NN40, May 2008
Education for Sustainable Development? Or The Sustainability of Education Investment? A Special Issue
Education and the coming global ?Great Transition? ? but which one?
By Des Gasper, Institute of Social Studies, The Hague
Email: gasper@iss.nlVarious studies, for example within The Great Transition Initiative (GTI), suggest that major changes are required in predominant human values during the next two generations, to ensure politically and environmentally sustainable societies and a sustainable global order. The GTI identifies three areas of critical uncertainties for humanity?s future (Raskin 2006): 1. Environmental risks; 2. The economic instabilities of ?turbo-capitalism?; 3. Socio-political combustibility. The three areas are strongly interconnected, which can bring chain reactions. We face a resultant likelihood of crises. The GTI sketches six indicative scenarios of global futures (Raskin et al. 2002). Each could be called a ?Great Transition? through the crises probable in the 21st century: whether a miraculous technological passage that rescues humanity despite our life-style, a slide or collapse into disaster, or a transition to a society better guided by humane values. Which scenario eventuates depends on the combination of intensity of crises and degree of coping capacity. With high intensity crises yet high coping capacity we may be both driven towards and able to make a ?Great Transition? of a profound yet favourable kind.
The GTI adjudges that global coping capacity can only greatly increase if a powerful global citizens? movement emerges, with a shared vision, the shared identity of global citizen, and a realistic change strategy. Only with such a movement can even modest reform scenarios become plausible, as opposed to the longstanding reality of recurrent fine-sounding global commitments which are then hardly implemented.
The premise of a scenarios? exercise is that people and societies have choices, which can be influenced by reflection and debate. Many social scientists are sceptical regarding what to expect from change by individuals, even if financially motivated by new incentives or full-cost accounting, if it runs against predominant meaning-systems. People have needs for meaning and identity, which in modern societies are in large part derived via material and commercial artefacts. The relative emptiness of consumption still requires and allows its endless repetition, with meaning-giving coming as much through the process as the product. Attempts to change consumer behaviour through addressing individuals, via information and via financial incentives and disincentives, may have little impact given people?s other motivations, their social lock-in, and the massive resources of business that pull in the other direction. Instead change must come through their peer groups and communities.
Processes of societal reform thus require values as drivers, that reconfigure and motivate patterns of action. Within a conceptual frame of co-evolving human-environmental systems, human values and the ?carrier? social movements are key variables, that have influence and are influenceable, even perhaps by scenario exercises. The major required value changes, as argued by The Earth Charter, the GTI and similar projects, are: away from consumerism (the pursuit of human fulfilment through purchases), to a focus on quality of life; away from the predominance of a certain type of individualism, towards more human solidarity; and away from an assumption of domination of nature, towards an ecological sensitivity. The GTI?s work reviews evidence from global surveys of values, with reference to what people say and what they do in these three dimensions (Kates et al. 2006). It concludes that while there is already much stated support for values of solidarity and ecological sustainability, behaviour does not match them well. The challenge in these areas is how to bridge the attitude-behaviour gap. Regarding quality of life values though, fundamental value change is required, away from consumerism.
Major value changes can be observed in human history, sometimes surprising and impressive, such as the rise of beliefs in and real commitment to human rights and racial equality. How do fundamental changes in values and practices arise? What roles can education play? Or is it just a dependent variable within society, with no fundamental system-altering impacts? The conundrum that ?we can?t change persons unless we change systems? and ?we can?t change systems unless we change persons? partly arises out of the crudity of our concepts, as a sort of Zeno?s paradox of social movement. Eppur si muove. The arrow can sometimes still reach the target. Change happens, through actions by persons. This is the premise of scenarios thinking. The possible roles for imaginative education in facilitating sustainability, including through supporting value change, imply a fundamental agenda of research and exploration.
Changes in values and visions require societal ?carriers?, and hard thinking about possible pathways of social change (see e.g. Krznaric 2007) and the roles of education therein. The Great Transition Initiative?s own model of change is via national and global citizens? movements driven by the energies of young people, posited as the most dynamic element in civil society. To bank on youth, as the key force of energy, impatience and potential, is perhaps what educators and educationists implicitly do. But we need to share and reflect on our experiences, and values, far more. Of particular potential importance, one may surmise, is ?global education? (see e.g. George 1997), if it can absorb and promote sustainability values rather than their obverse. The policy agenda enunciated by the UN?s Commission for Human Security (the Ogata-Sen commission) in its report Human Security Now (2003) includes a major role for cosmopolitan education. Educators and educationists need, though, to absorb also some of the energy and impatience of youth.
References
Commission on Human Security, 2003. Human Security Now. New York: UN Secretary General?s Commission on Human Security.
George, Shanti, 1997. Third World Professionals and Development Education in Europe ? Personal narratives, global conversations. Delhi: Sage.
Kates, Robert, et al., 2006. Great Transition Values? Present Attitudes, Future Changes. Great Transition Initiative.
Krznaric, Roman, 2007. How Change Happens ? Interdisciplinary Perspectives for Human Development. Oxford: Oxfam.
Raskin, Paul, 2006. ?World Lines: Pathways, Pivots and the Global Future?, on the dynamics of global change: crisis, choice, action; Paper 16. Available here.
Raskin, P., T. Banuri, G. Gallopin, P. Gutman, A. Hammond, R. Kates, R. Swart, 2002, Great Transition, Boston: MA: Stockholm Environment Institute.
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