Environment and sustainability education research as policy engagement: (re-) invigorating ‘politics as potentia’ in South Africa

Abstract

Using a meta-review approach organized historically in relation to critical policy incidents, this paper critically reviews the process of developing and (re) invigorating Environment and Sustainability Education (ESE) (policy) research as ESE policy engagement over a 30+ year period in a rapidly transforming society, South Africa. It offers an example of long term policy-research meta-review in a context of policy flux. It adds to a body of international ESE policy studies that are seeking to understand and develop the ESE research/policy interface as this relation emerges under more complex conditions. In particular, we respond to the finding in the systematic review of ESE policy research undertaken by Aikens, McKenzie and Vaughter (2016) which reports a geographic under-representation of Africa (amongst other places) in ESE policy studies, and González-Gaudiano (2016, 118)’s insight that ESE policy research in current neo-liberally dominated political conditions and as political process, is essentially an “open, unsteady, incomplete, and relational process”. The Aikens et al. (2016) finding informed our decision to offer a substantive ‘meta review’ of 30+ years of ESE policy research in South Africa including approximately 150 studies, thus making this body of research more visible and available for scrutiny in the international ESE policy sphere, while also offering us an opportunity for the reflexive introspection that is advised for ESE policy studies by Van Poeck and Lysgaard (2016). The paper develops around a concept of ESE research as policy engagement oriented towards a ‘politics of potentia’ (Dussel, 2008), framing the ESE policy-research meta-review within a theory of politics.

Keywords:

• Policy-making
• politics
• environmental education
• education for sustainable development
• research methods

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Fakir (2017) writes in the context of sustainability-oriented transitioning theory, and proposes ‘transitioning realism’ for emerging economies, noting that transitioning theory overall has fallen foul to socio-technical idealism and instrumentalism, lacking adequate political economy theory, and situated analysis as guide.

2 We use the terms EE and ESE interchangeably, because in South Africa since 1992, sustainability and social-ecological justice concerns have been central to environmental education, the term which was initially favoured as in many global South countries (e.g. Leff, 2009). Over the years, the term and its use has morphed into ESE. Here we agree with Kopnina (2012, 198) who argues that “… the field should put less emphasis on internal discussions about names (EE/ESD) and subnames (sustainable development education, learning for sustainability, education for sustainability, etc.), and instead insist on a radical turn away from neo-liberally and anthropocentrically-biased education” (Van Poeck and Lysgaard, 2016).

3 This is the research programme based at Rhodes University’s Environmental Learning Research Centre, but which has worked widely with researchers across the country and with state and civil society actors and other universities engaged in ESE Research in various national coalitions and collaborative ESE policy research and praxis programmes over the past 30+ years.

4 This is not unlike what Bhaskar (1993) refers to as Power 1.

5 Under-labouring here refers to ‘philosophical underlabouring’ as described by Bhaskar (2016, 1), which means that the research is philosophically informed by critical realist critiques of positivism and hermeneutics.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Heila Lotz-Sisitka

Heila Lotz-Sisitka holds a Tier 1 South African National Research Foundation Chair in Global Change and Social Learning Systems and is a Distinguished Professor at Rhodes University, South Africa.

Eureta Rosenberg

Eureta Rosenberg is Professor and Chair of Environment and Sustainability Education at Rhodes University, South Africa.

Presha Ramsarup

Presha Ramsarup is Director of the Centre for Researching Education and Labour at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.