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PREFACE TO THE DAS GUPTA REVIEW ON THE ECONOMICS OF BIODIVERSITY

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

David Attenborough

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

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

Guest Blog by Sarah EA Parkin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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http://www.sarahparkin.co.uk

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The Coming of the Ecological University

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Quality Standards and Sustainability in our Universities

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A SHIP FROM DELOS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Brave New Wild

A new report entitled ‘Count the cost of 2020: a year of climate breakdown’, published by the charity Christian Aid, has once again highlighted the existential crisis we face from Climate Change. Unsurprisingly, the burden falls disproportionately on poor nations, like Bangladesh, where the 2020 floods covered almost a quarter of the land area of this beautiful but blighted nation.

The world’s 10 costliest weather disasters of 2020 saw insured damages of $150bn, topping the figure for 2019 and reflecting a long-term impact of global warming.

These disasters claimed at least 3,500 lives and displaced more than 13.5 million people. In fact, the true cost of the year’s climate-enhanced calamities was far higher because most losses were uninsured.

Paul Wapner, in a brave and pithy new book called ‘Is Wildness Over?’wrestles with the question – probably the biggest question humanity faces – “what is to be done?”

It explores the three main ways of framing this question, namely the economics of dealing with mitigation and adaptation: the technical solutions and the ethical response via human rewilding. But his premise is an unusual one for many of us who situate our thoughts and lives in this knotty problem. He argues that we are living at a time when wildness increasingly encroaches and subsumes our lives – like the current impacts of the global pandemic, and the growing influence of climate change. Wildness from this perspective refers to the unwieldly or wicked character of the more than human world. As he enumerates the etymology of the word wild suggests something which is self-willed, even perverse: one which expresses itself as part of its own unique dynamics. Wildness also finds a place in human affairs like war or the social and economic complexities of Brexit. It even impacts on the chaotic behaviour of large crowds in sporting events or demonstrations. All of which are characterised by unexpected dynamics and take on a life of themselves and for most of us it spells fear, peril, and danger, which we detest and try to avoid. During the Holocene humanity sought progressively to avoid the unpredictability of wildness by immunising themselves from fluctuations in weather – in their dwellings and their food production systems and more recently using cars and aviation to travel long distances. There are many more examples in the book of our attempts to minimize wildness; one of the biggest being economic globalisation enabling manufacturing and distribution to avoid the vagaries of localised weather and the availability of base materials. But economic globalisation has wreaked a plague of unpredictability on the planet and its inhabitants -as Wapner argues the feral has remerged!

So does technology have an answer along with those who promote it, the so called” Earthmasters”. They argue that by harnessing some forms of geoengineering by disciplining the atmosphere itself or to reverse biodiversity by genetically engineering evolution could offer a solution, but only if adopted at a global scale and in a manner analogous to how our “convenience culture” got us here. They see this as a further step in the human mastery of our planetary biogeochemical systems. But this book argues from a hugely different perspective. It proposes a process of rewilding human experience such that we embrace more unpredictability into our lives and repurposing our pursuit of controlling everything. It offers a powerful strategy and ethical imperative for a rewilding that disconnects us from our comfort zones to live within a compassionate act of understanding with one another and all other lifeforms. This will need us to develop coping mechanisms for adapting to climate change and global pandemics along with the immense suffering they cause. Wapner sees this as a way of learning to live a more humbling form of life so that the living planet can sustain itself in partnership with a significant human presence. As he says , the Earth is in spasm so, we have the choice of either “shoving wildness from the planet itself or befriending it.”

As James Redbanks observes in his recent book- English Pastoral in developing transformative regenerative farming systems, many farmers are starting to work together to make things more nature based by fencing off river corridors and digging out adjacent ponds to provide wilderness corridors, along with wildflower meadows, liberated from artificial fertilisers. The old “us” and “them” human rewilding divide is fading now.

These are the two books that inspired this post.

Sustainability Leadership

THE POSITIVE DEVIANT: SUSTAINABILITY LEADERSHIP in a PERVERSE WORLD by SARA PARKIN EARTHSCAN 2010

This is a review I wrote for the Institution of Environmental Sciences in 2010-It has even more relevance to our current existential predicament now. So much of what we do is unsustainable and there seems to be a paucity of sustainability literate leadership in just about every field of human endeavour.

The ability to lead in building a more sustainable society requires far more than knowledge about sustainability it requires a facility for bringing about change which deals with complexity, uncertainty, multiple stakeholders, competing values, lack of end points and ambiguous terminology. In other words, leadership which can handle “wicked problems!”
The search for charismatic or “super leaders” to bring about this change has exercised the minds of many in the environmental movement, including many in the environmental professions. Some of the debate has inevitably been targeted at the paucity of political leadership – nationally and internationally, as exemplified by the limited outcomes at the world summit in Johannesburg, and more recently in Copenhagen and probably in Cancun, Mexico.
Sustainability is a big issue, probably the biggest there is. It is about whether there are birds singing in the trees, about climate change, about poverty alleviation, diminishing natural resources and about global security. It matters. Whilst it has caught the attention of some big companies such as Shell, BT, BP, Marks and Spencer, Tesco and Barclays, so far it has not caused CEOs and leaders of organisations to wake up in the middle of the night!
Perhaps the reason why sustainability only keeps a few people awake at night is that it is complex and often confusing and hence difficult to decide what to do about it. Most CEOs and other leaders are primarily trying to keep their institutions financially viable and like most of us, they have ‘a too big switch off’ mentality.
Sarah Parkin’s book is an impressive attempt to address the leadership gulf that currently exists in addressing this global issue. It describes and analyses how leadership is a complex cultural and behavioural process which influences the thoughts and behaviour of others. And it asserts that it is as much about followers and “sustainable followership” as it is about “sustainability leadership”. It is about getting people to move in the right direction, gaining their commitment and motivating them to achieve their goals because leaders need to achieve the task in hand and at the same time maintain effective relationships with individuals and groups of individuals.
The commitment of staff at all levels is vital if sustainability is to become part of the language and culture of an organisation. Strong leadership is crucial in creating opportunities for action and innovation at other levels. This process has been termed ‘vacuum management’ just as a cyclist creates a vacuum into which other racers can slip stream forward, so a leader, taking an organisation in a radical new direction creates a vacuum for others to fill with fresh ideas. Sir John Browne, now Lord Browne formerly CEO of BP, provides an example of such leadership. He took a stand against the prevailing views of the oil industry in May 1997 by publicly acknowledging the reality of climate change and withdrew BP Amoco from the Global Climate Coalition. He then wrote to the 350 senior managers in BP asking how the company might reduce its CO2 emissions. The response was overwhelmingly positive. “… no one could fail to miss the extraordinary level of support, the sheer excitement, within the company. For me, it is a matter of pride to report that BP employees do not leave their values at the door when they come to work.”

Whilst it is not the purpose of this book to explore in detail current leadership theory and practice it does emphasise the importance of transformational leadership in facilitating the integration of sustainable development into an organisational change process. According to the Leadership College, transformational leadership is characterised by a process that goes beyond an employee’s own self-interest and helps them contribute towards the resolution of societal issues within the purpose and mission of their organisation (like Lord Browne’s stance on climate change within the oil industry). An essential element of transformational leadership is having a clear collective vision and being able to communicate it effectively to all employees. And as role models, transformational leaders should inspire employees to put the good of the organisation (its sustainability in economic, social and environmental terms) above self-interest. They also stimulate employees to be more innovative, and they themselves take risks and are not afraid to use unconventional, but always ethical, means to achieve a collective vision. This form of leadership goes beyond traditional forms of ‘transactional leadership’, which emphasises corrective actions, mutual exchanges and rewards only when performance expectations are met. This form of leadership also relies mainly on centralised control through instructing each person what, when and how to carry out each task. Transformational leadership involves more trust and responsibility in employees and hence is more developmental and constructive. Much of the “cult of leadership” is centred on the charismatic characteristics which are deemed to be required. But as Parkin emphasises it is not just about charisma it is about the ability to persuade and transform followers to subordinate their individual wants to the wider needs of the organisation and society. The problem then is really as much about the poverty of followership as it is about the paucity of earth literate leadership. And yet the goal of most recruiters is to find charismatic leaders to resolve apparently irresolvable wicked problems. The most significant message for me in this book is that the most successful organisations are those where the errors of the leaders are compensated for by their followers – perhaps the title should have included the phrase: The Positive Deviant (and all of those crucial) “compensatory followers!” For anyone aspiring to be sustainability literate positive deviant this is a recommended read. It is full of good practical ideas, tools and techniques grounded in Parkin’s lifelong experience in the pursuit of sustainability.

“Sustainability leadership is like the abominable snowman whose footprints are everywhere but is nowhere to be seen.”

Learning for Sustainability in Times of Accelerating Change

Edited by Arjen E.J. Wals and Peter Blaze Corcoran. Netherlands: Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2012. 550 pages. (€) 69.00 (hardback) ISBN: 978-90-8686-203-0.

I reviewed this massive book for the Journal of Education for Sustainable Development in 2012 and set it in the context of a prescient album by the Indie Group ILiKETRAiNS: “And we regret the process of our age: progress, stagnation and decay” (He who Saw the Deep ,2010).

The Epic of Gilgamesh’s existential themes made it particularly appealing to German authors in the years following World War two. Even Saddam Hussein, made much of the story of Gilgamesh during his autocratic reign over Iraq.
The epic tale tells of Gilgamesh undertaking a long and perilous journey to discover the secret of eternal life. He eventually learns that “Life, which you look for, you will never find. For when the gods created man, they let death be his share, and life withheld in their own hands.
“I will proclaim to the world the deeds of Gilgamesh. This was the man to whom all things were known; this was the king who knew the countries of the world. He was wise, he saw mysteries and knew secret things, he brought us a tale of the days before the flood. He went on a long journey, was weary, worn-out with labour, returning he rested, engraved on a stone the whole story.” (Sanders 1960)
Epic tales of floods (climate change), knowledge, wisdom and uncertainty set the context to this ambitious book published at a time not unlike the present impacts of the global pandemic. A time when the world’s leaders struggle to come to terms with the impact of Covid -19, widening global austerity, major conflict zones and catastrophic and unpredictable weather systems in virtually all parts of the globe. What does this mean for humanity and in particular the global education community? How do we respond to ‘tipping points’, when situations move from stability to instability as human activity crosses planetary boundaries, such as elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations leading to climate change? Is there a path towards more resilience, adaptation, and renewal in the face of such unprecedented and accelerating change around the world?
Arjen E.J. Wals and Peter Blaze Corcoran(2006) have argued that sustainable development cannot be an end in itself but as part of a journey consisting of several inputs or drivers for transformative learning. While there is a wide range of ideas as to what sustainable development might entail, the lack of consensus about an exact meaning in variable contexts mitigates against global prescription. More importantly, to demand consensus about the perspective of an ill-defined issue such as sustainable development, is undesirable from a deep-and deliberative democracy perspective and is essentially ‘mis-educative’.
Deliberative democracy offers a way of thinking about difference, as opposed to consensus. Democracy, from this perspective, depends on difference, dissonance, conflict resolution, and antagonism, so that deliberation is fundamentally indeterminate. Any deliberative exploration of sustainable development raises inevitable tensions among the three P’s (People, Planet, Profit) or the three E’s (Efficiency, Environment, Equity). All of which are prerequisites for rather than barriers to higher and deep learning.
As I and many others have argued Universities have a responsibility to create space for alternative thinking. They have a profound moral and ethical role to play in developing students’ attributes and competencies. The acquisition of these qualities is essential to cope with uncertainty, poorly defined situations, and conflicting or at least diverging norms, values, interests, and reality constructs. The development of these dynamic qualities and related competencies sets higher education apart from training institutions and avoids prescription which stifles creativity, homogenizes thinking, narrows choices, limits autonomous thinking. It emphasises wisdom over knowledge acquisition-and prioritises the application of knowledge for the betterment of humanity and social progress.
Given this level of uncertainty and complexity there can be no universally applicable recipe for implementing sustainability in higher education. University governance systems cannot rely solely on limited structural use of economic incentives, rules, attainment standards, and regulations to enforce sustainability in higher education. Sustainability is an inchoate concept which can only derive democratic meaning with the involvement of multiple stakeholders in the university enterprise- both the academic and non-academic community within it but also the wider stakeholder community within which it sits. This can then resolve the “ wicked question” of what a university is for.
It ultimately needs a university stakeholder sustainability assembly-which invests in a transformative deliberative learning process and crucially deals with the inevitable tension among the divergence of interests, values, and worldviews on the one hand – and the need for the shared resolution of issues that arise in working on sustainability in higher education on the other.
“Plato’s division between well-educated, judicious leaders and the crazy and uproarious masses came to be so widely accepted that it’s easy to forget that he was writing as a contrarian in his time. Higher education in Greece then was often in the hands of the Sophists: private tutors, thinkers, and craft masters. Plato believed that engaging in higher thought for wages was corrupting and schlock-prone—the corporate lecture circuit of its day—and he rarely missed an opportunity to dump on those who did it. (His efforts succeeded: “sophistry” remains a sneer more than two thousand years later.) Yet the Sophists do seem to have believed that crowd wisdom was true wisdom. Aristotle, Plato’s student, ended up sharing this belief. “

Arjen E.J. Wals and Peter Blaze Corcoran(2006); Sustainability as an Outcome of Transformative Learning. In Drivers and barriers for Implementing Sustainable Development in Higher education. UNESCO Technical Paper no 3.

Can philosophy help humanity cope with the complexity of reality?

In an earlier blog, I explored the ideas of objectivity and subjectivity and how different world views impact on our understanding of reality. In 2002 philosopher John Gray also explored these issues and their impact on human thought in a book called Straw Dogs. He wanted to attack the unthinking beliefs of thinking people. The book is a powerful and withering critique of liberal humanism, one of our dominant worldviews.
He suggests that “The prevailing secular world view is a pastiche of current scientific orthodoxy and pious hope”. Which from a Darwinian perspective reinforces the fact that we are animals but which those who call themselves Humanists rail against because they argue that unlike animals, we have choices – or free will. But the idea of free will has its origins not in science but in religion. Not just any religion, but the Christian faith itself! This dichotomy underpins our failure to respond to the existential threat of climate change and our unsustainable lifestyles. We are beset by a huge array of false news, self-illusion, echo chambers, myths, and stories. Our beliefs do not map onto the actual structure of the world (reality). This makes it increasingly difficult for us to make rational, evidence based and logical decisions. This cognitive dissonance between belief-systems and rational thought and action is a major issue and unless we confront it, we will make no real progress towards the goal of a sustainable future.

Gray goes much further and critiques the “religion of Humanism” and its post Christian faith in humanity’s ability to make the world better through scientific advances; their idea of progress he argues is a secular version of the Christian belief in providence or the divine guidance from God.
However, our belief in progress has other origins. The growth of scientific knowledge is cumulative whereas human life is not since any gains in knowledge in one generation may be lost in the next. Our pursuit of more knowledge from all its sources is a mixed blessing. It has offered us longevity along with better living standards and at the same time has allowed us to wreak havoc on a planetary scale.
Scientific progress has been a huge part of modern society. But an equal emphasis has not been placed on the application of ethics as an integral part of scientific enquiry. Scientists are meant to be objective; they are not required to think about the social implications of their research. Knowledge and scientific progress are simply deemed to be good for their own sake. But as the following example points out this inequality between science and ethics has had devastating impacts.

Take a specific example, like the right to bear arms which is protected under American law by the Second Amendment. This is undoubtedly a controversial topic, and one that’s been even more fiercely debated since there have been innumerable school shootings recently. Many of which resulted in multiple deaths and injuries (in 2018 there were 8 making 18 school shootings in total). Is this still a necessary legal entitlement in the 21st century, given that since 1887 ,when this legislation was passed, there is no longer a “Wild West?” Coupled with the fact that scientific progress has resulted in the development of semi-automatic guns which allow one person to kill so many more people than the guns that were around in 1887. Is it in any sense ethical for a politician to support the continuation of this law?

Is humanity’s search for progress to be shaped only by its longing for immortality or should it be based on our yearnings for a good life as an integrated part of a self- sustaining biosphere?
Maybe this implies the need for a clear and unambiguous ecocentric theory of ethics as an essential prerequisite to the creation of a more sustainable world and one in which a programme of green citizenship based on virtue ethics, plays a significant role? Could this provide a philosophical blueprint for a more balanced, sustainable world.