Tomorrow today; 2010 - unesdoc - Unesco

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levels of education, taking part in both formal and non-formal education, are aware of the imperatives of sustainable development. The signatories of the Ubuntu Declaration are jointly working towards: • Strengthening the role of educators in the Commission on Sustainable Development process as one of the major stakeholders • Promoting communication and collaboration among scientific, technological and educational organizations by frequent exchange of information and views on their activities • Facilitating the review and revision process of educational programmes and curricula at all levels of education for integrating the latest scientific and technological knowledge for sustainable development into educational programmes and curricula, and to develop mechanisms to continuously inform teachers and update programmes • Promoting efforts to attract young people to the teaching profession • Emphasizing the importance of ethical issues in education for building a sustainable and peaceful global society in the 21st century • Promoting knowledge transfers in innovative ways to speed up the process of bridging gaps and inequalities in knowledge • Working towards a new global learning space on education and sustainability that promotes cooperation and exchange in education at all levels and among all sectors of education around the world. This space must be developed on the basis of international networks of institutions and the creation of regional centres of excellence, which bring together universities, polytechnics, and institutions of secondary education and primary schools. To develop the curricula and courseware needed – and regularly update these – and to inform teacher training and re-training in effective ways, the Ubuntu Declaration Group, the Ubuntu Alliance, aims at an inclusive and flexible process, mobilizing all who have something to contribute in primary, secondary and tertiary (including higher) education. Specific attention will be given to online learning and contributions of the media. The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation will give guidance with regard to the issues to focus on in particular, such as: water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity (WEHAB) and, of course, the Millennium Development Goals. The Earth Charter, too, gives important perspectives and concepts to build upon while constructing curricula and training teachers. 6 The signatories of the Ubuntu Declaration have worked closely with UNESCO to promote the DESD, and have contributed to the draft framework of the International Implementation Scheme. In that process they have also decided to choose as their most important concrete project the development of the global learning space, based on regional centres of expertise (rather than excellence), which include NGOs, public authorities, museums, botanical gardens and companies that were prepared to contribute to ESD projects in their region. RCEs: an innovative initiative Regions include parts of countries like Bretagne, Tohoku or Catalunya. The regional centres should include institutions of primary, secondary and tertiary education, research institutions, science museums, non-formal education, zoos, parks, etc. Prizes could be awarded for innovative, joint projects of two or more institutions from different sectors. The regional centres of expertise might be identified in a comparable way to the monuments on the cultural heritage list, by a peer group established by the Ubuntu Alliance. This has the distinct advantage that local/regional conditions can be fully taken into account. The RCEs would contribute to location-specific knowledge. Successful RCEs would run a portfolio of highly attractive and effective ESD projects, each of these run by two or more member institutions coming from different sectors of society. The initiative of the Ubuntu Alliance has already received much positive global response. The good advice and strong support for new RCE initiatives, given by the staff of the Global Service Centre located at UNU-IAS in Yokohama, has been crucial for the successful creation of RCEs and ultimately, the envisaged Global Learning Space on ESD. By the spring of <strong>2010</strong> the Group of Peers of the Ubuntu Alliance had officially acknowledged 74 RCEs, of which 12 are located in Africa, 28 in Asia and the Pacific, 23 in Europe and the Middle East, and 11 in the Americas. In different ways, the RCEs have also started to shape the global learning space by developing joint projects and sub-networks. In May <strong>2010</strong> the RCE Curitiba organized the Fifth International RCE conference, and in December 2009 the RCE Graz-Styria organized the Third European RCE meeting and the RCEs of Asia and the Pacific met at an event organized by the RCE Delhi and TERI at the TERI University. These regional centres of expertise will produce a visible output as a global network. In the process, it will be possible to mobilize many people, learn from their creative ideas, build on diversity and promote international cooperation in ESD. The regional centres and their mutual relations form the global learning space for sustainable development; the major tangible outcome of the DESD. Participants in an office productivity training programme, part of the RCE Cebu-APFED sponsored KnowledgeNetwork Image: UNU-Institute for Advanced Studies, Yokohama, RCE-Bulletin [ 31 ]
What is learning for sustainable development? Professor Stephen Sterling, Head of Education for Sustainable Development, University of Plymouth, UK and Senior Advisor to the Higher Education Academy, Education for Sustainable Development Project The key to a more sustainable future is learning. A selfevident statement perhaps, but it hides an important truth: that some learning – indeed, much learning that dominates currently in educational systems – will not take us towards a more sustainable future, but rather the opposite. So ‘learning for sustainable development’ is a radical step and movement that seeks to help assure a more livable, secure and harmonious society than that in prospect. A first step towards understanding the nature and implications of learning for sustainable development is to recognize that the world is on an unsustainable course, as has been evidenced by a stream of international reports over some years. 1 As the Tellus Institute states: “We stand at a historical crossroads, heading into an uncertain and perilous future.” 2 The concept of sustainable development, however it is perceived (it has been discussed and argued over in detail since coming to prominence with the Brundtland Report of 1987) can nevertheless be seen as an attempt to articulate those goals, principles, values and processes which can help change our collective direction towards a more hopeful and secure future. Such a trajectory takes into account the present and future social, economic and ecological well-being of people and communities, in the context of the Earth’s ecological health and resilience. It is driven by rising concern in public life and wider society as people in all sectors become increasingly aware of the negative impact and threat of sustainability issues such as climate change, economic vulnerability, social justice, resource depletion and species loss – as well as of positive opportunities to develop more sustainable lifestyles and economic activities. In essence, sustainability is about trying to ensure a society, economy and ecology that are viable now and in the long term. As such it has implications for most aspects of human activity, from local to global scales – production and consumption, energy, transport, food and agriculture, construction and housing, trade and equity, employment, social relations and so on. Preparing for change Evidence suggests that we are on the cusp of very different patterns of social and economic organization, driven by and in response to the end of cheap energy and the effects of climate change, necessarily towards more localized, low-carbon, low-waste, resource-efficient economies. This presents a very real and urgent challenge for educational systems and learning, which begs deep questions about their ‘responseability’, that is, the ability of the educational community as a whole to respond adequately to the emerging conditions of both threat and opportunity that face our communities, our graduates and our children. To clarify this challenge, we need to make a distinction between two arenas of learning: institutional learning and designed learning. Designed learning is the concern of all educational programmes: it is planned, resourced and provided for different groups such as school pupils, tertiary-level students and adults in community education. Institutional learning refers to the social and organizational learning that the policy makers and providers may themselves undergo or experience: for example, government educational departments, schools, universities and educational agencies. The critical point is that sufficient change towards sustainability in designed learning, including aims, curricula, methods, assessment, reward structures etc., is directly dependent on sufficient institutional learning – which can, in turn, facilitate re-design. Without this, layering or inserting sustainability into educational policy and practices that otherwise remain largely unchanged may have value, but is insufficient. In other words, sustainability requires learning within educational systems, not just learning through educational systems. As I have argued elsewhere, sustainability “implies a change of fundamental epistemology in our culture and hence also in our educational thinking and practice. Seen in this light, sustainability is not just another issue to be added to an overcrowded curriculum, but a gateway to a different view of curriculum, of pedagogy, of organizational change, of policy and particularly of ethos.” 3 More widely, as Williams suggests: “This learning…needs to be a core part of learning across society, necessitating a metamorphosis of many of our current education and learning constructs.” 4 The significance of this lies in the need to re-design educational programmes so that learners can experience the kind of education that is appropriate to our times. In essence, this is education that prepares people to cope with, manage and shape social, economic and ecological conditions characterized by change, uncertainty, risk and complexity. Common themes and new perspectives What this means in practice has been addressed by a growing literature around sustainability education [ 32 ]
Page 1 and 2: TOMORROW TODAY United Nations Educa
Page 3 and 4: DISCLAIMER The authors are responsi
Page 5 and 6: Foreword IRINA BOKOVA, DIRECTOR-GEN
Page 7 and 8: From activists to the inclusion of
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common aim of sustainable developme
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