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Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.
Bringing together representatives
of government and civil society
in 2002, ten years after the
Rio conference, consensus was
achieved on a key point: if we want
to progress towards a durable and
fair world society, education for sustainability
must play a more important
role than ever before.
Education for Sustainable
Development
The UN Decade aims to encourage
governments, educational establishments,
NGOs, private enterprise and
individuals to build the concept of
sustainable development into all areas
of the education system. The
meaning of sustainable development
has been best defined by the Brundtland
Commission: “Sustainable development
is development that meets
the needs of the present without
compromising the ability of future
generations to meet their own
needs.” For this to be achieved, the
three key development factors of
economy, society and environment
must be brought into harmony. The
economic development of a society
must not be raised to an exclusive
aim – such an objective could only
be achieved at the expense of natural
resources or social justice.
So: what is Education for Sustainable
Development all about? If people are
to be educated with a view to sustainability,
they must learn skills to
enable them to shape the future actively
and responsibly. In educational
theory this is known as the acquisition
of ‘participatory skills’ (“Gestaltungskompetenz”).
These include:
anticipatory, future-orientated thinking;
living, complex, interdisciplinary
knowledge; independent action; and
participation in social decision-making
processes. Education for sustainable
development is thus not simply
about raising environmental awareness,
as is often supposed. It is, in
fact, more concerned with empowering
people in general to take action,
orientated towards the goal of viable,
long-term development.
This educational concept is to be
brought into kindergartens, schools,
vocational training, universities, research
bodies, continuing education
centres and informal, independent
learning. With the help of the UN
Decade, education for sustainable
1958
New building
completed. On the
3rd November, the
UNESCO Building on
Place de Fontenoy is
inaugurated, containing
works by Picasso, Miró,
Moore and Calder. The architects
are Marcel Breuer
(USA), Pier-Luigi Nervi (Italy)
and Bernard Zehrfuss
(France).
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