Education for sustainable development (ESD): the turn away from ‘environment’ in environmental education?

Abstract

This article explores the implications of the shift of environmental education (EE) towards education for sustainable development (ESD) in the context of environmental ethics. While plural perspectives on ESD are encouraged both by practitioners and researchers of EE, there is also a danger that such pluralism may sustain dominant political ideologies and consolidated corporate power that obscure environmental concerns. Encouraging plural interpretations of ESD may in fact lead ecologically ill-informed teachers and students acculturated by the dominant neo-liberal ideology to underprivilege ecocentric perspective. It is argued that ESD, with its focus on human welfare, equality, rights and fair distribution of resources is a radical departure from the aim of EE set out by the Belgrade Charter as well as a distinct turn towards anthropocentrically biased education. This article has two aims: to demonstrate the importance of environmental ethics for EE in general and ESD in particular and to argue in favour of a return to instrumentalism, based on the twinned assumptions that the environmental problems are severe and that education of ecologically minded students could help their resolution.

Keywords:

• education for sustainable development (ESD)
• environmental education (EE)
• environmental ethics
• sustainable development (SD)
• anthropocentrism
• ecological justice

Notes

1. Also, it needs to be emphasized that environmental, conservation or whatever type of education related to conservation or development is not necessarily taught as such but integrated within general curriculum such as biology or history. This implies that while ‘official’ ESD and debates about it might be transforming themselves, EE in ‘traditional’ capacity defined by Belgrade Charter has stayed in its present capacity. This article targets EE theorists as well as practitioners who do consciously engage with the specified subject of ESD.

2. We need to acknowledge, however, that there might be significant differences at the ‘grass root’ level of practice of ESD – both as far as goals and orientation, as well as level of educational programmes within ESD is concerned. Also, not everything that may be characterized as ‘sustainable development’ in the curriculum is taught as part of a specific course – for example, at the level of middle school, children could be taught about issues such as poverty and agriculture within regular history or society courses.

3. The functions ‘of’ (such as the life-support functions of ecosystems) are independent of people. The ‘functions for’ people all contribute directly in some way to human welfare by acting as inputs to, or waste absorbers from, the economy, others help to maintain human health, or contribute to other aspects of human welfare.

4. Although the scope of this article does not allow for a review of all the positive aspects of ESD discourse, the author is careful not to throw a baby out with the bath water. It needs to be emphasized that advances in conceptualizations and operationalization of ESD have led to a number of very useful developments, both in theory and in practice. Participation and action competence research (e.g. Breiting and Mogensen 1999; Jensen and Schnack 1997) provides excellent perspectives on how new generation of global citizens can be truly engaged and active in the enterprise of sustainability. Breiting (2009) and Jóhannesson and colleagues (2011) argue that that education should focus on empowerment for democratic engagement and on teachers becoming capable of handling controversial issues with learners. In advocating the political model for EE, Chawla and Cushing (2007) argue that students need to learn not only about environmental and social equality issues, but also to learn to recognize the power centres that influence environmental and social change and understand the processes by which they operate.

5. For instance, in 1994, as much as 62% of a representative sample of the Swedish public fully approved of the idea of giving constitutional protection to the rights of animals and plants to life and reproduction (Lundmark 1998, 149). However, Lundmark reflected in the later article, if people were also asked to choose between different valuables, to judge the outcome of potential conflicts between rights, or even to see the rights of animals and plants in relation to interests such as employment, health care, macroeconomic stability, the result is likely to be totally different (Lundmark 2007).