Jairaj Gopalakrishnan
Intern at FIN
“ We are increasingly asking if what people learn is truly relevant to their lives, if what they learn helps to ensure the survival of our planet. Education for Sustainable Development can provide the knowledge, awareness and action that empower people to transform themselves and transform societies” – Stefania Giannini, Assistant Director – General for Education, UNESCO
Education was recognized as an essential element to generate awareness and cultivate understanding on issues prevalent to our Earth at the first United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1992. As the world looks to try and do their part in fulfilling the UN Sustainable Development Goals 2030, the plan of action for people, planet and prosperity cannot be met without acknowledging the important connection between educational development and a sustainable learning environment.[1] Thus, Education for Sustainable Development is an integral contributor to achieving the SDG’s, especially SDG 4 – Inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong opportunities for all.
So, what is Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)? Converse to the traditional way of teaching, ESD means adopting a more holistic approach to education with the aim of “creating a better world for this generation and future generations of all living things on Earth”. This allows every child to acquire the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values necessary to shape a sustainable future.[2] ESD incorporates key environmental challenges like climate change into core subjects like math, science and art, and involves modifying the teaching-learning process to a more all-encompassing approach. Students are thus able to relate to what they learn in the classroom to their real life actions and will be in a better position to take the lead in influencing behaviour and adopting sustainable lifestyles. Education for Sustainable Development is not only about being environmentally-friendly; it also involves developing life-skills including leadership, communication, and management; all of which are extremely important for personal development. By equipping young people with these relevant capabilities in addition to their environmental knowledge, they can excel at living lives which not only further humanity, but that care for and respect our planet’s resources too.[3]
While many nations have embraced the need for education to achieve sustainability, only limited progress has been made in this respect on any level. This lack of progress stems from many sources. Some are due to a lack of vision or awareness while others are due to a lack of funding or policy. We outline a few of these issues below:
- Increasing awareness – ESD is essential
- Structuring and placing ESD in the Curriculum
- Linking to existing issues: Education reform and Economic Viability
- Facing the complexity of the concept of Sustainable Development
- Community engagement into the ESD curriculum
- Engaging Traditional Disciplines in a Transdisciplinary framework
- Sharing the responsibility
- Building Human capacity
- Development of financial and material resources
- Developing policy and gain a national impetus
- Developing a creative, innovative, and risk-taking climate
- Promoting sustainability in Popular culture
While the problem starts from ensuring people understand the need for change, there is a need for policy initiatives and incentives so that schools are given the proper tools to implement the necessary curricula. Furthermore, developing a holistic, engaging and creative curricula is an extremely challenging task.[4]
When discussing the benefits that ESD brings to the table, we can take the example of St. Colm’s High School, in Draperstown, Belfast, Ireland. They took up a structured approach to teaching sustainable development since 2006 with the goal of inspiring students to embrace environmental responsibility. But there were a multitude of reasons why the school decided to undertake this essential step towards sustainability.
- Community focus: The community had a major problem of underage drinking and teen suicides. By valuing the youth’s contributions to the environment, helping them develop skills to manage difficult times and giving them pride in their town, they felt that they could bring about real change. Their focus areas lied in dealing with litter, biodiversity and health and wellbeing. Through engaging activities like litter blitzes, health fairs and biodiversity tours along with “outdoor exercise activities” for staff, teachers and pupils. They say that while it’s an ongoing process, there are significant reductions in litter, teenage drinking and improving community pride.
- Happy children: The pupils benefit from eco-involvement. They have developed life skills such as planting trees and hedges, painting fences and learning how to live more sustainably and economically. The inclusive nature of the activities helps to draw out children who may find school life challenging.
- Successful schools: All these things help to develop happy children – and if children are happy, they will be in a better position to succeed. Attendance, confidence, results and engagement increase.
In summary, the school experienced happier pupils, teachers and staff with improved performance and better community engagement, ensuring that the school in positively impacting the immediate environment and teaching students to be good people before they can become great people.[5]
To conclude, ESD is a vital part of the future of humanity and can will determine how we plan and live our lives. In multiple scenarios, it has proven to help students, teachers, schools and the surrounding communities, one example of which is discussed above. However, designing a proper curriculum is a challenging tasks and needs a coordinated effort at all levels of governance and academia to implement.
[1] https://www.greenschoolsalliance.org/why
[2] https://greenerideal.com/news/environment/0513-why-is-sustainability-education-important/
[3] https://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?210950/Importance-of-Education-for-Sustainable-Development/
[4] http://www.esdtoolkit.org/discussion/challenges.htm
[5] https://www.tes.com/news/how-schools-can-benefit-education-sustainable-development-sponsored-article
Jairaj Gopalakrishnan
Intern at FIN