In 2015, the UN set 17 global goals, the so-called Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the year 2030, “a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and ensure that all people enjoy peace and prosperity”. Although these challenges are global, their impact manifests itself on a local level. An inspiring challenge for HU UAS Utrecht is to educate self-confident (upcoming) professionals who contribute to the realization of these global goals by creating local impact. In our opinion such professionals are socially involved, cope with complexity, think systemic and work trans-disciplinary. Furthermore, they ‘mix and match’ personal, societal and professional development, which will not be confined to formal education but lasts a lifetime. This complex challenge forges us to transform our thinking about education and how to organize learning, and about how, where and with whom we educate. UAS’s will have to cooperate with private, public and research partners and create communities in which all participants work, learn and develop themselves while facing new challenges.
DOCUMENT
Building on the Millennium Development Goals, Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) and Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDG) were established. Despite the willingness of many educational institutions worldwide to embrace the SDGs, given escalating sustainability challenges, this article questions whether ESDG is desirable as “an education for the future”. Many challenges outlined by the SDGs are supposed to be solved by “inclusive” or “sustainable” economic growth, assuming that economic growth can be conveniently decoupled from resource consumption. Yet, the current hegemony of the sustainability-through-growth paradigm has actually increased inequalities and pressure on natural resources, exacerbating biodiversity loss, climate change and resulting social tensions. With unreflective support for growth, far from challenging the status quo, the SDGs and consequently, the ESDGs, condone continuing environmental exploitation, depriving millions of species of their right to flourish, and impoverishing future generations. This article creates greater awareness of the paradoxes of sustainable development and encourages teaching for sustainability through various examples of alternative education that emphasizes planetary ethic and degrowth. The alternatives include Indigenous learning, ecopedagogy, ecocentric education, education for steady-state and circular economy, empowerment and liberation. “This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in 'Journal of Environmental Education' on 01/20/20, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00958964.2019.1710444 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
MULTIFILE
This article will discuss social, environmental, and ecological justice in education for sustainable development (ESD) and Education for Sustainable Development Goals (ESDG). The concept of sustainable development and, by extension, the ESD, places heavy emphasis on the economic and social aspects of sustainability. However, the ESD falls short of recognizing ecological justice, or recognition that nonhumans also have a right to exist and flourish. An intervention in the form of an undergraduate course titled Politics, Business, and Environment (PBE) will be discussed. As part of this course, students were asked to reflect on the three pillars of sustainable development: society, economy, and environment, linking these to the fourth concept, ecological justice or biospheric egalitarianism. Biospheric egalitarianism is characterized by the recognition of intrinsic value in the environment and is defined as concern about justice for the environment. Some of the resulting exam answers are analyzed, demonstrating students’ ability to recognize the moral and pragmatic limitations of the anthropocentric approach to justice. This analysis presents ways forward in thinking about the role of “ecological justice” as the ultimate bottom line upon which both society and economy are based. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci10100261 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
MULTIFILE
