Why Should We Teach About Sustainable
Development?
The 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro was organised by the UN Commission
on Environment and Development in recognition that the world needed to
start to address global inequalities and promote sustainable development.
Important programmes were agreed for dealing with issues such as Biodiversity,
Forestry and Climate Change. A key programme was Agenda 21 (the agenda
for the 21st century), which was signed by 160 world leaders as the action
plan for sustainable development. It called for all communities to be
consulted about what sort of communities we want to have in the 21st century
and to work out ways of making them sustainable.Agenda 21 also recognised
the importance of education in helping to move towards a more sustainable
society.
How far this global action plan was implemented in the following decade
was reviewed at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Rio+10) in
Johannesburg, South Africa in 2002. It was agreed that to promote the
importance of the link between education and sustainable development,
2005-2015 should be declared the UN Decade of ESD (Education for Sustainable
Development). The effectiveness of awareness raising and education for
sustainable development must ultimately be measured by the extent to which
they change the attitudes and behaviours of people as both consumers and
citizens. Changes in lifestyles, as reflected in individual behaviour,
households and at a community level must take place (UNESCO 1997)
Teaching About Sustainable Development and
Sustainability
Evaluation of pupil learning during the course of the Learning
for Sustainable Cities project has shown that pupils are almost always
exposed to the concept ‘sustainable’ with regard to ‘development’.
Thus they see it as applying to something outside themselves, more at
the macro level, and do not see it as applying so much to themselves,
at the micro level.The word sustainable is increasingly applied to other
areas such as sustainable living, sustainable transport, sustainable farming
and (the much debated) sustainable economic growth. Ideally pupils need
to be able to see how the concept can apply at a variety of levels, from
the micro ( a sustainable chair or pair of shoes) to the macro (a sustainable
city or economic system)
(The Personal to Global diagram describes this effectively)
References
20 "Education, including formal education, public
awareness and training should be recognised as a process by which human
beings and societies can reach their fullest potential. Education is critical
for promoting sustainable development and improving the capacity of the
people to address environment and development issues."
Agenda 21, Chapter 36, UNCED 1992
http://www.unep.org/
21 http://www.earthsummit2002.org/
22 From Rio to Johannesburg: Lessons from a decade
of commitment, UNESCO 2002
http://www.unesdoc.unesco.org/
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