Changing Horizons in Geography Education - HERODOT Network ...

• sustainable development as a local process, the local territory has an important taskin creating local and global networks, region are cornerstones of development• sustainable development as a planned and communication process• sustainable development as a participated process, the key is empowerment oflocal stakeholders, the construction of a participated decision-making system andconflict management strategy (Arnstein, 1969,; Chambers, 1992; 1997; IIED,1991; Redclift and Sage, 1994; UNDP, 1993).Need for knowledge and skills in sustainable developmentGeography is concerned with sustainable development theory and practices andgeography can also supply territorial (landscape) knowledge. It also provides studentswith the abilities to actively participate in new decision making processes and skills inrecognition and empowerment of local actors (Bertoncin, Sistu, 2001). Central issuesin any decision related to actors, territories, natural resources are power relations andthe way to achieve consensus and to deal with conflicts. (Floc’Hay, Plottu, 1998)In the practice of territorial decision making any action should be appraised ina context wider than the strictly technical and economical issues of the action orthe sectoral and territorial circle directly involved by the plan or programs. Environmentaland territorial issues deal with social and ecological relationships morecomplex than those apparently influenced from the project or the program. The issuesof social equity and environmental carrying capacity are tightly connected (Berkes,Folke, 1998; Elling; 2000; Funtowicz et al. 1999; Gunderson, Holling, Light, 1995).Choices concerning the environment have always more to do with distributive policies;in every project, plan or program at stake is the socio-spatial justice; typicalexamples are the location of landfills, roads or dams: the costs are supported by thereceiving territory whereas benefits are enjoyed by territories or populations localisedfar from the place mostly hit, often there are no compensation measures. Thisreasoning does not intend to support the zero hypothesis as the best solution, ratherto project or program alternatives which have to be appraised not only in terms onenvironmental impacts, but also against the socio-spatial implications influencingeither the definition of the priorities and the results. In the practice of environmentalassessment this issue of socio-spatial justice has been faced foreseeing the consultationof the public after the conclusion of the impact statement.The social network that interacts with every plan or program foresees four typologiesof actors: the proponents, the environmental authority, the directly affectedactors and public opinion. If two actors are traditionally in narrow contact duringall the phases of the evaluation (proponents and environmental authority), directlyaffected actors and population have often few opportunities to contribute, so actual“participatory” models consist in the post-consultation phase which results in adynamic that often threatens to crystallise in the classical decide-announce-defend(DAD) mode.True public participation processes in decision-making are necessary to improvethe quality of the decisions made and strategic in order to make them more acceptableand shared within the environmental and territorial policies. Besides this, participa-315