Education for Sustainability: How can Educators Address the Failure of Government?

Abstract

In many respects education systems worldwide still contribute more to the obstacles than to solutions in humanity's quest to implement acceptable forms of sustainable living. The same appears to be the case with governments, especially at superregional and national levels. We summarise evidence suggesting that many governments fall short of their own broadly stated commitments towards sustainability. Their achievements are evaluated in relation to the Millennium Development Goals, and currently discussed notions about the forthcoming Sustainable Development Goals. Also, widely advocated transition strategies, in the educational sector and elsewhere, have met with only partial success. Our findings confirm our previous critical assessment of the UN's Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and of the dominant interpretations of sustainable development per se. We describe the extent of the shortfall and offer some explanations for it. In the classroom, efforts to educate for sustainability are dominated by contingencies, norms and possibilities that differ fundamentally from governance in their dynamics and contingencies. It is therefore possible for teachers at all levels to take the initiative in ways that can compensate to some extent for the failures of governments. This possibility is documented and further expanded conceptually to describe a productive operating space for educators to help prepare learners for the inevitable challenges of the transition. We refer specifically to the goals of making communities more resilient, reducing their ecological overshoot, and OPEN ACCESS 2 maximising their human security. It is the level of community that offers the greatest potential for mitigating the failures of government as well as of traditional education.

Functional Relationships of a Geospatial System for Reforestation of a Territory Using Geographic Information Systems

“…For example, the Lautensach-Meyer index [16] considers an arid month in which the water deficit reaches 30 mm, so, if we consider the year as a whole, the deficit to consider a zone as arid it would have to be equal to or greater than 360 mm. In this paper it will consider the following subdivision (Table 2) in response to the average annual P-ETP deficit.…”

Editorial for Journal of Human Security Volume 11

“…• Around the world, governments are increasingly falling short of recognising and addressing the most pressing challenges to the human security of their citizens [2]. This includes ignoring anthropogenic climate change and overpopulation, collusion with and support of sinister corporate agenda, failing to demilitarise politics, and supporting a global economic system that, in the inimitable words of ecological economist Bill Rees, "wrecks its planetary home, exacerbates inequity, undermines social cohesion, generates greater net costs than benefits and ultimately threatens to lead to systemic collapse" [3].…”