It is now more than ten years since 180 governments at the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit committed themselves to the quest for sustainable development. The Rio Summit built on the pioneering work of the United Nations 1987 Bruntland Report which defined sustainable development as ‘development which meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.
Since then there has been an increased understanding of the social and economic dimensions of sustainability as well as its environmental basis. Since then also, governments around the world have produced rafts of sustainability strategies and programmes. Sadly, of course, the rhetoric has all too often not been matched by the reality of policy implementation. There have been some successes, but overall on the major global issues such as climate change, bio-diversity, environmental degradation, hunger and poverty, the pace of progress has been disappointingly slow.
The Rio Summit, through Agenda 21, identified a wide range of strategies for achieving sustainability, one of the key policy areas, of course, being education. National governments were expected to review and enhance their provision for environmental education at all levels from primary to tertiary. Education was seen as a means of raising environmental awareness not only across the public at large but in time also among key government and business decision-makers.
Here in the UK there has been a range of initiatives intended to give environmental education and, in particular sustainable development, a higher profile. In the schools sector, for example, the new ‘citizenship’ curriculum ensures that all secondary pupils have at least some familiarity with the basic principles of sustainable development and in recent years it has also featured more prominently in the geography curriculum. However, although geography is widely acknowledged as the main school discipline for the teaching of sustainable development, unfortunately geography’s role in the national curriculum has been contracting. Moreover, compared with issues such as literacy, numeracy and IT, education for sustainability appears to occupy a somewhat peripheral position on the government’s education map.
Within higher education, although there are now a few degree programmes with sustainability in the title, the main torch-bearers continue, of course, to be the three ‘GEES’ disciplines, namely, Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences. Individual degree programmes vary considerably in their coverage of sustainability issues but, in line with the Quality Assurance Agencies’ Benchmark statements, it is likely that sustainability features in the curriculum of all UK GEES undergraduate degrees. In addition, it will no doubt play at least a small role in many courses in areas such as civil engineering, architecture, economics and tourism. However, the great majority of UK students will not encounter sustainability anywhere in their degree programmes. And this is despite a decade of initiatives and projects intended to ‘green’ higher education curricula. It is now ten years since the first Toyne Report (1993) recommended that all higher and further education institutions should prepare environmental policy statements. However, although some progress has been made in areas such as campus management and energy efficiency the goal of integrating sustainability across the HE curriculum has remained largely elusive.
Despite the limited progress to date, the government’s Sustainable Development Education Panel (established in 1998) remains committed to the goal of all HE students having sustainable development learning opportunities. This is in part for citizenship reasons but also because in many public, private and voluntary sector organisations, employers are now looking for graduates who can help them adapt their policies and practices to meet sustainable development objectives. In pursuit of this agenda, Universities UK (UUK) and the Standing Conference of Principals (SCOP) have recently set up a new group for sustainability in higher education chaired by Michael Driscoll, the Vice Chancellor of Middlesex University.
The publication of this theme issue of PLANET is therefore particularly timely. Here in the UK, as explained, we have a new HE policy group on sustainability. And internationally at the recent Johannesburg Earth Summit 2002 (whatever its other failings) the participating governments committed themselves to ‘integrate sustainable development into education systems at all levels, in order to promote education as a key agent for change’.
The aim of this special issue of PLANET is, therefore, to raise awareness, amongst GEES academics and others, of a number of initiatives and developments in the field of education for sustainability. Given that sustainable development is very much an international issue, we are delighted that several of the papers are from overseas. Indeed, the idea for this theme issue stemmed from a symposium held in Moscow in June 2002, where a number of leading Russian and UK specialists came together to exchange ideas and good practice. This symposium, part-funded by our LTSN-GEES Subject Centre, was hosted by the Faculty of Geography at Moscow State University. Shortened versions of several of the Moscow papers are included in this theme issue, together with other papers designed to inject additional ideas and alternative perspectives.
Our first main article by Ros Wade focuses on relevant curriculum developments at the schools level. In outlining the position of education for sustainability in UK secondary education, the paper provides an understanding of the platform on which higher education can build. The next two articles, by William Scott and Stephen Gough, and by Peter Higgins and Gordon Kirk, also link the secondary and tertiary levels. They focus on the key issue of how teacher training courses can better equip new teachers to engage with education for sustainability.
The next three articles, by William Scott et al., by Shirley Ali Khan and by Andy Johnston and Heloise Buckland, all address the issue of greening the Higher Education curriculum. Taken together they review the initiatives undertaken since Rio, identify the major challenges which still remain to be effectively addressed and outline the work of a major programme currently in progress, namely the Higher Education Partnership for Sustainability (HEPS).
The next two articles give examples of UK courses in education for sustainability. Dave Eastwood outlines a new PgDip/MSc course delivered by web-based distance learning. And Steve Martin describes a short course in sustainability for professionals working in the world of business, government or voluntary organisations. Then our last UK author, Martin Haigh, highlights the educational value of practical environmental projects, such as those undertaken by non-government organisations (NGOs).
The final set of papers remind us of the importance of thinking internationally and learning from practice overseas. Nikolai Kasimov and colleagues provide an introduction to education for sustainability in Russian Universities. This gives the context for three Russian case studies by Sergey Bobylev, byVladimir Tikunov and byA. Kapitza et al. which offer accounts of courses currently being delivered in Moscow. And finally, Kaisu Sammalisto describes the progress of greening the HE curriculum in Sweden and Roy Jones takes us to the antipodes for insights into education for sustainability in Australia.
Although this theme issue of PLANET clearly covers a lot of ground, it makes no claim to be comprehensive. We hope none the less that it will raise awareness of sustainability education and invite our readers to rethink their own attitudes and approaches to this key issue. We hope also that it may help encourage the Learning and Teaching Support Network (LTSN) as a whole to consider its own position vis-à-vis the sustainability agenda. This is clearly a subject where our own Subject Centre, LTSN-GEES, has a leading role to play but greening the HE curriculum as a whole will demand a broader and properly co-ordinated approach. This is an agenda where the LTSN, with its links to all the HE disciplines, could perhaps be well positioned to make a difference.