Quality of the Student Experience and the Levelling up Agenda

 

Since its inception in 2018 the Office for Students (OfS) has not placed any priority on the environmental and social sustainability agenda unlike its predecessors (Higher Education Funding Council; Quality Assurance Agency). So, I was interested to see it announce a new consultation on its next strategy. What caught my attention was the proposition that the quality and standards of provision in the sector should be aligned with the “levelling up” agenda. This new and “emerging “policy agenda has many parallels with the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals which the UK Government signed up to in 2015. I set out below my arguments for how both these policy agendas play a significant part in addressing the role that Universities can play in “building back better” from the Covid pandemic and the impact of Brexit. These and the existential threats of Global Warming and the loss of Biodiversity are inherently and systemically linked to the quality and standards of provision of our universities. Hence this review is an opportunity to apply some policy coherence about the future of our university sector

Our current approach to quality emphasises the role of higher education in serving economic interests, which restricts how quality is defined, understood, and implemented. Hence, value for money, completion rates, graduate employment, and graduate earnings, feature strongly.  Does this mean that a degree becomes equivalent to a share certificate whose value is determined by the issuing university? This is clearly not an adequate and robust way of assessing the quality and standards of a university education.

Universities should focus on how graduate learning contributes to wider social functions such as active and ethical citizenship and shaping a democratic civilised and more sustainable society which is crucial if graduates are to play an active and responsible role in an increasingly complex and uncertain world. No one can predict with any certainty how the world will change over the next few decades, but it is likely to change in many significant ways. An expanding population, increasing globalisation and advances in technology, will bring colossal societal and ecological changes, particularly if our unsustainable practices and lifestyles prevail. This is just a taste of what a graduate’s future might look like.

 Universities have a significant role to play in developing  socially and environmentally sustainability literate leaders and hence optimising their contribution to the future of society, the environment, and the economy.  Sustainability in this sense does not feature in the internal quality assurance systems of many of our universities.  A National Union of Students longitudinal survey carried out since 2011 indicates that 80% of the thousands of students who responded said sustainability should be an integral part of their university course and that this would help them in gaining employment in the future. These results have remained constant; despite changes such as the rise in fees, and the crash of the jobs market, the demand for action by institutions and students’ desire to learn about sustainability has remained constant. A growing number of UK Universities have begun to respond to this agenda, notably the Universities of Aberdeen, Bristol, Keele and Nottingham Trent, Plymouth, Gloucester, and Worcester; but much more needs to be done by all our universities to prepare graduates for an uncertain future.

Many universities are now beginning to address the issue of the currency of the curriculum in the face of many serious and challenging issues society faces in the 21 Century- not least all of those that are encompassed by the UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs) and the international and national policy discourse these have initiated (See Measuring up: A National Plan for the SDGs:  https://www.ukssd.co.uk/measuringup   ). They also link very closely to many of the issues raised by the levelling up agenda and some of the initial thinking on the significant regional inequality disparities that underpin this new policy.

The link between quality and sustainable development and the levelling up agenda 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/levelling up and a quality education. 

REGENERATIVE THINKING and AGENCY

By Josie Warden RSA

Today, our path has reached a cliff edge. As a species we are disrupting the balance of our Earth and undermining the systems that make our home liveable. At the same time, we are extracting from and exploiting one another. Despite the wealth and technology available in the world today, millions of people remain in poverty, and shocks like the pandemic and climate change reinforce and exaggerate existing racial, gender and wealth inequalities.

To a minority, the only answer seems to be to doggedly stick to the route we are on. But we have another choice. We can remember the other paths around us that we have separated from and choose also to explore those.

A living systems perspective

There are other ways of understanding our world: perspectives that see the Earth as made up of complex living and evolving systems, which acknowledge the relationships between things, and value multiple ways of knowing. These ideas are at the heart of regenerative thinking and are seen in fields from computing to physics to ecology, where theories of living systems are increasingly reflecting a more accurate view of the workings of our planet. Biomimicry expert, biologist and self-proclaimed ‘nature nerd’ Janine Benyus has said that we need to take a place in nature’s class “not to learn about nature that we might circumvent or control her, but to learn from nature so that we might fit in at last and for good, on the Earth from which we sprang”.

To help us to structure our thinking, what mental models might support us to move towards recognising and understanding living systems?

First, living systems are nested. This ‘nested’ characteristic, or holarchy, describes how living systems sit within one another to form larger and more complex systems. Consider your heart, which is a whole system on its own with parts that interact with one another and have complementary functions. But it also forms part of your circulatory system, which sits within your body, you within your family and so on. The layers of nested systems are whole, in and of themselves, but to understand their function you must see them as part of the wider systems they form. Like our hearts, their function is only fulfilled when it is within the wider system.

The British economist Kate Raworth is not alone in arguing that an economy can only fulfil its function once we recognise that it is ‘nested’ within society and that human society is nested within the wider natural world. Disease in your heart affects the overall health of the individual. In a social setting, poor ‘health’ of a neighbourhood, say through lack of work opportunities, poverty or inequality, can have knock-on negative effects for the socio-economic and environmental flourishing of the broader region.

Second, living systems move and change. This sets them apart from mechanical systems, like the engine of a car, where the parts and relationships are static and stay the same over time.

Regenerative development practitioner Jenny Andersson describes this movement as a flow between convergence, divergence and emergence. Resilience is found in the relationship between these dynamics. Too much convergence and a system may become rigid, too much divergence and it becomes chaotic. Living systems will often be operating and finding balance between these two states in order to maintain integrity in the long term. Ongoing adaptation provides greater resilience than rigidity – earthquake-proof buildings, for example, are designed to absorb energy and move in response to seismic events rather than resist them.

Third, living systems are emergent. Because they are made up of nested and interacting parts, living systems have properties that emerge from the interconnections between parts – properties that would not emerge from those parts in isolation. This emergence happens in a non-linear and unpredictable way. In hindsight, it is possible to identify cause and effect, but the multiple possible avenues open at any one time mean that predicting exactly what will happen in advance is almost impossible.

These emergent properties have enabled biological evolution; likewise, arts, language and culture are all emergent properties of human interaction. Jazz music could not have been predicted, but in hindsight its influences can be clearly traced.

Emergent properties mean that, rather than acting and analysing after the fact (by which time the overall conditions are going to have changed), we need to probe, sense and then respond to what we find.

Fourth, living systems favour diversity. Reductionism seeks efficiency, rationalisation and homogeneity. According to the reductionist way of thinking, if we can cut the number of actions or people or costs and still have the same or a better outcome, then we should do things this way.

However, living systems do not follow this rationale. So, for example, rainforests, perhaps the most mature systems on our planet, are not rationalised and efficient, with one type of tree repeated neatly. They are abundant, with a diversity of flora and fauna, some existing within impossibly small niches, others proliferating. For an animal, constant and ongoing competition is an unproductive route; much better to find key differences that allow you to live alongside others. In a world of constant change, putting all your eggs in one basket, even if it looks to be perfectly formed, is a foolish endeavour.

Fifth, living systems build mutuality and reciprocity. They are founded on relationships and interactions that create mutual net benefit. We often think of this in direct, two-way interactions between parties, such as the relationship between peas and other leguminous plants, and the nitrogen-fixing bacteria found in their roots, where the plant receives nitrogen from the bacteria and the bacteria receive sugars from the plant. But mutuality and reciprocity in nature extends beyond bidirectional transactions; we see abundance and generosity, as one species provides nutrients or helps create the conditions for others to thrive as well. Take for example the acorns of an oak tree: some will grow into saplings and others will provide food for nearby animals.

A powerful clip contribution from Josie Warden -the lead on Regentive Futures at the RSA

9 tips for talking to your family about degrowth during the holidays

By: Nathan Barlow

The holidays are special;  a chance to stop working, slow down and spend time with family and friends. The numerous family gatherings will likely involve discussions about the state of the world, politics, climate change, and maybe even degrowth. In case you find yourself in this scenario, we have put together this list of tips and suggestions for how to discuss degrowth with family and friends during the holidays:

  1. Stay respectful

This should be obvious, but unfortunately  when we’re passionate about a topic and think we’re ‘right’, there can be a tendency to tread into the dangerous waters of not communicating with care and compassion to others. So, first and foremost, let’s stay respectful!

  • Listen then speak

Understanding the concerns, frustrations, and passions of those you’re speaking to can help you to highlight the points of degrowth that are relevant for them. It’s a lot to digest at once, so don’t overload them and make sure you find the right entry-point.

  • Keep it simple, and avoid jargon

Many of us in the degrowth movement work and study in academia or have spent a lot of time around universities, and our (over)usage of theoretical language shows it. Try to limit the usage of jargon unless it’s really needed, because you will have to stop the flow of conversation to ‘define’ some of these words and it can create more confusion than clarity. For example:

–          Material and energetic throughput → the amount of energy and stuff used to make something

–          Just transition →  making sure workers in ‘dirty’/’bad’ sectors find a good job in the new economy

–          Social-ecological transformation → a radical change in how we live, organize society, our economic system and our relationship with the environment

–          Entropy → maybe save this until later in the night…

–          degrowth → degrowth – if you have a chance to use this key-word, take it!

  • Highlight real-world issues, not just theory

Think in advance of some real-world issues that exemplify degrowth. For example, food waste. The unsustainability of the current food system is evident to anyone after a few visits to the grocery store dumpster. The injustice of not sharing the excess products with the workers or vulnerable people highlights the need for new ways to organize businesses, the volumes thrown out by a single company reveals levels of overproduction and the limitation of individual recycling & composting, and the invisible nature of this practice to the everyday shopper is shocking once revealed.

  • Provide basic statistics

I don’t personally memorize masses of statistics about the social and ecological crises but remembering some can be very helpful to describe the severity of the situation. This avoids phrases like, “trust me – it’s really really bad!”  For example, in 2019 the Guardian reported that, “41% of global insect species have declined over the past decade”.

  • Relate the abstract to lived experiences

In my hometown there is currently a massive takeover of the roads and parking lots by Amazon delivery trucks that have decided to establish a ‘hub’ here. The drivers are reckless, likely due to  contracts which force them to rush to keep their job. Abandoned shopping centres (and most recently a large lot next to some wetlands) have been converted to parking lots for Amazon trucks, highlighting poor town planning and the limited power of local government in the face of big corporations. The poor town infrastructure (massive potholes, no sidewalks, terrible traffic) are curiously neglected despite the supposed ‘economic benefits’ of companies like Amazon locating here. And of course, more gasoline is used  for more deliveries, more materials for more packages, more stuff to fulfil more orders. Meanwhile, the town’s (official) poverty rate is 8.5%, a few years ago the town’s water was undrinkable, and 200 people have died in the last two years from drug overdoses in a town of just 25,000 inhabitants. Is an Amazon ‘hub’ really what this town needs? How would a degrowth vision address the challenges this town faces? If you can identify a lived experience like this one to contrast with degrowth, do so!

  • Give bridging ideas

While degrowth directly contests ideas like sustainable development, it can be helpful to begin from more commonly understood ideas and then explain how degrowth is different. For example, “degrowth is similar to sustainable development because of its emphasis on improving livelihoods and protecting the environment, but degrowth questions sustainable development’s naïve hope that long-term environmental sustainability can be achieved alongside infinite economic growth ”

  • Avoid individual critique and shaming

Avoid the trap of preaching or critiquing someone’s way of life. Degrowth is not about each of us overcoming our individual shortcomings and acting better, it’s about struggling collectively for new structures in society. I may be vegetarian and cycle a lot, but I also flew across the Atlantic to see my family for the holidays. Always remember these tensions and contradictions in yourself (and in society) when talking with others.

  • Highlight the positives

The holidays should not be a time for doom and gloom, so tell a story of success or hope. While the examples may be limited, incomplete and/or partial,  it can show a way forward and even give your family/friend an idea of how they can get involved and affect change. If these tips were helpful, then please help support this website’s ongoing work through a donation. Or ask your aunt for a small donation on your behalf instead of getting another “I ❤ Earth” canvas tote bag. Or simply share this blog post so more people can talk about degrowth with their families this holiday.

Nathan Barlow

He is a PhD candidate at the MLGD Institute at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU). His research areas and interests are degrowth, strategies for social ecological transformation, and understanding how related movements are taking shape on both sides of the Atlantic. He is active in Degrowth Vienna and is currently editing a collected volume on Degrowth & Strategy.

CONSULTATION ON THE OfS STRATEGY-2022-2025

The Office for Students(OfS) has just announced a change in emphasis to its regulatory strategy for university quality assurance:it’s about levelling up and the role of universities in this policy vacuum.

“Three and a half years since our public launch, this consultation on our new strategy marks a significant milestone for the Office for Students (OfS). During our first years of operation, we focused on establishing ourselves as the independent regulator for higher education in England, adding more than 400 diverse universities and colleges to our Register. We are now consulting on proposals for our second strategy, which will run from April 2022 to April 2025. The new strategy proposes two central priorities for our work: quality and standards, and equality of opportunity. It signals a step change in our focus and impact. Ensuring that all students can benefit from a high-quality academic experience has to be core to what we do.”

 The new strategy plans to assess graduates’ contribution to local and national prosperity, and the government’s ‘levelling up’ agenda: with usual opaqueness this means:

• Our regulation of quality will ensure that courses require students to develop the skills they need for success beyond higher education and that all providers satisfy our minimum requirements for progression of their students to professional employment or postgraduate study.

 • Our approach to TEF assessments will incentivise providers to deliver provision that supports progression of students to professional employment or postgraduate study beyond the minimum requirements.

 • Our regulation of access and participation plans will ensure that providers take steps to address inequalities in relation to progression to professional employment or postgraduate study for any student due to their background, location, or characteristics.

 • We will work with others across government to design, deliver and evaluate programmes to address current and anticipated skills shortages for business and public services locally and nationally. Equality of opportunity.

 But nowhere does it say what is meant by levelling up?

Levelling up is designed to address the longstanding problem of the UK’s regional economic disparities – the 2020 Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) Green Budget included a chapter on levelling up, which identified the following characteristics of areas most in need of levelling up: A ‘left-behind’ area, in need of ‘levelling up’, is characterised by broad economic underperformance, which manifests itself in low pay and employment, leading to lower living standards in that area. Behind these factors lie other considerations such as poor productivity, which in turn may be associated with a low skill base. The health of the population may also be relatively poor: in some cases, this could be a legacy of deindustrialisation or long-term unemployment, as well as deep-rooted socio-economic issues.

The most prominent measure of economic performance, Gross Domestic Product (GDP), shows the disproportionate contribution of London and the Southeast to UK GDP.

  • In 2019 (latest available data), London accounted for 22.7% of UK GDP, with the Southeast adding another 14.8%. Their combined 37.5% of UK GDP compares with these two regions making up 26.8% of the UK population.
  • As a result, GDP per head is much higher in London (£56,200) than the rest of the UK (UK average is £32,900). Only London and the Southeast have GDP per capita figures above the UK average, with London significantly pulling up the UK figure.
  •  There is much less variation among other regions and nations. In 2019, most had GDP per head between £24,000 and £31,000. The Northeast (£24,100) and Wales (£24,600) had the lowest GDP per head of the UK’s 12 regions and nations. London saw the fastest GDP per head growth between 2010 and 2019, a cumulative increase of 18.0%, with the West Midlands second fastest at 13.4%. The UK average was 12.2%. The Northeast was an outlier, with growth per head of only 2.7% in total over the period. The next slowest was the Southwest at 7.2%.

Under these circumstances can we assume that the OfS will now be assessing how universities are progressing their impact on the implementation of the UN’s SDGs? “ Leave no one Behind?”

REBOOT THE FUTURE JONATHON PORRITT ANNOUNCES, ‘HOW WILL YOU REBOOT THE FUTURE?’

CAMPAIGN TO MOBILISE SCHOOLS FOR COP-26 IN GLASGOW

 

On Wednesday, 21st April, Reboot the Future, a UK-based NGO,  launched ‘How Will You Reboot the Future?’, a multi-media project targeted at UK 14–19-year-old students to stimulate debate and action as we approach the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow later in the year.

Reboot joined forces with Forum for the Future to deliver this major new initiative. ‘How Will You Reboot the Future?’ is a project comprising a specially commissioned book, film and classroom resources inspired by the lifelong campaigning work of distinguished environmentalist, Jonathon Porritt, in his capacity as Founder Director of Forum for the Future. The materials span the individual and collective experiences of young people who reflect on the tumultuous years 2021- 2025, as they map their way toward a sustainable future.

Based on the book, ‘Rise Up’ is a suite of five films which tell the story of five young people as they describe the positive life choices, they make in 2021, which make it possible for them to help shape a fairer, more sustainable world. Each film is designed to be watched individually or as part of whole. ‘Rise Up’ is a first-time film from Director Sophie Austin and screenplay written by Beth Flintoff, based on the original book by Jonathon Porritt. Produced by Becky Burchell, the films will be accompanied by a dedicated school resources pack, freely available to download from: www.globaldimension.org.uk/rebootthefuture

Regeneration – ending the climate crisis in one generation

I came across the work of environmentalist Paul Hawken  during my time as Director of Learning at Forum for the Future. In his new book published on the 21 September-2021-at the start of the autumn equinox he espouses a new way of framing the solutions to our climate crisis. It’s title is an alternative twist that might be humorous if our global crisis weren’t so depressing; his latest of nine books is called Regeneration: Ending the Climate Crisis in One Generation. Paul has a near-encyclopaedic knowledge of the corporate and consumer inattention and avarice that has brought the Earth and its human and nonhuman inhabitants to today’s “Code Red” state.

It’s hard to comprehend some of the statistics around wealth and the power it has in influencing policy.  The UK for example is now home to 145 billionaires, behind only China and the USA in world rankings. And London has the most billionaires of any city on earth-93 , with New York a distant second. Recent media reports(Pandora Papers) show how  their financial sponsorship can seek to adversely influence some political parties on environmental and social issues.

Paul has enjoyed half a century at the forefront of thought leadership, activism, and collaboration with leading brands, all of which lays the groundwork for his advocacy for a critical global shift toward a regenerative economy.

 The word “regeneration” has been bandied about increasingly in more recent times by many who sign up to the transformation agenda especially those seeking ways to develop regenerative agriculture and at the University of British Columbia – where they are making great strides towards a “regenerative university”. As one recent reviewer has argued” Hawken isn’t co-opting the word. He has a history, in fact, of creating and promulgating a cementing lexicon that leads to cultural and practical promotion through philosophy and policy. That’s what he did in 2017 with Drawdown: The Most Comprehensive Plan Ever Proposed to Reverse Global Warming, and the impact it created and sustains.”

Regeneration is “a how to do it” book. But what exactly is regeneration? Hawken says. “It’s both simple and complex.”

He correctly states that we must agree on  the meaning of our terms because terms like “climate change” are not accurate descriptors (the problem is global warming — our climate changes every nanosecond and always will), or as with “sustainability,” a word too vague and fuzzy to catalyse traction, leading to a movement based on them which does not seem to work.

We certainly need new measures and metrics for growth and success. Along with new parameters and more transparency. And in his view, regeneration is the most rational, albeit ambitious, option available. So, in Hawken’s words : “Regeneration is a radical new approach to the climate crisis, one that weaves justice, climate, biodiversity, and human dignity into a seamless tapestry of action, policy, and transformation that can end the climate crisis in one generation.”

 A “much simpler” definition, coined by Hawken is: “Regeneration is putting life at the centre of every act and decision … an orientation … looking at what we do; what we think; what we buy; and how we interact with each other, with the natural world, and with the world of goods and services,”

 He argues that regeneration is a natural part of our lives. “It’s innate to being a human being. All 30 trillion of our cells regenerate every nanosecond, or we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Regeneration is what we do as living beings, as a species of life on the planet. We regenerate ourselves, by taking in air, water, or food. We care for our children. We do it with our pets, do it with our garden. We care for others. We regenerate in our synagogue, church, or temple.”

According to Hawken the bottom line is this : “Life creates the conditions for life.”

Yet, “What’s happened is we have created — inadvertently, mistakenly — an economic system that is the opposite. It’s one that extracts life … an extractive economy,” Hawken argues. “If you follow the breadcrumb trail back into any supply chain, anything you buy, any service you receive, you will find that it is extracting life from the living world, from the oceans, from the land, from the forest and the soil — and from people, by the way.”

And “When you take life, you are degenerating,” he says. “Today, with business-as-usual, “We’re stealing the future from our children and their children and generations to come.”

THE PARALYSIS OF TRUTH IN PRACTICE

 

Epistemic vices which nullify epistemic virtues

In May 2020, I LIKE TRAINS the Leeds based indie band shared a brand new single, The Truth, which was the first single from their upcoming album, KOMPROMAT.

 The inspiration behind KOMPROMAT, is a social as well as a conceptual representation of the current and ongoing theme of post truth and the rise of ‘post-truth politics’, epitomised by the increasing trend towards ignoring inconvenient facts if they get in the way of a politician’s ideological commitments or ambitions.

 All of which erupted into public consciousness following Edward Snowden’s NSA leaks in 2013. The result is an album about the rise of populism, from Brexit to Trump, Cambridge Analytica to Russian interference, and for this recent release there is no more fitting introduction to this album than The Truth.

The lyrics as Dave Martin belts them out batter the ear with repeated definitions of the Truth, each seemingly taking you further away from actual reality, “the truth is no longer concerned with the facts”, “the truth is I hold all the cards here”, “the truth is I am the truth”.

A week or so ago the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPPC)delivered its latest report on the state of our planet. It was the gravest and starkest warning to date. António Guterres(the UN secretary general), called it a “code red for humanity”, adding that the “alarm bells are deafening”. The IPCC found that sea level is rising, the polar ice is melting, there are floods, droughts and heatwaves coupled to massive fires and undeniably it is human activity which is the cause.

But many still deny this truth, the same way that some insist coronavirus is a conspiracy theory hatched by right wing populist politicians or caused by 5G phone masts or aliens. All these groups are guilty of a deep form of denial and repeatedly fail to update their beliefs in the light of the evidence.
As the Guardian journalist Jonathan Freedland argues:

“There is another form of denial, what the philosopher Quassim Cassam calls “behavioural or practical denialism”. This is the mindset that accepts the science marshalled by the IPCC – it hears the alarm bell ringing – but still does not change its behaviour.”

And it operates at the level of governments and in individuals too. Freedland quotes the White House official who urged global oil producers to open the taps and increase production, so that motorists can buy gasoline more cheaply. And he links it to  individuals, who shrug their shoulders because they believe there is nothing a single person can do to halt the climate emergency.  According to Cassam. “The practical upshot is the same.”

Whether it’s the Covid pandemic or climate emergency, there is a common human shortcoming at work here. It’s wilful blindness, an intentional act of avoiding a reality that is too difficult to apprehend – and it influences much wider and diverse groups of individuals than those who noisily and publicly demonstrate on our streets. A US poll recently found that a summer of heatwaves, flooding, and wildfires – evidence that the planet is both burning and drowning – had barely shifted the public’s reaction to the climate issue.

The most often quoted definition of the word Truth is the property or state of being in accordance with facts or reality.  And one of the core and allied concepts in epistemology is belief. A belief is an attitude that a person holds regarding anything that they take to be true. For instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition “snow is white”

But as we are increasingly finding, particularly in politics and in practice- truth and belief are often at odds and this has significant impacts on how we collectively approach crucial decisions- like how to tackle wicked problems such as climate change or Covid vaccination-we are seeing increasing evidence of what has been described as epistemic myopia or even worse epistemic vices.

 The philosopher Quassim Cassam describes the latter in some extremely dramatic and troubling ways, particularly where they have a deeply biased impact on the practice of political and other forms of leadership.  He defines epistemic vices, as character traits, attitudes or ways of thinking that get in the way of knowledge. He asserts that Epistemic vices are bad for us as knowers because of the extent that they obstruct the acquisition, retention, or transmission of knowledge. He calls this theory of epistemic vice ‘obstructivism’. Standard epistemic vices include closed-mindedness, dogmatism, wishful thinking, prejudice, and intellectual arrogance. This is a quote from one of his blogs:

“The Washington Post recently reported that President Trump ‘bragged that he made up facts’ at a recent meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. According to the Post Trump boasted about telling Trudeau that America has a trade deficit with Canada even though he had no idea whether that was true.
The dictionary defines insouciance as a casual lack of concern. What Trump displayed in his encounter with Trudeau was a casual lack of concern about the facts. His insouciance was what might be called epistemic insouciance. This looks like a straightforward example of an epistemic vice, though not one that until now has been named by philosophers.”

Doing More with Less: Ensuring Sustainable Consumption and Production

Still Only One Earth: Lessons from 50 years of UN sustainable development policy

 Today the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) sent out  a relatively short-for them- reflection on how far we have progressed over the past 50 years on the journey towards a sustainable future . It struck me as a prescient and harsh history lesson for humanity as we creep slowly towards COP 26 in Glasgow in November. As this quote from the report highlights:

“Ensuring sustainable consumption and production patterns has been one of the greatest global challenges over the past fifty years.” 

By any measure we have not progressed very far when we waste billions of tons of food globally, whilst at the same time I billion humans are under nourished and a further billion go to bed hungry. Even more depressing is the thought that should the global population reach 9.6 billion, then it is predicted we will need the equivalent of 3 planets to provide the natural resources needed to sustain our current lifestyles.

All is not lost, however, because as the report argues

“With the adoption of Sustainable Development Goal 12, “Ensure sustainable consumption and production,” and rising interest in the circular economy model, there is an opportunity to set systems-wide goals for all societies, recognizing that key drivers and solutions lie in our economic, financial and governance decision-making.”

 I have argued along with many others that Universities in all countries bear a special responsibility about sustainability, for the following three reasons:

Higher Education as the ‘nursery of tomorrow’s leaders:’

 Universities educate most of the people who develop and manage society’s institutions. For this reason, universities bear profound responsibilities to increase the awareness, knowledge, technologies, and tools to create an environmentally sustainable future. This clearly implies that graduates of every discipline (whether as engineers, teachers, politicians, lawyers, architects, biologists, bankers, managers, or tourist operators, etc.) will need a sound working knowledge about sustainability.

Universities as role models for society:

The world over universities are – rightly or wrongly – regarded as the centres of the most advanced knowledge. They should therefore, through their teaching and their institutional practice, embody role models of excellence and microcosms of best practice for the future .

Universities enjoy special status which incurs special obligation to society:

 Higher education institutions are allowed academic freedom and a tax-free status to receive public and private resources. Society rightly expects from universities in exchange for this privileged position that they contribute as much as possible to the solution of society’s problems. Up until now, though, universities have overall not been at the forefront of implementing sustainability. A UNESCO study noted that ‘it is no accident that environmental education and, more recently, education for sustainable development, has progressed more rapidly at the secondary and primary levels than within the realm of higher education.” The main reason cited for this inability of academia to engage productively in this transdisciplinary endeavour called sustainability is that the frontiers between academic disciplines remain stoutly defended by professional bodies, career structures and criteria for promotion and advancement.

 This gives us some clear indication towards what a sustainable university might look like. But let’s be even more honest. David Orr, Professor for Environmental Science at Oberlin College and one of the pioneers in applying sustainability to universities, spells it out: ‘It is worth noting that [destruction of the world] is not the work of ignorant people. Rather, it is largely the result of work by people with BAs, BScs, LLBs, MBAs, and PhDs.’

I have just finished reading a more optimistic interpretation of our global future, Mission Economy: A Moonshot Guide to Changing Capitalism, written by UCL Professor Mariana Mazzucato. Mariana is making waves with a powerful call for a green revolution founded on deliberate and conscious changes in social values: a redirection of the entire economy, transforming production, distribution, and consumption in all sectors in favour of the common good. She advocates that the concept of “value” should find its rightful place at the centre of economic reasoning (and academic reasoning too) if we are to meaningfully respond to the question: “What future do we want?” To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the future cannot be left in the hands of cynics—or economists—who know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

A couple of memorable quotes from the book:

” There is certainly no lack of challenges that need a mission-oriented approach. The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals outline seventeen of the greatest problems we have, from cleaning our oceans, reducing poverty and hunger to achieving greater gender equity…….one strength of the SDG’s is that they engage diverse stakeholders across the  world. They identify internationally agreed grand challenges that have been chosen by broad and comprehensive consultation around the world. They offer huge opportunities to direct innovation at multiple social and technological problems to create societies that are just, inclusive and sustainable….They are problems without straightforward solutions, and so they require a better understanding of how social issues interact with political and technological ones, behavioural changes and critical feedback processes.”

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As she argues the SDGs are more difficult to accomplish than “literal” moonshots as they are more difficult to define because they involve global commons such as air and water and are affected by social, cultural and political complexities.

 And a wonderful quote at the end of the book from Arundhati Roy(2020)

“Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers, and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it”

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.