Tomorrow today; 2010 - unesdoc - Unesco

From Tbilisi to Bonn: an important
journey in the historical context of ESD
Charles Hopkins, UNESCO and United Nations University Chairs in ESD, York University, Toronto, Canada
It is no easy feat to do justice to the many and complex
sources that have contributed to the formation and nurturing
of education for sustainable development (ESD).
Any civilization that has survived the test of time has somehow
mastered a systemic way to embed ecological understanding into
its cultural and economic DNA. The world’s ‘successful’ cultures
from a longevity perspective (largely its indigenous and traditional
cultures) have sustained themselves for thousands of years by
remaining within their ecological limits. Those cultures that have
ignored the importance of preparing their next generation with this
wisdom have become ghostly indicators of cultural ineptitude. Their
only remaining purpose is to be a warning for those future generations
that are wise enough to understand these indicators and to
heed them. Hence, the need to engage the world’s education, public
awareness and training systems has been unanimously recognized
by those leaders who want informed change and overall lasting
development.
The historical context of the journey from Tbilisi to Bonn should
not ignore the parallel processes within the worlds of formal and nonformal
education and training. The emergence of corporate social
responsibility in the private sector as well as the ability of popular
culture to address sustainability issues in engaging fashion are of
equally tremendous importance. The emergence of thousands of new
NGOs and the ongoing contribution of the stalwart pillars of society
such as religion, justice, healthcare etc. also are intertwined with the
world of ESD and deserve their own recognition.
The growth of ESD
The emergence of education for sustainable development is largely
attributable to the Agenda 21 work programme of the United
Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)
in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This programme called for action on 40
different fronts, grouped into four distinct groupings:
• Economic and social issues
• Environmental issues
• Major groups to be targeted for engagement
• Means of implementation.
This last grouping was addressed in Chapter 36, which specifically
spoke of the need for engaging education systems and public awareness
opportunities and identified the need for sustainability-oriented
training in all sectors. The need for ESD was also mentioned in
Agenda 21’s other chapters and in the work programmes of all the
major UN conferences of the 1990s. ESD was unanimously accepted
as a crucial element of the sustainability agenda and it seemed logical
that the world’s education systems would take this on
as a key piece of the global implementation plan. This
was not to be the easy task that the leaders anticipated.
Those who drafted the ESD chapter between 1987
and 1992 were heavily influenced by their own backgrounds
and by other events during this period. One of
these was the emergence of environmental education
(EE) roughly ten years earlier, as described in the Tbilisi
Declaration in 1977. The majority of the drafters were
aware of EE and many were actually involved in the
Tbilisi process.
However, they were also very aware of the Jomtien
Declaration of 1990, which recognized that approximately
120 million children had no opportunity for
education of any kind, let alone environmental education.
This was more than all the school age children
in Europe and the USA combined. Without education
there would be no development at all, let alone
sustainable development. Jomtien called for a concerted
programme known today as Education for All (EFA).
Hence the first thrust of ESD called for access to quality
basic education. This was the most prominent distinguishing
feature of ESD and has eventually led to its
wider acceptance in the formal education community.
There was also an awareness of the limited influence
within formal education of additional topics or ‘adjectival’
1 educations as John Smyth, one of the drafters,
called them. The final draft of Agenda 21 pointed out
that we should learn from EE and that nations should
engage education in its entirety, implying that the addition
of another adjectival was unnecessary. The drafters
were also aware of the many existing adjectivals that
would be able to contribute and refrained from simply
implying that the solution would be an enhanced EE
programme.
The forty chapters of Agenda 21 were distributed
amongst the various UN agencies for leadership and
monitoring. UNESCO was the UN agency that was
given the responsibility for moving Chapter 36 forward
but not a single nation volunteered additional funding
to assist. Staff and budgets had to be found within the
existing UNESCO funding, which was already stretched
due to the withdrawal of the UK and USA. To make
matters worse, in many countries, sustainability was
largely administered by environment ministries. For
the most part, ministries of education did not view
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