Tomorrow today; 2010 - unesdoc - Unesco

Structural solutions for ESD in SwedenCarl Lindberg, Special Advisor to the Swedish National Commission for UNESCO on ESDIn Sweden, the concept of education for sustainable development(ESD) was first established in 2000. In March of thatyear, education ministers from the Baltic Rim countries metin Stockholm at the invitation of the Swedish government. Thismeeting came to be part of the Baltic 21 process, which had beenlaunched four years earlier with the aim of creating an Agenda21 programme for the Baltic Sea and the region surroundingit. The Baltic, an inland sea, had become severely polluted.Powerful long-term measures were considered essential if it wasto be restored. Seven reports from different sectors relevant tothis restoration effort had been prepared, urging among otherthings that the educational systems in the countries concernedbe made aware of the problems and be encouraged to help solvethem. The March meeting in 2000, which took place at HagaPalace in Stockholm, adopted the Haga Declaration.The importance of education for environmental work had long beenemphasized in Sweden. Its role had been noted as early as 1967 in theThe Bonn Conference on ESD, 2009Image: Anna Lundh and Swedish National Commission for UNESCOpreparatory documents for the UN Conference on theHuman Environment held in Stockholm in 1972. Theaction plan from that conference, therefore, containeda section on the importance of environmental education.The intentions of the Swedish government weremanifested more clearly in 1990 in one of the generalprovisions of the Education Act, stating that: “each andevery person active in the school system shall promoterespect for… our common environment”. The nationalcurricula for compulsory and upper secondary schools,adopted in 1994, placed emphasis on environmentalissues, but also referred explicitly to what is now calledthe social dimension in sustainable development. Inthese documents, however, the actual term ‘sustainabledevelopment’ is only used in reference to the environmentaldimension.Following the Rio conference, the concept ofsustainable development was spread afield throughthe successful promotion of Agenda 21. Sweden’s highlevel of environmental awareness, already evident atthe time of the 1972 conference in Stockholm, is oftenattributed by international observers to the country’stime-honoured right of common access. This 200-yearoldprinciple allows citizens to roam more or less freelythrough the countryside, while showing due considerationfor the environment.The education ministers who met in March 2000decided to develop an action plan for the provisionof education and training on sustainable developmentin the Baltic Sea region: Baltic 21 Education. Effortsto this end were led jointly by Lithuania and Sweden.Three working groups of committed participants developedan action plan that was subsequently adopted ata new meeting of education ministers at Haga Palacein January 2002. The process of developing this actionplan helped make ESD known among the variouscountries’ education ministries and non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs). The plan was circulated to allcompulsory and upper secondary schools in Swedenand to all Swedish higher education institutions.Unfortunately, it was not followed up by informationefforts of any great note. It did, however, help ensurethat university researchers concerned with environmentaltraining in international networks redirected theirwork towards ESD. This applied both to those involvedin largely Nordic networks and those who had arrivedvia the Organisation for Economic Cooperation andDevelopment’s environment and school initiatives.[ 92 ]