Scope and Impact of Global Actions under UNDESD

Introduction

One of the more difficult tasks facing the staff in the Education for Sustainable Development Section at UNESCO in 2014 will be the preparation of the final report of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD). As education for sustainable development (ESD) embraces education (formal, non-formal and informal), public awareness and training programmes, how does one begin to capture the scope and impact of all these global actions?

During these 10 years, there have been thousands of meetings carried out, events staged and policy decisions made. The range and reach of the activities has been enormous. However, cataloguing the actions is insufficient. It is also important to try and capture not only what was done but also what we have actually accomplished and what we have learned, to better inform and shape the emerging Global Action Programme on ESD. UNESCO is in the process of capturing the activities of the UNDESD into a manageable report for release at the UNESCO World Conference on ESD in Nagoya in November of 2014 and ultimately to submit to the UN General Assembly in 2015.

As someone closely associated with ESD throughout the Decade, I am now asked more and more ‘What do you think are the most important accomplishments of the DESD?’ ‘Was it useful?’ These are indeed important questions but too large for any one person to answer in their entirety. No one person can begin to comprehend the magnitude of the UNDESD in its entirety; we each have our own perspective. The following article is my opinion piece on these questions. For this article, I have chosen, as someone working largely in the field of formal education, to identify three things from this limited perspective: one event and two emerging trends that I feel are truly significant UNDESD outcomes. These three may or may not be seen by all in the ESD community as directly influencing them or their work. However, I feel these three unobtrusive outcomes either are already or are poised to be major shapers or energizers of the future of ESD in formal education and perhaps beyond.

Involvement of Ministers of Education at the Unesco World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development, Bonn, Germany

When asked of significant milestones, my mind quickly goes back through the many different events that I have attended around the world starting with the Decade launches in New York, Tokyo, Ahmedabad and Paris. I feel that even more significant than those launches was the achievement of the UNESCO World Conference in Bonn in 2009 marking the mid-point of the Decade. Many ministers of education and their active participation in writing and unanimously adopting the beautiful Bonn Declaration are hard to surpass. At the conclusion of those three days in Bonn, a crucial number of the ministers and other senior education officials, corporate leaders and non-governmental organization (NGO) non-formal educators understood and accepted both the concept of ESD and their responsibility to bring education, public awareness and training to their personal workplace. In particular, it proved to be a tipping point for the endorsement of ESD as an overarching issue for formal education from preschool to higher education. The many Bonn Conference workshops also showed how new teams of educators and trainers from formal and non-formal education institutions and organizations could collaborate to address a wide range of complex sustainability issues such as climate change, unemployable youth and the loss of biodiversity.

The ministers attending Bonn were influential in raising the importance of ESD at the next UNESCO General Conference and ultimately their understanding of ESD as an over-arching purpose of the world’s and their own education system finally infused into the policies and practices of UNESCO itself. This ESD infusion continued after the Bonn Conference and greatly influenced the overwhelming decision by nations at the UNESCO General Conference in November of 2009 to adopt the Bonn Declaration. This insight and sense of responsibility has endured within UNESCO in subsequent years. As ESD became better understood, the interest and expertise in it rose within UNESCO and has emerged as an institutional priority. In 2013, this priority culminated in a call for an ongoing action plan to continue the ESD work begun by the UNDESD. Many UNESCO National Commissions commented on the importance of building upon the solid foundation initiated by the UNDESD as there remains a huge task—to strive for an educated citizenry that is concerned with the direction of global development. This task of nurturing an appropriately educated citizenry is now recognized as critical for the survival of humanity and all aspects of life on the planet. The vote of approval by the UNESCO General Conference for an ongoing ESD programme is linked both to the strategy of engaging ministers in Bonn in writing the Declaration and to the success of the countless efforts of thousands of educators and other participants during the UNDESD.

ESD and Quality Education

The second outcome that I would like to bring forward is related to ESD within formal education. This is the emergence of ESD as an element of quality education. This possible connection is an extremely important linkage that needs to be explored, proven and built upon.

One of the initial steps taken by UNESCO after The Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro (1992) was to reaffirm the focus of ESD as defined in the title and substance of Chapter 36 of Agenda 21: Education, Public Awareness and Training. It was logical to identify education, public awareness and training as the three areas for action for ESD. UNESCO identified four foci or thrusts of ESD. Education was addressed as both the need for access to and retention in a quality education (i.e., the first thrust of ESD) and the need to reorient existing education to address environmental, social and economic aspects of sustainability (i.e., the second thrust of ESD). Public awareness and understanding of sustainable development as well as training programmes for all sectors of society formed the third and fourth thrusts.

Most of the early work in ESD was carried out by NGOs through environmental education, development education, peace education, etc. The main interest of these groups was creating curricular materials that included their group’s specific concerns. These early advocates of ESD had limited access, influence or even expertise in addressing access and retention within formal education and hence the first thrust was almost forgotten. Their sphere of activity was largely within the second thrust of ESD and addressing the NGOs’ primary focus (e.g., mega fauna or waste disposal) rather than a broader vision of ESD. Progress in developing ESD was made, but it was limited to reorienting the fringes of formal education rather than engaging the core disciplines of language, mathematics, science, etc. ESD was an additional point of interest but seldom seen as core to the graduation outcomes of these core disciplines. Addressing this limitation of overlooking the first thrust of access and retention in a quality education became one of the major challenges of the UNDESD. How to link ESD to formal education in all countries of the world became a crucial question.

In the early and mid-UNDESD, there was some linkage between ESD and Education For All within UNESCO; however, the linkage was limited to Southern nations (aka developing countries). Addressing education for the millions of youth who either drop out of school or are undereducated in all countries, including the most affluent, is now part of the ESD discourse. The first thrust of ESD is being revisited with a new awareness of ESD’s role in decreasing dropout rates and increasing the employability of youth. The role that ESD could play in creating and maintaining a sustainable just society for all is a new pivotal question and a priority research quest. Can a society whose education systems from preschool to higher education are not addressing their contribution to the well-being of the individual, society and the planet in its entirety be considered a quality education?

In the 1990s, sustainable development was often considered the responsibility of the ministry of environment. Rarely were ministries of education involved in national sustainable development strategies. As a result, ministries of education were only peripherally engaged at the beginning of the DESD. The peripheral engagement was often through the second thrust of reorienting the curriculum to address sustainability issues and was often influenced by other ministries such as environment, health and social services. Even the first global ESD handbook published on the WWW and translated into over 15 languages, The ESD Toolkit, was funded by the Waste Management Research and Education Institute in Tennessee.

The emerging quest to understand the relationships between ESD and quality formal education is now engaging ministries of education as access and retention in a quality education is truly their domain. I feel it was the Decade with the revisiting of all four thrusts and not the concept of sustainable development that has finally engaged the ministries of education. The pursuit of a quality education is the beginning of a new era for ESD in the formal education sector.

I say the beginning of a new era, for much remains to be accomplished. Most of the world’s ministries of education are struggling to deliver what is perceived to be a quality core curriculum due to the emergence of PISA (i.e., Programme of International Student Assessment) that emerged almost simultaneously with the DESD. Originally designed to assess the education systems of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, PISA has now spread to approximately 60 countries and is now being adapted for developing countries. The emergence of PISA has proven to be of global significance and has given new impetus to the discussion of the quality and purpose of our education systems. I will come back to this later.

Of key concern to this discussion is the fact that globally, there are few resources to either dedicate to new emerging curriculum areas or reinvigorate existing pedagogical efforts. Even if a minister of education is inclined to try and introduce ESD, it would be difficult to find the resources needed to produce curricular materials. Even more difficult—yet more important—is finding the resources and leadership needed to engage staff in the professional development and the systemic change that would be required. Before ministers and even headmasters can reorient their fiscal and human resources, they will need to consider questions such as:

How can ESD update and improve educational purposes and outcomes? This question pertains to traditional perceptions of quality and better outcomes. Can ESD improve test scores and/or other desired outcomes (e.g., improved student attendance and problem solving)?

Currently, researchers in a number of countries are trying to find evidence to answer these and other questions related to ESD’s contribution to a quality education. The initial results look promising. In school systems where profound ESD systemic change has been undertaken, there have been observable changes such as an increase in academic success and in student engagement. Additionally, teachers express satisfaction in addressing pressing issues related to sustainability and student achievement.

ESD as a purpose of Education

I would argue that perhaps an even greater outcome or accomplishment of the UNDESD is the renewed discussion on the very purpose of education.

The emergence of the UNDESD moved the pedagogical discussion for some to an entirely different level. I say ‘some’, because many of those who did act simply added a special event or created a school club to address an aspect of a social or environmental issue. Some individuals and groups went deeper and led green school or eco-school efforts. Others renamed one of their adjectival educations such as environmental education or anti-racist education or consumer education as sustainability education.

Those who were more thoughtful and concerned pondered on a different level of engagement. After UNESCO agreed that ESD was education for sustainable development and not just education about sustainable development, the discussion took on a much more profound significance for these concerned educators. It became clearer that our current education system was ultimately about national or regional economic competitiveness and growth. Generally, teachers did not perceive that the purpose of their career was to improve the workforce and parents did not send their children to school to enable our countries to thrive economically. Nevertheless, our governments fund education based on an economic model. Furthermore, industry and media certainly describe and comment on our education systems as the drivers of our economic future. In other words, school officials and community leaders alike realized that they were striving for and evaluating formal education systems as education for development. If the new goal was to be ESD, then the entire system had to be examined, and certainly changes would be necessary. The deeply rooted question of ‘What changes are needed?’ goes to the very heart of the purpose of our education systems.

As it becomes more apparent that our graduates will be faced with major personal and societal challenges, many of which are not yet envisioned, it is necessary to revisit the goals of our education systems. We are told that our youth will need to adequately provide for and govern justly an increase in population of roughly 3 billion. Most of these new people will be born in regions that are already stressed environmentally and economically. Working in a new collaborative manner, the world’s current youth will need to help provide for and govern over 9 billion people using fewer resources (e.g., less water as we are already using prehistoric water from aquifers; less land as our arable lands are shrinking due to desertification and erosion; and fewer ocean resources as our fish stocks and reefs are in a major decline). Future leaders will need to bring sanitation, energy and equity to impoverished regions or face uncontrollable migrations and perhaps violent uprisings. Future leaders will also confront issues beyond the current prevailing human-centric vision or world view. In other words, they must assume the responsibilities of global citizenship. Should and could our education leaders take this into consideration?

Currently, we are not providing very useful models of sustainable production, consumption or lifestyles for our students. Nations are largely pursuing a self-centred perspective as they compete with each other to please their own electorate to remain in political power. Little progress is emerging regarding international issues such as climate change, fisheries collapse, biodiversity or poverty reduction within our own societies, let alone globally. The Decade provoked the questions; ‘How can we develop the skills to act as responsible global citizens, speaking not only for humans, but all life forms? How do we generate the will to try to undertake this task as soon as possible? Are there roles for our education systems in this?’

It is very seldom that a school system has the resources or authority to question its very purpose and actually take informed, profound action as a result of the deliberations. Unlike the private sector with budgets for research, innovation, manpower training and retooling of assembly lines, school systems are fiscally and politically restricted to make very limited adjustments or changes. While there is continuous longitudinal improvement as curricula are modified or pressing societal issues such as HIV/AIDS are infused into school practice, seldom is there a major change such as the repurposing of education itself.

As more and more countries are politically trapped by the public reports of their nation’s PISA successes or failures, it becomes harder for ministries of education and school systems to focus on discerning between the purpose of education and student proficiency related to a few crucial skill sets. In the eyes of politicians, parents and even some practitioners, these distinctions have been blurred. Somehow, we must distinguish between purpose and proficiency of knowledge and skill sets.

The UNDESD has brought forward deep reflection regarding the purpose of our systems. In the Province of Manitoba in Canada, the vision of the K-12 education system is:

To ensure that all Manitoba’s children and youth have access to an array of educational opportunities such that every learner experiences success through relevant, engaging and high quality education that prepares them for lifelong learning and citizenship in a democratic, socially just and sustainable society. (http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/edu/mandate.html)

To continue the synergy, the first goal of the Manitoba system is: ‘To ensure education in Manitoba supports students experiencing and learning about what it means to live in a sustainable manner’ (http://www.edu.gov.mb.ca/edu/mandate.html).

The new goal has brought about significant change through several years of in-service professional development as well as local and province-wide adaptation. Interviews with school superintendents, principals and teachers show there is confidence that the shift of purpose from traditional development to a more socially, environmentally and economically just world view in their school policy, programmes and practices is not only welcomed but also accepted as necessary and ethically right.

Finland, which is one of the nations that is highly successful in PISA assessments, is also questioning the purpose of education at the ministerial level. ESD is an essential element in the purpose of the new curricula being collaboratively constructed by their National Board of Education and informed by school leaders, teachers and the community at large. They seem very clear about ‘what is purpose’ and ‘what is proficiency’. This clarity is an important step in building significant synergy between the goals of PISA and ESD. A sustainable future is clearly the purpose of education and there is a need to explore how PISA can become a new ally in this.

Closing Remarks

Many wonderful events happened during the Decade and some will be documented in the UNESCO report. Others will be highlighted in this special edition of the JESD which itself is a product of the UNDESD. However, looking back on the emergence of ESD from its conceptual inception in the preparation of Agenda 21 in the late 1980s, I feel that the aforementioned three are major milestones attributable to the UNDESD that may be overlooked. They are in some ways emergences and perhaps unintentional outcomes that will be important to acknowledge and embrace in the new Global Action Programme.