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CULTURE AND SUSTAINABILITY

As Raymond Williams now-famously said, ‘culture’ is one of the two or three most complicated words in English usage

Embedding sustainability into the higher education curriculum has been far from straightforward. Consequently, implementation has been patchy – both in terms of disciplinary spread and in terms of the understandings of sustainability A culture for sustainability can be thought of as one in which organizational members hold shared assumptions and beliefs about the importance of balancing economic efficiency, social equity and environmental accountability, and the failure to embed sustainability in HEIs suggests it has failed to become part of the culture.

This observation is supported by UNESCO’s call to integrate the values inherent in sustainable development into all aspects of learning and that most barriers to university implementation of sustainability are human rather than technical.

Culture matters in sustainable development. All the planet’s environmental problems and certainly all its social and economic problems have cultural activity and decisions – people and human actions – at their roots. Solutions are therefore likely to be also culturally based, and the existing models of sustainable development forged from economic or environmental concern are unlikely to be successful without cultural considerations. If culture is not made explicit, discussed, and argued over explicitly within the sustainability debates, it does not have power in the decision making. Yet incorporating culture in the sustainability debates seems to be a major challenge. The scientific challenge is that both culture and sustainability are complex, contested, multidisciplinary and normative concepts. The policy challenge is that a broad understanding of culture requires cross-sectoral or even transdisciplinary policies, and innovative, at times even radical modes of implementation that involve re-examination of broad-spectrum issues such as governance, democratic participation, and social equity.

I for one did not fully foresee the success of the idea of ‘Sustainable Development’ when it was introduced in 1987 by the Brundtland publication ‘Our Common Future’. Over 30 years later, the idea is still increasingly being presented as a pathway to all that is good and desirable in society and is widely adopted and frequently advocated. This was clearly illustrated at Rio+20 in June 2012 culminating in the agreement by member states to set up the sustainable development goals. Several subsequent policy commitments have cemented the idea of culture as the fourth pillar of sustainable development and even placing culture at the “heart of sustainability”. For some time, the mainstream prioritised the implement of sustainable development in terms of ecological, social, and economic ‘pillars’ as confirmed at the Johannesburg Summit of 2002, which I attended, but often labelled in symbolic ways, such as people-profit-planet. However, attempts to keep these three dimensions in balance and to make sustainability a ‘win-win-win’ solution for all three remain unsatisfactory or in many people’s eyes an outcome to be sought but never found.

During a four-year investigation from 2011-15 an international team explored all three concepts to understand and to embrace their multiple meanings and connotations. The final report can be read here: “Culture in, for and as Sustainable Development” , which summarizes the main conclusions of the network

Its first chapter offers an interesting view of key concepts and presents three important roles they identify for culture to play in sustainable development. First, culture can have a supportive and self-promoting role (which they characterise as ‘culture in sustainable development’). This approach expands conventional sustainable development discourse by adding culture as a self-standing 4th pillar alongside separate ecological, social, and economic considerations and imperatives. A second role (‘culture for sustainable development’), however, advocates culture as a more influential force; it moves culture into a framing, contextualising, and mediating mode, one that can balance all three of the existing pillars and guide sustainable development between economic, social, and ecological pressures and needs. Third, they argue that there can be an even more fundamental role for culture (‘culture as sustainable development’) which sees it as the essential foundation and structure for achieving the aims of sustainable development.

Transformation with a focus on Human Value

If we are to effect transformative change towards a more sustainable future, then the policies which underpin such change must embrace and place human value at the centre of the economic life of society. Yet the adversarial character of democratic politics tends to focus more on the expectations of change than on a cogent reality. In the 2010 general election, in which I stood for the Liberal Democrats( in North Warwickshire) the party wanted “every child to receive an excellent education, to unlock the children’s potential and to ensure they can succeed in life.” Labour’s goal was ”educational excellence for every child, whatever their background or circumstances.” Conservatives pledged to “improve standards for all pupils and close the attainment gap between the richest and poorest.”

The overriding subtext was clearly the objective of addressing the educational systems inability to correct the deep inequalities in British society. The desire for change was palpable and as an educationalist I fully supported it and still do. This should be a policy objective for all political persuasions and is a key principle of the UN Sustainable Development Goals-“leave no one behind”. However, no party was able, with any sense of clarity to clearly articulate what education is for.

An effective and progressive education policy is hard to define without a clear answer. And the reason is because each party is deeply conflicted on the question. In the absence of a clear rationale then policy making becomes an exercise and a diatribe on untested nostrums- at best bright ideas based on a political ideology of change, rather than based on seeking specific human outcomes. This is particularly exemplified by the number of Education Acts passed by the UK parliament in over 50 years. There was an act in each of the following years: 1962,1964,1967,1968,1973,1975,1976,1979,1980,1981,1986(2),1988,1992,1993,1994,1996,1997,2002,2005,2006,2008,and 2011.

23 in total and many more acts with education in their title ! And over the same period there were 13 general elections and only 6 changes in government. A similar picture is possible for primary legislation on health. All of which exemplifies the increasing desire of governments to micromanage these key areas of social engagements. And a conflict of political aspiration to leave teaching to teachers and medicine to doctors.

All of these acts of parliament were clearly ineffectual substitutes for “intention and purpose” in relation to services that education and health professionals are naturally motivated to provide. A more transformative approach, left to them, might bring more benefits than those policies based on crude numerical targets.

Ireland is in the news again!

But it’s not only about the ongoing border dispute over Brexit this time, important though this is. It is about the future of universities, and the impact of marketisation.

Headlined- Irish president: ‘market-driven’ universities face ‘ruination’.

Michael Higgins warned last week that universities ‘have suffered attrition of range and depth, loss of interdisciplinary exchange, leading in too many cases to a degradation of the very scholarship and teaching for which they were established”.

The president of the Republic of Ireland has issued a stark warning that the “ruination” of the university tradition is “at hand”, with scholarship and teaching threatened by both authoritarian politicians and a subservience to the “utilitarian reductionism” of market ideology.

Speaking at a conference on “Academic Freedom and Intellectual Dissent” on 8 June, Higgins warned that it was a “perilous juncture in the long history of the academy”.

“Universities as sites, sources and experiences of learning, have for several decades now been under continuous attack”. He argued that free inquiry has been under pressure for decades from a drive to turn universities into “market-driven” organisations.

“Such adjustments have usually been rationalised as an inevitable search for relevance, often in the name of market forces and the inexorable drive towards a utilitarian reductionism that is now so pervasive”.

An ideology of “unrestrained market dominance” has taken hold, he said, and significantly diminished the space in universities to ask any questions “beyond ones of a narrow utility”.

The teaching of economics, for example, had degraded from questions of “moral economy”, through “political economy”, to now merely being a “technical training in measurement”.

He took aim at university presidents and rectors who “often describe and introduce themselves as CEOs of multimillion-euro enterprises rather than as academics first and foremost”.

Whilst universities had for centuries spearheaded new movements of thought, new paradigms of human existence – this raison d’être was now being undermined and under threat.

Higgins also made an important suggestion which in my view all universities should adopt:

“Teach a module on the nature and role of the university, including the cornerstone of academic freedom, to every incoming university student, raising awareness of the importance of such freedom.”

Sustainability needs new approaches to adult learning: a role for citizens’ assemblies.

Adult learning for citizenship needs to respond to rapid global change which is economic, political, social, cultural and ecological. The destruction of the environment, and the various initiatives and actions, by individuals, communities, organisations and movements like the Climate Change school ‘strikers’ and Extinction Rebellion, set a bold and urgent context to repurposing adult citizenship education and lifelong learning.

Political parties of all colours are using the citizenship debate to define not simply our rights as citizens but, more significantly, our responsibilities as active agents of change. This is set against a background of declining participation in the democratic process in both Europe and the USA. Yet our political systems seem incapable of responding at scale and urgency to this democratic deficit and the planetary existential crisis.

How should adult education respond?

The UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals and associated targets represent an unprecedented opportunity to learn how to tackle the root causes of climate change, biodiversity loss, extreme poverty and put the world on a more sustainable path. And their implementation is central to the reform of our concept of citizenship and adult learning. But how should we learn about them and put them into practice as adults?

We all expect our citizen’s rights to include such things as access to clean water and air, along with high-quality education and health provision. However, I suspect for many who sign up for adult education in art appreciation or horticulture (or, in my case, who are struggling with Italian classes and ballroom dancing) it means very little. Indeed, there is much evidence that any mention of citizenship issues when we are enjoying our leisure activities tends to be unwelcome.

Nonetheless, no matter how we might feel about these existential issues, humanity is increasingly and often unknowingly, faced with a widening array of complex issues in the 21^st century; issues such as racial and religious intolerance, disinformation and fake news, aerial pollution, terrorism and widening inequality and poverty. And when we vote on such issues as responsible citizens in national elections, we have relatively limited understanding about how such issues are contributing to an unsustainable world, and how they can be resolved.

Sustainability needs new approaches.

Although the concept of sustainability relates to the whole biosphere, at its core it is concerned with sustainable human lifestyles. To achieve such lifestyles, we all need to make decisions about a whole complex of interacting requirements, for food, housing, livelihood, health, transport etc., where decisions about one aspect can have unexpected, and perhaps undesired, effects on others and on our wider biophysical environment. Choosing to work from home can save transport fuel, but could use an even greater amount of extra fuel for home heating. To be effective, we need to learn to consider our whole lifestyle system, not just separate activities.

The journey towards sustainability is a ‘wicked’ problem involving complexity, uncertainty, multiple stakeholders and perspectives, competing values, lack of end points and ambiguous terminology. In a word, dealing with sustainability means dealing with a mess and most people avoid messes because they feel ill equipped to cope.

The health, agricultural, financial and ecological problems we now face are qualitatively different from the problems for which existing scientific, economic, medical and political tools and educational programmes were designed.

Without the right tools, learners faced with these wicked problems may fall back on the same old inappropriate toolbox with at best, disappointing outcomes. These approaches are as much about ‘problem finding’ and ‘problem exploring’ as they are about problem solving.

Why citizens’ assemblies could be important forums for adult learning

My contention along with many others is that learners cannot deal with the wicked problems of sustainability without learning to think and act systemically. This is also supported by the growing use of Citizen’s Assemblies (a form of deliberative democracy) as a means of supporting decision making in complex areas of social and environmental concern.

A citizens’ assembly:

is formed from the citizens of a modern state to deliberate on an issue or issues of national importance;
has members who are randomly selected;
uses a cross-section of the public to study and learn about the options available to the state on certain complex questions;
proposes answers to these questions through rational and reasoned discussion and the use of various methods of inquiry such as directly questioning experts.

These assemblies aim to reinstall trust in the political process by taking direct ownership of decision-making and could, if used more frequently and sensitively, support active citizens as agencies for change. They could also enhance wider learning and understanding within civil society based on empirical evidence rather than being based on political dogma and ideology.

https://epale.ec.europa.eu/en/blog/sustainability-needs-new-approaches-adult-learning-role-citizens-assemblies

HOW ALL LIFE IS INTERCONNECTED AND WHY IT MATTERS

There is currently a burgeoning literature on our life support system-the biosphere. Moreover, it is coming at a time when we are being alerted to an eco-apocalyptic countdown but with little understanding of how and when a global tipping point will impact on our very survival. For the first time in our history, we can now draw on a compendium of scientific research that not only warns of this impending crisis, but which also tells us how to deal with it. Yet political inertia coupled with limited understanding of the biophysical limits to our life support systems puts a massive obstacle in the way.

Tom Oliver, an Ecologist at Reading University explores this issue in a new book –The Self Delusion-and explains why we need to grasp that we are part of this eco system and not independent individuals. The idea of the self as a relatively closed system is a delusion that has often conferred advantage but is now a dangerous trap. Moving through advances in science with valuable clarity, Oliver tells us why.

Bacteria and fungi inhabit our bodies, their 38tn cells outnumbering ours. A human mouth contains over a thousand species. Genes pass between them. New species invade. Many are part of the functioning of our bodies. Even inside our cells there are mitochondria, energy-generating organs inherited from bacteria that fused with our single-celled ancestors two billion years ago. Even feelings and actions, which we might think define our identity, are not necessarily simply our own. Bacteria make a difference to moods and depression. Alarmingly, there are parasites that assist their own life cycles by modifying their hosts’ behaviour, for example toxoplasma, which makes rats behave recklessly and expose themselves to predation. People who carry this organism are more likely to be involved in traffic accidents.

Oliver argues persuasively that science now demands this change but is a little less convincing on how we transform our current belief systems. Many of which are currently deeply dependent on the consumerist idea of self. An idea spread via the dominant western capitalist ideology across the globe. Advertising presents consumers with visions of their selves enhanced by the possession of each new commodity or ability. The structures that reinforce this kind of self are formidable; nevertheless, Oliver hopes that we may be approaching a tipping point. The science that finds the outside world at work in all our components of selfhood is pulling us that way, as is the immensity of the ecological crisis.

Oliver however seems somewhat exasperated that humanity seems incapable of falling into line with the science. To Oliver, initially, this stubbornness resembles that of the flat-earthers who refused to accept the Copernican revolution.

This individualistic idea of self has had great advantages, in both evolutionary and moral terms; care for the self is a primal motive for ingenuity in finding food, shelter and reproductive success. But Oliver calls it a white lie, an adaptive delusion. This also reflects some of the cognitive science studies which are now beginning to influence our understanding of human behaviour.

We are facing an existential crisis; a pending Armageddon which threatens our very existence on planet earth because of our unsustainable lifestyles. And, yet humanity has so far failed to respond to this threat at scale and with urgency. Rolf Jucker’s recent book- Time to Live Complexity: Reflections on science, self-illusions, religion, democracy, and education for the future.
frames this issue from the standpoint of future proofing our education systems. Its premise originates from the fact that intelligence and rationality are far from perfectly correlated. This cognitive dissonance between intelligence and rational beliefs and action is a major issue for how we perceive the world. Our education systems need to develop our understanding of how intelligence can be a tool for both propaganda and truth-seeking based on the ground-breaking work of Kahneman (2011). Cognitive scientists like Kahneman divide our thinking into two categories: system 1: intuitive, automatic, fast thinking that may be prey to unconscious biases; and system 2: slow, more analytical, deliberative thinking. According to this view, called dual-process theory, many of our irrational decisions come when we rely too heavily on system 1 thinking, allowing unconscious biases to cloud our judgment. Studies by the Canadian psychologist Keith Stanovich (1993) have elucidated that these cognitive biases are often more prevalent in those with higher intelligence quotients than those with lower ones. Stanovich calls this dysrationalia: this raises some fundamental issues about our conceptions of intelligence and helps explain the huge divides in our opinions and beliefs on climate change and our inchoate relationship with the deteriorating biosphere. As Harold Glasser(2018) has concluded:

The upshot is that as a species, we tend to overestimate our own rationality and vastly underestimate the role of chance . When System 1 is well suited to the environment this marriage between the two systems generally functions symbiotically. When this is not the case, as when the Dominant Guiding Metaphors do not fit the current state of the planet or our highest aspirations, the relationship can be toxic or even antibiotic.

As Gandhi presciently noted, “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.” Meeting these exalted goals for our species, however, requires learning more about how we think, learn, and make decisions.

Carbon Choices

The common sense solutions to our climate and nature crises

Guest Blog by Neil Kitching

Geographer and energy specialist Neil Kitching has published Carbon Choices on the common-sense solutions to our climate and nature crises. Here Neil outlines five common-sense principles to tackle climate change and considers the community and social implications of the changes that are required.

In my book, I identify five common sense principles to tackle climate change:

Be fair across current and future generations
Price carbon pollution
Consume carefully, travel wisely
Embrace efficiency, avoid waste
Nurture nature

Community is a theme that runs across these. Climate change can be tackled by governments, business, or individuals; but communities can aggregate individual action to place pressure on, or support, action by government and business.

For example, when the rush to erect wind farms was at its peak, Local Energy Scotland helped the village of Fintry to negotiate with the multi-national developer. The community now owns one of the 15 turbines erected. This far-sighted decision brings a steady flow of income into the village – to refurbish community owned buildings, give energy advice to householders and to install home insulation. The wind farm developer benefitted from engaging with a supportive community. But community energy requires time, money, effort, and patience, and is not always successful. Its growth has been hampered by constant changes in the available subsidies.

Not everyone has the time, skills, or inclination to develop community energy. But most schemes also need financial support and one way of raising this is through crowdfunding campaigns. These can be promoted to provide people with a vested interest in local developments. The best schemes also return some of the ‘profits’ to local communities.

In my local town of Dunblane, a social enterprise has set up Weigh Ahead. Its aim is to eliminate the need for packaging, particularly single-use plastics. The shop weighs the customer’s own containers, fills them with goods such as rice or pasta, and then re-weighs them to calculate the amount due. A charity runs the shop and local people contributed to its start-up costs through a crowd funding campaign. Again, the aim is to provide a socially beneficial service.

In my view, community environmentalists are well placed to put pressure on politicians and businesses and to mobilise local people to do things that impact their lives and local environment. Examples include community litter picking, tackling invasive species, local food projects, and encouraging local biodiversity through woodlands, ponds, and gardens.

Amidst all the bad news, these community initiatives demonstrate that there are grounds for hope – this popular science book concludes with a green action plan for government, business, and individuals to make better Carbon Choices.

Carbon Choices can be bought on Amazon or direct from the author – further information can be found at www.carbonchoices.uk

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.