Education for sustainable development in the ‘Capitalocene’

When the thought of this Special Issue began to take shape 3 years ago, we had no clear idea of how it would develop. We wanted to address what we saw as the inability, or even impossibility, of our education system in general, and ESD in particular, to respond to the current climate and environmental crises. We began the call for contributions to the SI with the question ‘Has Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) reached an impasse?’ and referred to Moran and Kendall’s (2009) argument that our various research approaches produce nothing but illusions of education and that education does not exist beyond its simulation. Moran and Kendall continue to argue, drawing on the work of Baudrillard, that current movements in education constitute an ‘improvement agenda’ where more interventions are produced and critiques are repeated ‘over and over’ to foster improvements, ‘pursued as if they were possible’ (Moran & Kendall, 2009, p. 329, italics added). In the call text we used Moran and Kendall’s position on education as a springboard for thinking around ESD and capitalism. In the messy terrain of the debates concerning the ‘Anthropocene’ (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000) and the ‘Capitalocene’ (Malm & Hornborg, 2014), how does education emerge? Since its conception, the ESD field has been criticised for its hidden and problematic normativity (Jickling, 1992). Regardless of how valid such a critique is, the core idea of ESD is, arguably, a grandiose ‘improvement agenda’ – not only of education, but of the planetary condition as such. There is an assumption that if we can find the appropriate way of ‘doing’ ESD, a sustainable world is within reach.

Yet while working on the Special Issue, one overwhelming real (i.e. not simulated) global event and disaster after the other has occurred: The Fridays for Future strikes; the catastrophic wildfires, hurricanes and flooding across the globe; the heatwaves in the Arctic circle and Pacific Northwest, and, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic – to name a few. Extinction numbers are now at critical levels (IPBES, 2019), climate change impacts are here and increasing in magnitude and frequency (IPCC, 2021), and human-made materials, such as plastic and concrete now outweigh the living biomass of the planet (Elhacham et al., 2020).

How, then, is it at all possible to educate in the midst of this harsh reality, if education itself, and educational critique, cannot be conceived beyond its own illusive patterns of simulation and repetition? As educators, working within these multiple tipping points, where do we stand? Are schools and universities and even ESD, becoming an extension of the globalizing economy and unwillingly accelerating unsustainability (Huckle & Wals, 2015) by equipping people merely to be more effective vandals of the earth? (Orr, 1994). Does the temporality of assumptions held about education (Facer, 2021) impede our ability to respond to the current crisis with urgency? Can educational institutions ever cultivate multi-species approaches to knowledge and justice in a time of mass environmental pillage (e.g. Pedersen, 2021)? And what does this all mean for an individual teacher attempting to nurture hope, and stave off despair (e.g. Ojala et al., 2021), in the face of widespread inequality and lack of access to meaningful biopolitical actions (e.g. Knutsson, 2021)?

During this time, authors in the Guest editorial team have, consequently, also been involved in critical debate articles addressing social and educational implications of the pandemic (Henning Loeb & Windsor, 2020; Knight et al., 2020), and the recent UNESCO framework for ESD (Knutsson et al., 2021). To add to our frightening insights on the escalating precarious conditions for all life on earth, fuelled by our capitalist system, the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report points out that humanity is closer to irreversible tipping points that, once reached will lead to accelerating compounding ecological and Earth systems transformations that will drastically change life on earth during the coming decades – even if emissions are drastically reduced (IPCC, 2021).

These are indeed difficult times (to put it mildly) to produce a special issue. Still, we wanted to bring together international colleagues to share their thoughts with us on the roles, positions and workings of education in an increasingly unpredictable and unintelligible world. Our initial call text received critique (indeed, sarcasm) that we were mocking education, even at the earliest stage (Scott, 2019). Our intention, and hope, was that this special issue would open new trajectories of thinking and acting on and within education in relation to sustainable development, addressing both critique and possibilities to proceed. While the initial critique should be taken seriously – we take it as a sign of sincere engagement with the topic – we leave to further debate the evaluation of the knowledge that is actually produced by the contributions. How this educational knowledge resonates with, and adds to, current developments in environmental and Anthropocene education studies, is, to us, a pivotal question: How can science-based educational policy, theory and practice change without being firmly grounded in a cross-fertilization of knowledge in the rapidly shifting risk landscape in which we all – education researchers included – find ourselves?

We see a demarcation line between the contributions. On one side are those who remain committed to the wider project of education (in some form), believing that it can reclaim its own purpose of a common good for the benefit of people, nonhuman beings, our environment and shared life conditions. These contributions refuse to see the ‘Anthropocene’ as a deterministic dystopia and offer guidelines for a way forward for education (some hopeful but all necessary) grounded in human accountability, responsibility, justice, ethics, and care (Humphreys et al.; Stein et al.; Ward; Webster). Another set of contributions (Peers; Saari & Mullen; Stock & Peim; Wallin) takes a radically different and perhaps post-anthropocentric direction, unnerving the very premises (ontological, political, structural) that education relies on. These contributions oscillate around the dark ecology movement and its educational intersections, offering a less hopeful image of the future and a profound critical analysis of education’s position in catastrophic global development. In these accounts, education can no longer be viewed as a nostalgic promise for a common good and a better future. Paraphrasing Tiqqun (2010), education is, rather, an environment or infrastructure, that is fundamentally hostile to us, inextricable from other anthropogenic threats and natural forces that seem to become increasingly intertwined in joint production of our current predicament.

In the process of working with our SI, we didn’t anticipate this demarcation line, nor was it included as a selection criterion. In retrospect however, we have watched it unfold as the SI took shape, and suggest that this may be a knowledge contribution to ESD in and of itself. Our critics may not agree. We present these thought-provoking responses, not to close down the conversation on the role of education presently, but rather to open up and contribute something to the debates, interventions and purposes of education in times of climate change and other global catastrophes. We urge educational theorists, practitioners, and policymakers to engage with them as critical tools for thinking, practicing and revolutionizing educational futures. What is at stake is no longer ‘improvement’, but survival.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Helena Pedersen

Helena Pedersen is Associate Professor in Education at University of Gothenburg. She is author of Schizoanalysis and Animal Science Education (Bloomsbury, 2019) and Animals in Schools (Purdue University Press, 2010). She is Co-editor of the Critical Animal Studies book series (Brill) and co-founder of University of Gothenburg’s Network for Critical Animal Studies in the Anthropocene (GU-CAS).

Sally Windsor

Sally Windsor is a Senior Lecturer in Sustainability and International Education at the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies, University of Gothenburg. Her research and teaching interests focus upon teacher education and how school teachers in particular can include sustainability across the curriculum. She is currently working on a European project developing teachers’ capacities to enhance climate literacy.

Beniamin Knutsson

Beniamin Knutsson is Associate Professor in the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies, University of Gothenburg, and a research associate of the Centre for Education Rights and Transformation, University of Johannesburg. Drawing on critical traditions, his research is concerned with issues of power, inequality, education and sustainable development.

Dawn Sanders

Dawn Sanders is an Associate Professor in biology didactics at University of Gothenburg. She is also a fellow of the Linnean Society of London and an editor for the journal Plants, People, Planet. Her teaching and research inhabit a transdisciplinary view of life on earth.

Arjen Wals

Arjen Wals is Professor of Transformative Learning for Socio-Ecological Sustainability at Wageningen University and a Visiting Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences. He also holds the UNESCO Chair of Social Learning for Sustainable Development. His teaching and research focus on designing learning processes and learning spaces that enable people to contribute meaningfully to sustainability.

Olof Franck

Olof Franck is Professor in Subject matter education, specializing Social sciences, and Associate Professor in Philosophy of Religion at the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies, University of Gothenburg. His main research interests concern ethics, ethics education, intercultural religious education and ethical issues relating to ESD.