United Nations: Holistic Education and Sustainable Development

http://motherearthrights.org/2010/08/18/harmony-with-nature-report-of-the-un-secretary-general/

V. Sustainable development: A holistic paradigm for harmony with nature in the 21st century

43. Throughout the world, humankind has become increasingly aware that the ways of our present civilization despite all its material progress have not always been beneficial for the Earth or her peoples. Since the 1960s, scientists, researchers, writers, governments and civil society have been signalling the precariousness of life on Earth.

44. Applying holistic thinking to all humankind’s activities is a complex task. Yet, the failure to do so has created serious ecological imbalances and environmental degradation. Ultimately, environmentally destructive behavior is the result of a failure to recognize that human beings are an inseparable part of Nature and that we cannot damage it without severely damaging ourselves.19

A. Education for Sustainable Development

45. The holistic concept of sustainable development can guide human beings’ efforts to rebalance their relationship with the Earth. Such a rebalancing is urgent, as scientists and researchers remind us that we are running out of time.

46. Education is critical if people are to be motivated and informed to take the necessary actions to mend the damage already incurred and avoid further damage to the Earth and its ecosystems. The focus of environmental education has been on teaching a respect of nature. However, such respect alone has clearly not changed society’s destructive behaviour. Respect and appreciation are the first steps toward developing environmentally aware citizens. Effective learning should manifest itself in changes in values and behaviour.20

47. People can draw wisdom from the long-established indigenous beliefs and traditions that, within different contexts and structures, have formed the basis for a life in harmony with nature. The “holistic vision” inherent in all of them and the importance given to being in constant communion with nature is perhaps one of their key lessons.

48. A great environmental awakening took place in the United States in the 1960s and later spread around the world in the wake of the publication of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. The new consciousness of Spaceship Earth was reinforced by satellite photography and environmental disasters such as major oil spills. In response, increased attention began to be paid to the causes of environmentally damaging behaviours.21 Since then scientists, researchers, writers, environmentalists, civil society and governments have contributed thousands of books, reports, documents, initiatives, and awareness-raising campaigns at local, national, and global levels. They have all sounded and continue to sound the alarm about the dangers to the Earth and its life-support systems. They have addressed different aspects of environmental challenges and have tried to bring the environmental pillar on an equal footing with the social and economic pillars. All of them have sought to promote a holistic view of human and the Earth.

49. Improving overall basic education, let alone for sustainable development, is by and large a work in progress. UNESCO’s Education for All 2010 report states that today one in five adults is still not literate, two-thirds of them women, while 72 million children are not enrolled in school. Millions of youths leave school without the skills they need to succeed in the workplace. Every year millions of children attend school carrying the burden of malnutrition, ill-health and poverty 22

50. For those with access to education, students are yet to be educated through all the stages of formal education within an educational framework informed by sustainability, or sustainable development, as overarching principle. While significant improvements are being made to provide more cohesion within any given discipline, we are still far from looking beyond narrow disciplines.

51. Science education at the university level has become ever more specialized, with students choosing not only an academic field but a sub-field and even a sub-field of a sub-field. The fragmentation of knowledge makes it difficult to forge cross-disciplinary links23.

52. Efforts are afoot in many parts of the world to strengthen science education and to ensure that it produces graduates not only with strong skills in their respective fields but with a broad, holistic view of the sciences in relation to one another, to other academic disciplines and to the real-world problems of sustainable development which scientific inquiry should help humanity to solve.

53. According to the American Board on Science Education, the demand for students with a solid foundation in science continues to grow; however, current science education in the United States falls short.24 Significantly improving science achievement will require coordinated changes in science standards, curricula, laboratories, assessments, professional development, and uses of modern technologies. Recent studies show that there is a long way to go. “Taking Science to School”, a National Academy of Sciences report, recommends revising standards to focus on core ideas, designing curricula to build on students’ knowledge of the natural world, and aligning assessments with understanding – in short, an overhaul of the entire system.25

54. In July 2010, in order to guide the development of new science education standards, the U.S. Board on Science and Education has circulated the “Conceptual Framework for New Science Education Standards”. The framework will identify and articulate the core ideas in science in the disciplines of life sciences, physical sciences, earth and space sciences, and engineering and technology, cross cutting ideas and scientific practices. The final report is anticipated in the winter of 2010.26

55. In Europe, the situation is similar. Many studies have highlighted an alarming decline in young people’s interest for key science studies and mathematics. The European Commission has tasked a group of experts to examine a cross-section of on-going European initiatives and to draw from the elements of know-how and good practice that could bring about a radical change in young people’s interest in science studies. Renewal of science teaching practices, including greater cross-disciplinary fertilization, is being promoted by two initiatives, “Pollen” and “Sinus Transfer”.27

56. In Asia and the Pacific, home to two-thirds of humanity, environmental education in schools has resulted in many educational initiatives such as revision of syllabi to infuse environmental perspectives, establishments of specialized environmental education centers, to cite a few. However, these initiatives remain limited to an outdated concept of environmental education which tends to favor nature conservation, especially through the study of science and geography, rather than the multi-disciplinary bases of sustainable development and the holistic imperatives that education for sustainability should serve. Such initiatives also tend to concentrate upon information and awareness-raising campaigns directed at individual behavioural change rather than broader educational or sustainability goals. 28

57. In contrast to what has occurred in other regions, environmental education in Latin America and the Caribbean has traditionally been more closely related to the social sphere than to the ecological one. Since it was introduced in 1993, the concept of Education for Sustainable Development (EDS) has been gradually accepted in the region and several international and regional summits and conferences related to EDS have served to further clarify the concept.29

58. It is worth highlighting one of the three sub-regional initiatives: the Amazonas Andean Plan for Environmental Education (PANACEA) where Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, coordinated by Peru, are focusing on bringing quality environmental education. Most countries in Latin America have a national policy or strategy on environmental education.30

59. In Africa, the Education sector features prominently in the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) together with Health, Science and Technology as key contributors to human development. This all-encompassing approach to the priority areas of NEPAD reflects the holistic approach to SD and corresponds to the principles underlying ESD. Therefore, the objectives of the Decade on Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014) and the Second Decade of Education in Africa launched by the African Union (AU) in 2006 are closely aligned.31

60. According to a recent UNESCO mid-term review32 of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, in Africa the re-orientation of education towards sustainable development requires the strengthening and boosting of the quality and efficiency of human capacity development initiatives (education, training, community development and public awareness programmes). ESD has the potential to contribute significantly to the quality of educational programmes.

61. In the Arab region, the Regional Guiding Framework of Education for Sustainable Education (2005-2014) provides a vision of the activities that could be implemented by any of the partners such as education and training institutions, enterprises, international and regional organizations, civil society and NGOs, within the framework of the DESD. The events organized within the Framework of the Decade are usually linked to the Education for All goals (Dakar, 2000), Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) (New York, 2000), and the UN Literacy Decade (2003-2014).33

62. A key tool whose usage needs to be fully maximized in the educational sector is information and communication technologies (ICTs). Research shows that students gain insights when they use visualizations to link situations, rather than using only text or static drawings. Such tools can help learners connect salient information to their existing ideas.34 ICTs have an indisputable strategic role in the promotion of Education for Sustainable Development. It is necessary to popularize the skills required for their mastery and promote applications adapted to social, cultural, economic and technical realities of the South.35

63. Rural communities living far from the city usually have limited access to wider-scale information. Their education curricula insufficiently prepare them to compete with those that have been educated in urban areas. The core idea of Community Resource Centres (CRCs) is to make current information and technologies available to younger generations so that they can learn through means other than formal education. In addition, a resource centre also provides opportunities for household women, the elderly, and farmers who should be encouraged to take advantage of the information resources provided by such centres. CRCs can play a role in furthering knowledge about Education for Sustainable Development.36

64. Cross-disciplinary work is in its infancy and, while initiatives exist, information about them remains limited. There are individual and small-scale initiatives around the world which have yet to become mainstreamed into educational policy and practices on a wider scale.

65. One initiative worth mentioning is the Trans-Disciplinary Workshop and Book Project to Explore a Broader Research Agenda in Environmental Education and Related Fields. The Workshop aims to explore new epistemologies and research directions in environmental education and related fields by creating a platform for dialogue on research philosophy, questions and approaches among scholars from a diversity of environmentally-related disciplines. The trans-disciplinary epistemologies and research directions emerging from the dialogue will address issues related to the inability of disciplinary research to solve complex environmental problems, and to the need for incorporating epistemological reflection in cross-disciplinary research. Results will be published in 2011. 37

66. Another such initiative is the Earth System Science Partnership (ESSP), established in 2001 by four global environmental change (GEC) research programmes: DIVERSITAS, the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP), the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change (IHDP) and, the World Climate Research Programme (WCRP). The Partnership facilitates the study of the Earth’s environment as an integrated system in order to understand how and why it is changing, and to explore the implications of these changes for global and regional sustainability. The ESSP developed a new strategy that will provide an internationally coordinated and holistic approach to Earth system science. These programmes, in their individual capacity have existed since the 1990s however it became apparent that these programmes could not individually address the Earth system-level integrative questions, especially those to fundamental issues of energy (carbon), food, water and health. 38