a process of adaptive management and systems thinking, requiring creativity, flexibility and critical reflection. Through teamwork and working across disciplines, social groups learn from each other as they consider options and the consequences of these options for the future.
ESD is about how to stimulate and guide participation and learning. Critical to ESD is learning to access and influence social systems for public participation for decision-making.
Education with the objective of achieving sustainability varies from previous approaches to environmental education in that it focuses sharply on developing closer links among environmental quality, human equality, human rights and peace and their underlying political threads. Primary concerns of ESD include issues such as food security, poverty, sustainable tourism, urban equality, women, fair trade, green consumerism and public health, as well as those of climatic change, deforestation, depletion of natural resources and loss of biodiversity. Matters of environmental quality and human development are central to ESD as it is based on the premise that we cannot have environmental quality without human equality.
There are key features of the ESD process that encourage people to explore the complexity and complications of sustainability as well as the economic, political, spiritual, cultural and environmental forces that foster and impede sustainable development. These are as follows:
- Focus on the future and ability to create a sustainable future-building capacity for change and improved quality of life
- Less emphasis on awareness-raising and behavior changes and more emphasis on lifestyle choices
- Developing skills and knowledge for socially critical citizens to deal with complex issues
- More focus on social, structural and institutional change than on personal change
- More focus on changing mental models
DESD
The UNESCO draft framework for the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development released in 2003 argues that ESD needs to address issues of poverty alleviation and peace and not just biodiversity matters.
It confirmed that ESD is about learning to prevent the destruction of ecosystems, biodiversity threats, loss of forests and fisheries, air and water pollution, but it also addresses issues of intellectual property rights, overconsumption, increasing poverty, inequality, exclusion and alienation, social conflicts and violence, AIDS, health, trade and aid as well as cultural erosion. The Decade provides a great opportunity for improving our quality of life--to do so we need to reflect not only upon human-environment relationships, but also on human-human relationships.
ESD advocates that all stakeholders, particularly "key multipliers," those which can reach large numbers of people, be involved genuinely in decision-making to build a more sustainable world. The strategic approach of targeting key multipliers has the aim of raising the capacity of as many people as possible to participate in making decisions about what issues and problems need addressing and working collaboratively to implement them. However, over the last decade, key multipliers within civil society, including religious groups, have not been receiving much attention.
Contribution of Faith Communities
Faith communities do, however have an important role to play in ESD. They are heavily engaged in work that contributes toward sustainable development through grassroots and global initiatives, community education, partnerships, and policy-making. As Gary Gardner of Worldwatch writes, faith groups have the capacity to shape worldviews, have moral authority, access to material resources, a large base of adherents and community-building capacity.
UNESCO has highlighted the need for their involvement in the Decade. Involving faith groups provides an opportunity to develop an appreciation of the significance of spirituality for sustainable development, harness the power of religion to inspire long-term commitment in its followers and reach a large number of people. For example, the teachings of faith communities encouraging moderation in all things could contribute to addressing rampant consumerism and unsustainable practices.
Faith communities are beginning to engage with ESD at various levels: some with specific initiatives stimulated by the declaration of the Decade, others through faith-secular partnerships.
A recent partnership of religious and secular organizations is the U.S. Partnership for the Decade of ESD. The current partners include University Leaders for a Sustainable Future, the secretariat for the Earth Charter in the U.S., the National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá'ís of the U.S., the National Council for Science and the Environment and the National Council of Churches, among others, and membership continues to increase.
Engaging with ESD
In the coming six months two initiatives will be held during which the interaction between faith, religion and ESD will be a focus. The first is the international conference "Education for a Sustainable Future," being held in Ahmedabad, India, in January which will include a track on faith and ESD. The conference is hosted by the Centre for Environmental Education, and sponsored by UNESCO, UNEP and the Ministry of Human Resource Development and the Ministry of Environment and Forests of the government of India. The second is a Seminar on Education for Sustainable Development, a joint initiative of the International Environment Forum (IEF) and the Educators for Social and Economic Development (EDSED) network scheduled for December. The focus of the seminar is how the Bahá'í community can contribute to the Decade and how ESD challenges the practice of education in the community.
ESD, with its focus on empowering people through the development of capacities and skills in values clarification and critical reflection, and engaging people in open dialogue, provides an opportunity for institutions, individuals and communities to raise their capacity to contribute to a better quality of life.
"How does ESD challenge the culture and practice of faith communities in contributing to sustainable development?" is an important question and one that faith communities are beginning to ask. There are also many initiatives of faith-inspired and ethics-based groups which address similar goals, although they may not be termed ESD. Related to this is another important question: "How does the practice and vision of faith communities contribute to ESD itself and thus the approach taken to building a sustainable world?"
Daniella TilburyAssociate Professor Daniella Tilbury is the director of the Australian Research Institute in Education for Sustainability (ARIES) at Macquarie University, Sydney. She is the global chair in ESD for the IUCN Commission on Education and Communication.
Dimity PodgerDimity Podger is a PhD candidate with Macquarie University, investigating the questions outlined in the article. She welcomes contact from people involved in faith-inspired organizations and ESD. She can be reached at: dpodger@gse.mq.edu.au
