Some Thoughts on Nature

I have been on a great WEA course for the past 6 weeks exploring the work of the Welsh novelist, critic, and academic Raymond Williams. He is also noted for his exploration of Key Words. Our WEA tutor framed the course thus: Using the work of cultural theorist, novelist and WEA tutor, Raymond Williams, together we will unlock the Keywords that construct our culture, define ourselves and frame our thinking. Where Psychology, Sociology, Politics, and language meet.

 His book Key Words  was first published in 1976 with 120 words. The second edition 1983 added 21 more words. It is still an ongoing work by the society set up in his name: https://raymondwilliams.co.uk/

But what is a keyword?( http://keywords.pitt.edu/whatis.html )  ’A ‘keyword’, in the sense in which we investigate keywords on this website, is a socially prominent word (e.g., art, industry, media or society) that is capable of bearing interlocking, yet sometimes contradictory and commonly contested contemporary meanings.

NATURE – Keyword entry from his book.

Nature is perhaps the most complex word in the language. It is relatively easy to distinguish three areas of meaning: (i) the essential quality and character of something; (ii) the inherent force which directs either the world or human beings or both; (iii) the material world itself, taken as including or not including human beings. Yet it is evident that within (ii) and (iii), though the area of reference is broadly clear, precise meanings are variable and at times even opposed. The historical development of the word through these three senses is important, but it is also significant that all three senses, and the main variations and alternatives within the two most difficult of them, are still active and widespread in contemporary usage.

Nature comes from fw naturc, oF and natura, L, from a root in the past participle of nasci, L – to be born (from which also derive nation, native, innate, etc.). Its earliest sense, as in oF and L, was (i), the essential character and quality of something. Nature is thus one of several important words, including culture, which began as descriptions of a quality or process, immediately defined by a specific reference, but later became independent nouns. The relevant L phrase for the developed meanings is natura rerum – the nature of things, which already in some L uses was shortened to natura – the constitution of the world. In English sense (i) is from C13, sense (ii) from C14, sense (iii) from C17, though there was an essential continuity and in senses (ii) and (iii) considerable overlap from C16. It is usually not difficult to distinguish (i) from (ii) and (iii); indeed, it is often habitual and in effect not noticed in reading.

In a state of rude nature there is no such thing as a people . . . The idea  of a people … is wholly artificial; and made, like all other legal fictions, by common agreement. What the particular nature of that agreement was, is collected from the form into which the particular society has  been cast.

Our society has evolved so much, can we still say that we are part of Nature? If not, should we worry – and what should we do about it?

Such is the extent of our dominion on Earth, that the answer to questions around whether we are still part of nature – and whether we even need some of it – rely on an understanding of what we want as Homo sapiens. And to know what we want; we need to grasp what we are.

It is a huge question as a biologist in the Conversation has recently suggested . Here is his “humble suggestion “ on how to address it, and a personal conclusion.

Perhaps the best place to start is to consider what makes us human in the first place, which is not as obvious as it may seem.

As might be expected, in matters of such fundamental difficulty, the concept of nature was usually in practice much wider and more various than any of the specific definitions. There was then a practice of shifting use, as in Shakespeare’s Lear:

Allow not nature more than nature needs, Man’s life’s as cheap as beast’s …

. . one daughter

Who redeems nature from the general curse Which twain have brought her to 

That nature, which contemns its origin. Cannot be border’d certain in itself. . .

“Many years ago, a novel written by Vercors called Les Animaux dénaturés (“Denatured Animals”) told the story of a group of primitive hominids, the Tropis, found in an unexplored jungle in New Guinea, who seem to constitute a missing link.

However, the prospect that this fictional group may be used as slave labour by an entrepreneurial businessman named Vancruysen forces society to decide whether the Tropis are simply sophisticated animals or whether they should be given human rights. And herein lies the difficulty.

Human status had hitherto seemed so obvious that the book describes how it is soon discovered that there is no definition of what a human is. Certainly, the string of experts consulted – anthropologists, primatologists, psychologists, lawyers, and clergymen – could not agree. Perhaps prophetically, it is a layperson who suggested a possible way forward.

She asked whether some of the hominids’ habits could be described as the early signs of a spiritual or religious mind. In short, were there signs that, like us, the Tropis were no longer “at one” with nature, but had separated from it, and were now looking at it from the outside – with some fear.

It is a telling perspective. Our status as altered or “denatured” animals – creatures who have arguably separated from the natural world – is perhaps both the source of our humanity and the cause of many of our troubles. In the words of the book’s author:

All man’s troubles arise from the fact that we do not know what we are and do not agree on what we want to be.

We will probably never know the timing of our gradual separation from nature – although cave paintings perhaps contain some clues. But a key recent event in our relationship with the world around us is as well documented as it was abrupt. It happened on a sunny Monday morning, at 8.15am precisely.

A new age

The atomic bomb that rocked Hiroshima on August 6 1945, was a wake-up call so loud that it still resonates in our consciousness many decades later.

The day the “sun rose twice” was not only a forceful demonstration of the new era that we had entered, it was a reminder of how paradoxically primitive we remained: differential calculus, advanced electronics and almost godlike insights into the laws of the universe helped build, well … a very big stick. Modern Homo sapiens seemingly had developed the powers of gods, while keeping the psyche of a stereotypical Stone Age killer.

We were no longer fearful of nature, but of what we would do to it, and ourselves. In short, we still did not know where we came from, but began panicking about where we were going.

We now know a lot more about our origins but we remain unsure about what we want to be in the future – or, increasingly, as the climate crisis accelerates, whether we even have one.

Arguably, the greater choices granted by our technological advances make it even more difficult to decide which of the many paths to take. This is the cost of freedom.

I am not arguing against our dominion over nature nor, even as a biologist, do I feel a need to preserve the status quo. Big changes are part of our evolution. After all, oxygen was first a poison which threatened the very existence of early life, yet it is now the fuel vital to our existence.

Similarly, we may have to accept that what we do, even our unprecedented dominion, is a natural consequence of what we have evolved into, and by a process nothing less natural than natural selection itself. If artificial birth control is unnatural, so is reduced infant mortality.

I am also not convinced by the argument against genetic engineering on the basis that it is “unnatural”. By artificially selecting specific strains of wheat or dogs, we had been tinkering more or less blindly with genomes for centuries before the genetic revolution. Even our choice of romantic partner is a form of genetic engineering. Sex is nature’s way of producing new genetic combinations quickly.

Even nature, it seems, can be impatient with itself.”

SOME THOUGHTS ON TRANSFORMATION

 

Our civilisation, as we know it, is at an historical tipping point, because of the environmental wreckage we are causing in the planetary biosphere. Planetary biophysical limits will determine the future of our world and, as things stand, this may well be characterised by huge discontinuities for human and natural systems, caused by widespread natural disasters, mass migration, and civil unrest. In this new age , – the Anthropocene- we urgently need new ways of thinking and acting. The shockwaves running through our interconnected global, environmental, socio-economic, and educational systems caused by Covid-19 create opportunities to transform all our current systems, at the deepest levels.

I am currently drafting a chapter  which explores how our university systems could play a significant part in this national and global transformation, but only if they themselves can become transformative. As Richard Bawden (2008 ) has commented :

“There is a strange and inexplicable reluctance by our institutions of higher education across the entire globe, to overtly promote the fact that they are first and foremost, agencies of human and social development”.

He argues that “project civilisation” is profoundly fragile and our universities have extraordinary know how and capacity to protect it.

Many pressing challenges require transformation, rather than incremental change and trade-offs. These ‘grand challenges’ are reflected in the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by the nations of the world in September 2015 at a meeting titled Transforming Our World, and in the December 2015Paris Climate Agreement (together called Agenda 2030). Agenda 2030 requires deep – many call it radical – change in mindsets, and ways of acting and organizing. Agenda 2030 present the challenges as inter-dependent ones of environment, equity, and poverty.

The knowledge, tools, and action for achieving transformative change are, however, inadequate and fragmented across disparate disciplines, issues, organizations, and people. There is, therefore, an urgent need to develop, nurture and connect ways of working and learning for transformative change. The SDG Transformation Forum is addressing this need. See also : https://transformationsforum.net/

And this short film outlining its purpose:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1BTcKMODVAvoIypE2YGYUL10f04Xg6qD1/view

Find out here what is meant by “Transformation”.

 A National Plan for the SDGs:  https://www.ukssd.co.uk/measuringup

Bangladesh Sink or Swim

Many recent news stories highlight Bangladesh and its people living with and dying from climate change.  This is both a moving and disturbing story – a wake-up call to all of us about the direct environmental and indirect social and political consequences of our (the developed world’s) dependency on fossil fuels.  In this most vulnerable country climate change and its effects are not some future eventuality because on average floods inundate 20.5% of the country and can reach as high as 70% during extreme conditions.   The effects are devastating and impact on people and livelihoods now.  One of the poorest countries in the world with a population of 150 million cannot be held responsible for the CO2 emissions that are the cause of disastrous climate change impacts that the country is experiencing.   Bangladesh accounts for only 0.3% of the world’s carbon emissions so not much room for cuts there! 

During a visit to Bangladesh in 2004 we witnessed another of the climate change impacts – flash floods from increased melt in the Himalayas which engulfed the rice crop in the Sunamganj district only a week or two before the harvest.   During a boat journey to assess the impact on schools and families in the town of Sulla it appeared that fishermen were hard at work – it turned out that they were salvaging their rice crop from beneath the floodwater. The ‘rotten rice’ harvest provided only about 20% of the potential yield. This happened in April before the disastrous monsoon floods of that year.

If climate change is not addressed urgently, there will be environmental migration on a massive scale or do we wish to be accused of ‘climatic genocide’? The developed world needs to help Bangladesh mitigate the impacts of climate change as well as find appropriate adaptation techniques. But more fundamentally can we find ways to compensate the people of Bangladesh for the damage we have already caused?

The map of Bangladesh looks as though a celestial sledgehammer  has been aimed hard at its southern end shattering it like a car wind screen. .
Shards of land poke awkwardly into the Bay of Bengal and the country is splintered by countless hairline cracks the sea seeping deep into every wrinkle!

The region is a vast delta basin. Bangladesh is one of the most waterlogged countries in the world, crushed like a sodden sponge in the arm pit of Asia. This makes it one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change.

Population: projected to be 242 million by 2050

Pop. Growth rate declined from 2.1 % to 1.7%  Labour force growth: 2.2%

Life expectancy: 62 years

Poverty (%of population below national poverty line): 50%

The pride of Bangladesh is its rivers with one of the largest networks in the world with a total number of about 700 rivers including tributaries, which have a total length of about 24,140 km.

Educating Earth Literate Leaders

We are now citizens of the Earth joined in a common enterprise with many variations. We have every right to insist that those who purport to lead us be worthy of the task. Imagine such a time! (Orr, 2003)

Hundreds of delegates met late in 2019 in Madrid(Cop25) to discuss  climate change and the UN’s Secretary-General headlined with his statement that” we have reached a point of no return!” The UK will hold this year’s climate conference (Cop26 )in Glasgow and the government is making much of how well the UK is mitigating greenhouse gas emissions despite our increasingly prolific use of fossil fuels and our unsustainable consumer lifestyles.

If we look back on the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg (2002) and many of the other international summits which followed, and reflect on their impact, the overriding conclusion is that political leadership the world over has failed to rise to the challenges of sustainability. And yet it is likely that most of the hundred or so leaders who attended the earth summit would have had a higher education degree from some of the world’s most prestigious universities. This raises some serious questions for our university leaders and their governance structures. Why, as the American academic, David Orr once remarked, is it that the people who contribute most to exploiting poor communities and the Earth’s ecosystems are those with BAs, MScs, and PhDs and not the ‘ignorant’ poor from the South?  And why is the illiteracy amongst the world’s politicians as to how the world works as a living system so widespread? Why is it so rare that we encounter in our leaders the qualities needed to enable sustainability: humility, respect for all forms of life and future generations, precaution and wisdom, the capacity to think systemically and critically challenge unethical actions? And more worryingly based on current performance, what hope of improvement is there for future leaders? 

The fact that the higher education sector is seriously failing society by producing leaders incapable of addressing our most pressing problems should trigger some critical consideration about the fundamental role of universities in society, based on three key assumptions:  If universities are the nursery of tomorrow’s leaders and educate most of the people who develop and manage society’s institutions, then the sector bears “profound responsibilities to increase the awareness, knowledge, technologies, and tools to create a sustainable future”, as the Talloires Declaration (signed by many of the world’s university leaders) stated in 1990 (ULSF, 1990). This clearly implies that graduates of every discipline (whether as engineers, teachers, politicians, lawyers, architects, biologists, banks managers or tourism operators, etc.) will need a sound working knowledge of sustainability.

Moreover, sustainable development is now a mainstream policy issue around the world ( in 2015, 150 world leaders  signed up to implementing the UN Sustainable Development Goals and there is an increasing demand for graduates with a broad interdisciplinary training in sustainable development and problem solving. Universities as centres of the most advanced knowledge can through their teaching and their institutional practice, act as role models for wider society and be overt, ethical leaders and advocates of best practice for the future. 

Last September the proportion of young people in England going to university passed the symbolic 50% mark for the first time and a further 2.5 million optimistic students arrived at our universities. Should we celebrate these significant milestones? Or is their optimism misplaced and is the achievement of this 20-year-old policy target good for our society? OECD’s education director Andreas Schleicher believes that achieving this target is a good thing, whilst at the same time he argues that UK’s record in measuring the learning in schools is “leading the world”, we are less effective in measuring the learning taking place in our universities. If we are not adequately measuring the output of a university education how can we assess its effectiveness and how does this influence a student’s choice of a university? And more fundamentally, how does the absence of clear learning outcomes, help us to understand the purpose of a university education?

A recent book written by Professor Kerry Shephard (Higher Education for Sustainability) asks a more fundamental question: “What does guide our beliefs and actions?  and, to what extent might higher education  be guiding the beliefs and actions of our students?”  Without a measure of the outcomes of a university education, there is no answer to this question. Shephard argues that universities should develop and enhance their student’s critical thinking and related dispositions because this captures more precisely the social, environmental, and ethical needs of civil society in a complex and rapidly changing world. In the absence of this kind of explicit purpose, then as one Finnish academic has recently commented, the university “has already become an empty shell, or a soulless organism reduced to dead matter”.

The traditional view is that a university education provides a basis for extending and deepening human understanding in a disciplined, ethical, and illimitable manner. But this liberal view has been overtaken in recent years by the prevailing commercial wisdom which holds that the purpose of higher education is to advance knowledge, promote social mobility and help ensure perpetual economic growth and competitiveness. As one commentator has suggested:

‘This commercialisation of higher education serves a bigger purpose, though. It softens students up for the rigours of globalisation. By creating a market, young people are encouraged to think and behave like rational economic man. They become ‘human capital’, calculating the rate of return on their university investment. A degree becomes a share certificate. Commercialisation conditions students to expect no help from others, or society, and therefore never to provide help in return. Debt and economic conditioning discourage graduates from going into lower-paid caring jobs – and instead into the City, where the real ‘value’ is. It fashions a Britain that competes rather than cares.’ NEF University Challenge

This commercialisation creates citizens who remain as mainstays of the prevailing economic system and, consequently, are unable to lead as agents of progressive social change. But complexity, volatility, and potential social collapse increasingly define the lives of today’s graduates, as well as most (around 87%) of our political representatives in parliament who have undertaken a university education.  If our universities are to provide us with leaders capable of making a positive rather than a negative impact on human survival and wellbeing in these changing times, they need to rethink their purpose.

 There are pockets of outstanding and relevant work in research and teaching but overall universities are not responding urgently or at scale to the growing global challenges that face societies. The narrowness of policy and practice in universities is in stark contrast with emerging social change movements such as the Youth Strikes for Climate initiative and Extinction Rebellion. Young people fear for their future. Recent reports from the IPPC, FAO, WWF, Stockholm Resilience Centre, highlight the unprecedented nature of the systemic challenges that currently face humanity. Our universities are part of this systemic problem and yet potentially the solution too, not least if they can embrace and build on the passion, commitment and creativity of young people who are switched on to assuring their future.

Universities have a significant role to play in developing ‘sustainability literate’ leaders, thereby optimising their contribution to the future of society, the environment, and the economy.  Sustainability in this sense does not feature in quality assurance systems of many of our universities. And herein lies the problem. Universities the world over are facing some serious challenges as demand grows for a better qualified and more flexible workforce in an increasingly complex and dynamically changing world.  But are universities sufficiently reading the signs of the times? Are they capable of themselves being learning organisations in the light of a rapidly changing world context? 

The recently launched IPPR report This is a crisis: Facing up to the age of environmental breakdown states that young people are beginning ‘to realise the enormity of inheriting a rapidly destabilising world’. Conditions of urgency require emphasis on agency, and this requires higher education to embrace a higher purpose than it has assumed to date.

PREFACE TO THE DAS GUPTA REVIEW ON THE ECONOMICS OF BIODIVERSITY

We are facing a global crisis. We are totally dependent upon the natural world. It supplies us with every oxygen-laden breath we take and every mouthful of food we eat. But we are currently damaging it so profoundly that many of its natural systems are now on the verge of breakdown.

Every other animal living on this planet, of course, is similarly dependent. But in one crucial way, we are different. We can change not just the numbers, but the very anatomy of the animals and plants that live around us. We acquired that ability, doubtless almost unconsciously, some ten thousand years ago, when we had ceased wandering and built settlements for ourselves. It was then that we started to modify other animals and plants.

At first, doubtless, we did so unintentionally. We collected the kinds of seeds that we wanted to eat and took them back to our houses. Some doubtless fell to the ground and sprouted the following season. So over generations, we became farmers. We domesticated animals in a similar way. We brought back the young of those we had hunted, reared them in our settlements and ultimately bred them there. Over many generations, this changed both the bodies and ultimately the characters of the animals on which we depend.

We are now so mechanically ingenious that we are able to destroy a rainforest, the most species-rich ecosystem that has ever existed, and replace it with plantations of a single species in order to feed burgeoning human populations on the other side of the world. No single species in the whole history of life has ever been so successful or so dominant.

Now we are plundering every corner of the world, apparently neither knowing or caring what the consequences might be. Each nation is doing so within its own territories. Those with lands bordering the sea fish not only in their offshore waters but in parts of the ocean so far from land that no single nation can claim them. So now we are stripping every part of both the land and the sea in order to feed our ever-increasing numbers.

How has the natural world managed to survive this unrelenting ever-increasing onslaught by a single species? The answer of course, is that many animals have not been able to do so. When Europeans first arrived in southern Africa they found immense herds of antelope and zebra. These are now gone and vast cities stand in their stead. In North America, the passenger pigeon once flourished in such vast flocks that when they migrated, they darkened the skies from horizon to horizon and took days to pass. So they were hunted without restraint. Today, that species is extinct. Many others that lived in less dramatic and visible ways simply disappeared without the knowledge of most people worldwide and were mourned only by a few naturalists.

Nonetheless, in spite of these assaults, the biodiversity of the world is still immense. And therein lies the strength that has enabled much of its wildlife to survive until now. Economists understand the wisdom of spreading their investments across a wide range of activities. It enables them to withstand disasters that may strike any one particular asset. The same is true in the natural world. If conditions change, either climatically or as a consequence of a new development in the never-ending competition between species, the ecosystem as a whole is able to maintain its vigour.

But consider the following facts. Today, we ourselves, together with the livestock we rear for food, constitute 96% of the mass of all mammals on the planet. Only 4% is everything else – from elephants to badgers, from moose to monkeys. And 70% of all birds alive at this moment are poultry – mostly chickens for us to eat. We are destroying biodiversity, the very characteristic that until recently enabled the natural world to flourish so abundantly. If we continue this damage, whole ecosystems will collapse. That is now a real risk.

Putting things right will take collaborative action by every nation on earth. It will require international agreements to change our ways. Each ecosystem has its own vulnerabilities and requires its own solutions. There has to be a universally shared understanding of how these systems work, and how those that have been damaged can be brought back to health.

This comprehensive, detailed and immensely important report is grounded in that understanding. It explains how we have come to create these problems and the actions we must take to solve them. It then provides a map for navigating a path towards the restoration of our planet’s biodiversity.

Economics is a discipline that shapes decisions of the utmost consequence, and so matters to us all. The Dasgupta Review at last puts biodiversity at its core and provides the compass that we urgently need. In doing so, it shows us how, by bringing economics and ecology together, we can help save the natural world at what may be the last minute – and in doing so, save ourselves.

David Attenborough

“It would seem then that, ultimately, we each have to serve as judge and jury for our own actions. And that cannot happen unless we develop an affection for Nature and its processes. As that affection can flourish only if we each develop an appreciation of Nature’s workings, the Review ends with a plea that our education systems should introduce Nature studies from the earliest stages of our lives, and revisit them in the years we spend in secondary and tertiary education. The conclusion we should draw from this is unmistakable: if we care about our common future and the common future of our descendants, we should all in part be naturalists.”

Celebrating the Trees of Derbyshire: their contribution to climate change, flood risk and our mental health.

Guest Blog by Sarah EA Parkin

Growing up in the flat lands of the West of England, I enjoyed drawing and painting. My background is in textiles with an MA specialising in Printed Design. A love of nature, wildlife and getting out into the landscape is a thread that runs through my life.

Moving to Derbyshire Dales in 1997, I began painting landscapes forming a strong bond with the area; its soft rolling hills, quirky undulating land, dramatic cliff faces, surprise town vistas, tree-lined hills and parks. Figures flit into the work, integrating into the environment. How we fit into the landscape is significant to me. A snowy scene has a strong appeal; when the bones and structures are revealed. Singular or groups of trees, often form an integral part of the composition or subject matter, such as the Oker tree, Peak Tor or Minninglow.

My work has been described by one art curator as ‘the artist to depict landscape that is the Derbyshire Dales’.

Originals, Fine art reproductions, cards and mugs are available, as are canvas prints (to order), these are all made in Derbyshire Dales.

More recently, I was asked to develop a group of studies of local trees under a commission title of ‘Celebrating Derbyshire Trees’. Completed in pen, ink and pencil, these small A4 drawings have been a joy to produce. Finding trees I had already photographed and seeking others, was rather like a treasure hunt.

It was interesting that many people have also been drawn to the same local trees. In particular, the ‘couple’ on Matlock Meadows – two oaks bending towards one another. The trees sit in a flood plain area and were recently surrounded by water.

The artworks included the appreciation of smaller bushes such as the ‘Minninglow Hawthorn’. These are like beacons for passing flocks of migratory birds, providing much needed cover and food in an otherwise barren landscape, their twisted trunks resting on walls of the trails punctuating the journey for walkers and riders; Corridors for life.

In the Peak District, trees regularly sit proud on top of hills, often known as Tors or ‘lows’. Minninglow is a feature to be spotted on the horizon rather like a spaceship. Taking a look into the inner circle is very atmospheric. The trees that stand there in the middle are beeches, growing very close the prehistoric burial chambers. These old trees are surrounded by a crown of younger beeches acting as a protective hedge, softening the winds for these shallow-rooted giants.

To extend this project seems apt for this moment in time when we are faced  with a climate emergency which we have never faced before.

Trees providing a source of comfort to many, natural remedy for staying mentally healthy, even looking at photographs is believed to produce a calming effect on the mind. Of course, what is also so significant is their ability to trap carbon, absorb water and provide habitat for a vast range of wildlife. How they currently sit in the landscape, how this might change for the better. Celebrating their contribution to the landscape. How they sit in the landscape now.

 In the White Peak and Derbyshire Dales, increasing tree cover seems the best direction to combat climate change.

https://www.facebook.com/SarahEAParkinDerbyshireLandscapePaintings/

http://www.sarahparkin.co.uk

The Coming of the Ecological University

“Universities have been with us on this Earth for at least one thousand years and will surely be with us in the future; perhaps so long as there is life on this planet that has any well-being. There is now something in not just the name of the institution but in the idea of the university that seems to have durability But yet, the question imposes itself again: just what is it to be a university?(Barnett,2011)”

Ronald Barnett sets out a masterly critique of our ideas of a university. By offering a forensic analysis of their past and present  trajectory he posits that there is a positive and ontological case for the evolution of an Ecological University. As he argues, we need to develop feasible utopias as part of what he describes as social philosophy, with a critical edge ,which seek to develop ideas which address the question of how to create universities which might be the best fit for this world, and not the best in all possible worlds.

These ideas are perpetuated and reinforced in a world of increasing uncertainty and unpredictability. Hence, there are strong arguments as advocated by Facer(2021) that business as usual is an insufficient response to the crises of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Climate Crisis. In these circumstances Barnett coins, the descriptor –the therapeutic university—a stance based on the idea of helping the world live purposely with uncertainty-which he advocates is based on the reality that the world cannot be controlled and that for any university, control is an anathema to their core values. And its pedagogy becomes less epistemological and more ontological in character. In this orientation its policies and practices play out in its concerns for human flourishing and the connection to the wider dimension of well-being along with concerns about ethical dilemmas.

But most of these orientations have both negative and positive and even pernicious possibilities. Another more acceptable alternative offered by Barnett is the idea of the authentic university. – one that is true to itself. But as he argues the pushes and pulls from its environment make this hugely difficult especially those that come from regulation and funding mechanisms. Hence, he questions whether we can realistically speak of a responsible university, because these external pressures make it impossible to speak of the university and authenticity in the same breath. His answer is that these apparent tensions between authenticity and responsibility -between the inner and outer calling of the university can be resolved by a different concept – the Ecological University.

This is a university which seriously focusses on both its interconnectedness with the world and the interconnectedness of the world. Its tangible learning  outcomes being towards developing students as global citizens with a care or concern for the world and their contribution via civic engagement towards the realisation of a more environmentally and socially just sustainable world. This characterisation also encompasses the idea of a networked university– which engages actively both locally and globally to bring about a better world.

“This is a university neither  in-itself( the research university)nor for itself(the entrepreneurial university)but for others. Or we might even say simply, for -the-other, for the ecological university has an abiding sense of alterity ,of there being external realms to which it has responsibilities, even while holding fast to its traditional interest in the emancipatory power of understanding for enlightenment”.

Ronald Barnett (2011) The coming of the ecological university, Oxford Review of Education, 37:4, 439-455.

Keri Facer(2021) Beyond business as usual: Higher education in the era of climate change. HEPI Debate Paper 24.

Quality Standards and Sustainability in our Universities

The link between quality and sustainable development is probably best exemplified in the following quote:

“Human relationships based on naked self-interest (e.g., greed, envy or lust for power) maintain inequitable distribution of wealth, generate conflict and lead to scant regard for the future availability of natural resources.”  

An education system which mirrors these values is unlikely to deliver a quality education.  Education should facilitate and promote human relationships characterised by justice, peace and negotiated mutual interests, which lead to greater equity, respect and understanding.  It is these qualities which underpin sustainable development and a quality education. 

The UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) argued that all education which embraces sustainable development must share the characteristics of any high-quality learning experience, but it also emphasised that an additional criterion must be that the process of learning and teaching model the values of sustainable development.  These include:

  • Respect for the dignity and human rights of people throughout the world and a commitment to social and economic justice for all.
  • Respect for the human rights of future generations and a commitment to intergenerational responsibility.
  • Respect and care for the great community of life in all its diversity which involves the protection and restoration of the earth’s eco systems.
  • Respect for cultural diversity and a commitment to build locally and globally a culture of tolerance, non-violence, and peace.

Few would disagree with these guiding principles but how these are interpreted and implemented in teaching and learning is more difficult to specify. 

In the early part of 2004/5 I initiated some discussions with the UK Higher Education Quality Assurance Agency, based in Gloucester, to explore this question along with the role they might play in it. The potential outcomes of this conversation progressed slowly – too slowly given the growing impacts of climate change and many more impacts of our unsustainable lifestyles. Nevertheless, there was further progress in 2011/13 when, during my tenure as chair of the Higher Education Academy’s Sustainable Development Advisory group, the QAA began to take a more committed interest in it. And, in 2014, the HEA and QAA launched a pioneering report on the teaching of sustainable development in our universities. Its purpose was:

“to serve as a reference point for use in curriculum design, delivery, and review. Educators are encouraged to use it as a framework, within their own disciplinary context, rather than as a prescription of a curriculum or pedagogic approach.”

As far as I am aware, this pioneering document which was was launched in June 2014 (and given its status as ”guidance“)  received little or no further evaluation of its impact, from the QAA nor the Higher Education Academy or from the Higher Education Funding Council nor any of its successor bodies, especially the higher education regulatory authority – the Office for Students.

Last week, we heard that an updated and enhanced QAA document was ready for consultation from the sector and presumably far beyond?

So, for the past six years the guidance document was out there, and no one  considered asking the question – What impact if any has it made? This was despite the growing evidence from university students from across the UK about the importance they placed on learning about sustainability and the necessity for its inclusion across the university curriculum. And this coupled with massive student climate strikes across the globe involving in one week alone in March 2019 – 1.6 million strikers across 125 countries. All of which makes it seem incredible that this document lacks any sense of the urgent need for deeper and scalable action on sustainability in our universities and moreover under represents the student voice in these matters.

What’s in a name? – why ‘the environment’ can be a misleading myth

Guest blog by Stephen Sterling, Emeritus Professor of Sustainability Education, University of Plymouth

I see myself as an environmentalist. And have done so ever since my early teens – which was a long time ago. So why would I be writing a blog with such a title? On the face of things, perhaps it seems a bit contradictory – a little sacrilegious even – amongst fellow greenies.

I was prompted to write because of the Chief Inspector of Schools’ recent statement, on launching Ofsted’s Annual Report. Amanda Spielman worried there were efforts to ‘commandeer’ schools and the curriculum to cover worthy social issues, including environmental causes and tackling racism. Well, that view probably needs an additional blog response, but it’s what she said next that bothered me. Which was, ‘I think my message would be – don’t revise the curriculum in the context of a single issue or purpose’. Such as the environment, she meant. On the face of it perhaps, this sounds a reasonable argument. But it arises from a basis of misunderstanding and misapprehension which is widely shared.

The problem is that word environment, or more precisely, the meaning we attach to it. It’s a helpful label for sure, and it carries a perception and conveys certain ideas which are widely recognised. So when the newscaster says, ‘over to our Environment Correspondent’ we have a reasonable idea of his/her territory.

But let’s dip a little further. Here’s a question: where do you think ‘the environment’ starts. At the end of your fingertips maybe, or above your head? Or outside your front door? Or where the urban area meets the country?

See the problem…? Then what about your family, or friend, partner, colleague – they are part of your environment, clearly, but so also you are part of theirs. So if on reflection, the environment seems to be everywhere, then it raises the question, ‘what isn’t the environment?’ The everyday answer might be that it’s the indoors, or perhaps the town or city. But that’s an unsatisfactory position, because they are clearly environments too. And yet, commonly ‘the environment’ is perceived as being an ‘externality’. Crucially, and disastrously, this misapprehension has been a guiding assumption in conventional economics for decades. So, this calls for some urgent re-thinking, and re-perception. In fact, such re-thinking is not new.

Kenneth Boulding was an American economist who developed the metaphor of ‘Spaceship Earth’ and was one of the founders of ecological economics. In one of his books he stated:

We must look at the world as a whole…as a total system of interacting parts. There is no such thing as an ‘environment’ if by this we mean a surrounding system that is independent of what goes on inside it (1978, p.31).

That was written more that forty years ago, but this one statement totally flips our common understanding of environment, and the disconnected sense of reality that it perpetuates. Why? Because Boulding’s perspective puts paid to the idea we are or can be in any sense separate from the biosphere. We are, to use his term, ‘inside it’. The trouble is, it is customary – almost to think of ourselves as separate from the environment, so for example we think and talk of ‘people and nature’, and ‘economy and ecology’ as if they were unrelated.

At a deep level of our psyche, this sense of separateness and lack of identification with the Other can lead to feelings of alienation, or worse, allows us to exploit and misuse the natural world. Nature is then easily regarded as a resource primarily, and ‘nice to have’ secondarily –rather than as the very foundation of all life. So ‘people versus nature’ and ‘economy versus ecology’ seem plausible notions in debate. But in his classic 1973 book ‘Small is Beautiful’, the radical economist E.F. Schumacher wrote: ‘Modern man talks of a battle with nature, forgetting that, if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.’

Nearly fifty years later, with unprecedented fires, storms, floods, loss of species – and now a devastating global pandemic – Schumacher’s words seem particularly prescient. One feels he would feel sadly proven correct, if he turned up now in a time machine.

So this is a major problem of language and perception. These two aspects of meaning-making are closely related. Is there a better description of the complex and intertwined reality of human and natural systems? Nearly forty years ago, the educator and systems thinker Donella Meadows (1982, p.101) made a brave attempt with the following:

The world is a complex, interconnected, finite, ecological-social-psychological-economic system.

Full marks for accuracy! But really problematic otherwise – it’s not exactly a handy label for widespread use. Alternatively, sustainability scientists have for some years been employing the terminology ‘socio-ecological systems’ – whereby people, communities, economies, societies, cultures are viewed as embedded parts of the biosphere: they both shape it and are shaped by it. The economy is a subsystem of society, which in turn is a subsystem of the biosphere. So therefore, the health and functioning of the biosphere is a precondition of human flourishing from local to global scales. This is incontrovertible, as is becoming ever more evident.

This holistic framing – which views humanity as unavoidably integrated within the larger biosphere system – helps us go beyond the narrow perspective of the human-nature dualism that has dangerously skewed our understanding and consciousness for so many years. As I have argued (Sterling 2010), ‘we are not on the Earth, we are in the Earth, we are inextricably actors in the Earth’s systems and flows, constantly affecting and being affected by the whole thing, natural and human, in dynamic relation.’ There are echoes here of calls to shift our consciousness and thinking from anthropocentrism and egocentrism towards ecological intelligence and ecocentrism – which is the concern of such movements as ecopsychology.

Encouragingly (if a little perversely) the knot of ‘wicked problems’ now affecting the world is giving rise to a changed sense of ourselves as embedded participants in the drama of our times that is now playing out. Something seems to be shifting. No longer separate bystanders, there is a growing sense of our grave responsibility for the future, and an awareness that all actions have systemic effects or consequences—from minuscule to massive, from micro-second to long term. And that ‘business as usual’ is no longer a viable option. This realisation is central to what may be termed a participatory or ecological worldview and I have long argued that this sense of ourselves and of our planet is essential to securing a liveable future. The urgent need for such awakening has been underlined by such news as microplastics being found both in the deepest ocean trenches and on Mt. Everest, and the very recent report that human-made materials now, in 2020, outweigh the entire living biomass of the Earth.

Such evidence – and no doubt Covid, and the burgeoning climate crisis – appears to be accelerating new thinking and interest in the green economy and innovation across many aspects of human activity which acknowledges meeting human needs within environmental limits and planetary boundaries as the new ‘bottom line’, although there is a very long way to go.

But this still leaves us with the problem and connotations of the world ‘environment’. We will, of course, continue to use it – but this is a plea to be aware of its limitations. Perhaps we should think more of the ecosphere and technosphere as the two fundamental systems that interact and intertwine on Earth – a view put forward by the late Barry Commoner whose ‘Four Laws of Ecology’ in his book ‘The Closing Circle’ (1971) were an early influence on my own thinking.

So, I’m afraid the Chief Inspector of Schools is just wrong. ‘The environment’ is not the environment as commonly understood – a separate ‘something to do with nature’ thing. Understood properly, it’s much more than that. The word underplays and belies the profoundly intertwined reality – and fate – of humanity, fauna and flora and natural systems, now under threat as never before in human history. Understood this way, ‘environment’ is not a ‘single issue’ but an essential window on the critical state of society and the planet, and a door to new, holistic and regenerative ways of thinking, being, and educating that give us some hope of securing the future. This way, we are all ‘environmentalists’ and indeed environmental educators – or should be.


Stephen Sterling
Emeritus Professor of Sustainability Education, University of Plymouth
Website: ‘Re-thinking education for a more sustainable world’
https://www.sustainableeducation.co.uk/

A SHIP FROM DELOS


Annually a sacred ship would set sail around the Island of Delos, and until its return, Athenian society would not partake in public executions due to religious observance. Socrates trial at Roayl Sota and sentence occurred during this period. Whilst waiting for the sacred ship and the fate to follow, the 70-year-old Athenian philosopher defends himself, in his jail cell.

Like Socrates awaiting his execution on the arrival of the Ship from Delos-humans are in a similar situation as we see the black sails of our future global ecological collapse. In their pocket size ethical analysis of humanity’s fragile future, Robert Bringhust and Jan Zwicky’s “Learning to Die-Wisdom in the age of Climate Crisis” raise the almost unthinkable question: how should humanity face its destiny- as have many other species, its ultimate extinction? If as they argue, we have done too little too late to avert this catastrophe, how should we learn to face our demise with a modicum of responsibility and grace- just as Socrates did in awaiting his execution? As one reviewer of this immensely prescient book suggests, it opens a space for human beings to reflect on “ultimate things.”

As we enter the year when the UK hosts COP26 and world leaders congregate in Glasgow to decide on how global governance systems respond to the climate crisis, I wonder if the ethical question this book addresses will in any way be part of the dialogue?

Back to Socrates- many believe he was innocent of the charges made against him. Unlike many of our political and corporate leaders who will be feted at COP26. Many of whom live comfortable, air-conditioned lives surrounded by affluence of an unbelievable kind: SUVs, extravagant homes, and extensive, mostly private air travel. The book asks what would constitute “virtue” under these conditions? Their conclusion is straightforward-those which were characterised and cultivated by Socrates and particularly those he embodied in the days he learned that he was going to lose his life. And it is these virtues which should underpin those actions and approaches we collectively adopt in response to the climate crisis.

So, what are these virtues? From their Greek origins they are conceived as excellence-of being a “noble exemplar.” Whereas, from their Latin and Christian origins, they are understood to represent purity, meekness, and quiet obedience. Clearly, their origin, translation, and usage, like language today had a variety of meanings. This is particularly true when the characteristics of “human excellence” are analysed within each of the core Socratic values, namely: Courage, Self-Control, Contemplative Practice, Compassion and Knowledge.

The book explores how deeply aware Socrates was of the authentic meaning of each of these virtues. For example, knowledge of itself is not that important, but “knowing what’s what: linked with an awareness coupled with humility regarding what one knows” is much more important. In today’s reality this should mean that all political and corporate decisions, in support of sustainable human progress, must be based on a wise systemic appraisal against all six core Socratic values.

As the authors rightly say: “How might humans living today or in the near future manifest these excellences, in the face of our own global ecological ship from Delos?”