This paper argues that the need for a core -fourth pillar‖ of sustainability/sustainable development, as demanded in multiple arenas, can no longer be ignored on the grounds of intangibility. Different approaches to this vital but missing pillar (cultural-aesthetic, religious-spiritual, and political-institutional) find common ground in the area of ethical values. While values and aspects based on them are widely assumed to be intangible and immeasurable, we illustrate that it is possible to operationalize them in terms of measurable indicators when they are intersubjectively conceptualized within clearly defined practical contexts. The processes require contextual localization of items, which can nonetheless fit into a generalizable framework. This allows useful measurements to be made, and removes OPEN ACCESSSustainability 2013, 5 3036 barriers to studying, tracking, comparing, evaluating and correlating values-related dimensions of sustainability. It is advocated that those involved in operationalizing sustainability (especially in the context of creating post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals), should explore the potential for developing indicators to capture some of its less tangible aspects, especially those concerned with ethical values.

There have been recent calls for a shift to an evidence-based paradigm in environmental management, grounded in systematic monitoring and evaluation, but achieving this will be complex and difficult. Evaluating the educational components of environmental initiatives presents particular challenges, because these programs often have multiple concurrent goals and may value 'human outcomes', such as value change, which are intangible and difficult to quantify. This paper describes a fresh approach based on co-creating an entirely new values-based assessment framework with expert practitioners worldwide. We first discuss the development of a generic framework of 'Proto-Indicators' (reference criteria constituting prototypes for measurable indicators), and then demonstrate its application within a reforestation project in Mexico where indicators and assessment tools were localized to enhance context-relevance. Rigorously derived using unitary validity, with an emphasis on relevance, practicability and logical consistency from user perspectives, this framework represents a step-wise advance in the evaluation of non-formal EE/ESD programs. This article also highlights three important principles with broader implications for evaluation, valuation and assessment processes within environmental management: namely peer-elicitation, localizability, and an explicit focus on ethical values. We discuss these principles in relation to the development of sustainability indicators at local and global levels, especially in relation to post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals.

A collaborative partnership is developing a values-based indicator framework for use by civil society organizations (CSOs). A key sub-study on the relevance and usability of such indicators was carried out through an action research process with a CSO and it was found that: 1) it was, indeed, possible to develop useful and relevant indicators for the presence of CSO values; 2) it was not useful to tie each indicator to only one value; 3) the indicators were more 'universal' than the values for which they had been derived; 4) these indicators were not considered valid by the user CSO without being 'localized'; 5) the use of our values-based framework caused substantive transformational learning within this CSO. The importance of these findings to studies on values and to design issues central to formal values-based measurement work, such as face validity and catalytic validity, is drawn out. The principles of emancipatory action research used are shown to be key to the results, which themselves form foundational elements

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This descriptive report outlines an innovative project in which Earth Charter International is actively involved. The project aims to develop approaches, indicators and tools for Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) to be able to measure values-based aspects and impacts of their work at the project level.Dimity Podger is Research Fellow at the University of Brighton, UK.

Abstract:In this paper, we explore the way in which institutional contexts mediate values-focused behaviour change, with potential design implications. We use concepts taken from training research, where "learning transfer" refers to the translation into practice of the learning acquired during training: it is considered necessary to generalize it for the job context and for it to be maintained over a period of time on the job. In this paper, we analyse the example of one education for sustainable development (ESD) intervention that is already established as pedagogically effective when it is deployed in diverse institutional environments worldwide-the Youth as Agents of Behaviour Change program of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). This allows an opportunity to consider variations in learning transfer due to distinctive moderating institutional features, which can now be understood in terms of varying transfer climates, levels of leadership support and opportunities to practice. Additional barriers of tokenistic consultation, lack of role clarity and perverse effects of increased distance between trainees and their colleagues on return were also seen. ESD programs intending to bridge the values-action gap could benefit from not focusing only on the training content, but pre-planning organisational support for returning trainees and including in the training ways for them to assess and plan to overcome such difficulties.

Among the central tropes of Baha’i socio-political theology is a single sentence from the Persian Bayan which, alluded to in Baha’u’llah’s Kitab-i Aqdas became, in Shoghi Effendi’s interpretation, the ‘myth of origin’, in the sense of a starting point in sacred narrative, for the Baha’i Administrative Order structuring the Baha’i community, and for the Baha’i World Order envisaged as its culmination, ultimate purpose and eventual fruit. The passage in question states, in Shoghi Effendi’s translation, ‘well is it with him who fixeth his gaze on the Order of Baha’u’llah’. Shoghi Effendi’s interpretation of that passage as alluding to a sacred socio-political entity which is the hallmark of the Baha’i revelation and is anticipated as the embodiment and structure of the millennial promise of the unification of humankind, represents a radical interpretive leap, given that the passage in the Persian Bayan in its most intuitive reading refers, not to an institutional idea, but to the compilation and arrangement of sacred Babi texts. At the heart of this seemingly incompatible usage lies the single word nazm, which may be translated as both order and arrangement. The present paper will explore the interpretive trajectory of the word nazm, from its roots in the earliest Qur’anic hermeneutics dating from the 2nd Islamic century, to its complex articulation in the Bab’s writings, including various instances in the Persian Bayan and in the Kitabu’l-Asma’. It will contextualize these occurrences in the Bab’s subtle and esoteric (batini) cosmogony of the universe as Text, including the simultaneity and parallelism of levels of interpretation, within which the apparently inoccuous passage of the Bab is revealed to be charged with cosmological, communal and messianic dimensions, which it will be argued form the implicit substratum or at least demonstrate a substantive correlation to the counter-intuitive, although not exclusive interpretation of that passage by Shoghi Effendi as denoting likewise a communal, global and, in its deepest level, a messianic cosmic order.

This paper explores the dynamics of conflict-philosophical, personal, communal, and sociopolitical-against the backdrop of globalization, with a focus on religion's role to both foster and overcome it. It argues that behind the Bahá'í principle of unity lies a "logic of reconciliation" by which we continuously seek, and continuously find, new capacity to contain paradox, transcend contradiction, and find harmony among ideas, individuals, communities, and nations. Far from denying or ignoring conflict, the Bahá'í writings push us to face it and find reconciliation. This process is an important contribution to the emergence, from the fractious present, of a sustainable and prosperous world order. Résumé L'article explore les dynamiques du conflit dans ses dimensions philosophique, personnelle, communale, et sociopolitique, sur fond de mondialisation, et examine le rôle que joue la religion dans la naissance du conflit et dans sa résolution. L'auteur fait valoir que derrière le principe bahá'í de l'unité il y a une logique de réconciliation, par laquelle nous cherchons et trouvons continuellement une capacité nouvelle à contenir les paradoxes, à transcender les contradictions, et à découvrir l'harmonie entre des idées, des individus, des collectivités, et des nations. Les écrits bahá'ís, loin de nier ou d'ignorer le conflit, nous poussent à y faire face et à trouver la réconciliation. Ce processus constitue une importante contribution à l'émergence d'un ordre mondial durable et prospère. Resumen Este ensayo explora la dinámica del conflicto-filosófico, personal, comunal, y sociopolítico-con la globalización como telón de fondo y con enfoque sobre el 95 jbs18.1-4.qxp 5/12/10 5:52 PM Page 95 [T]he storeroom of humanity's accumulated materials-mechanisms, machines, merchandises, markets, institutions, documents, poems, emblems, photograms, opera picta, arts and trades, encyclopedias, cosmologies, grammars, topoi and figures of speech, ties of kinship, tribe and enterprise, myths and rituals, operational models-no way remains to keep them in order.. .. all the parameters, the categories, the antitheses, that had served to imagine, classify, and project the world, are up for discussion. And not only those closest to historic attributions of values: the rational and the mythic, to work and to exist, masculine and feminine, and even the poles of more elementary topologies, like affirmation and negation, the tall and the short, the living and the thing. It should not surprise that such conditions should have had a profoundly destabilizing effect not only on our societies but on our very notions of self, engendering what Appadurai describes as a "new order of instability