Abstract
This paper examines how education for sustainable development (ESD) can be concretely advanced using the theoretical approaches of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) and sustainable livelihoods (SL). Five case examples illustrate a diverse set of strategic educational interventions focusing on: (1) education of specific organizational actors about these theoretical frameworks illustrated with case examples (such as SCP training by the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies [UNU-IAS] and CSR-Asia of government and business representatives), (2) regional education strategies focused on production and consumption in specific sectors (such as the food sector in Skåne, Sweden), (3) social learning directed at innovation for sustainable development (such as competitions of solar boats developed by universities in the region of Friesland, the Netherlands), (4) education of consumers and firms made possible by the adoption of certification systems affirming SCP and SL (such as Cradle-to-Cradle certification of a paper company in the Netherlands or the establishment of Fair Trade cities in Sweden), or (5) reorienting communities to address underutilized productive physical capital within communities (such as the sharing productive capital project in rural areas of Saskatchewan, Canada). The cases are drawn from the projects that the UNU-IAS, four of its regional centers of expertise (RCE) on ESD and other affiliates have conducted. In addition to documenting the educational processes emerging from specific regions, the paper highlights findings related to the success of these projects and opportunities for further research, including regional and inter-regional approaches.
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Notes
Regional centers of expertise (RCEs) on education for sustainable development (ESD) are networks of organizations that come together at a local/regional level to develop learning systems for sustainability. The RCE concept was originally developed by the United Nations University (UNU) in 2004 and translated into practice by RCEs worldwide. As of August 2009, there were 62 RCEs in Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Americas. After initial efforts to establish their activities in their home regions, RCEs since 2007 have started to develop a number of activities uniting them across the globe. This paper is one such intellectual effort. As a preparation for a workshop of the 5th World Environmental Education Congress (5WEEC) held in Montreal, Canada, in May, 2009, RCEs, in collaboration with the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS), thought to analyze their educational efforts in the areas of SCP and SL.
Charmaz defines grounded theory as “a set of inductive strategies for analyzing data” that starts “with individual cases, incidents, or experiences and develop[s] progressively more abstract conceptual categories to synthesize, to explain, and to understand [one’s] data and to identify patterned relationships within it” (Charmaz 2004, p. 497).
For a discussion of John Biggs’ concept of meta-learning, see Scott and Gough 2003.
For a general theoretical background of learning for sustainable development, see Scott and Gough 2003.
A similar approach was used for several training events focusing on SCP with representatives of the ministries of education and environment of the ASEAN countries.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the UNU-IAS for facilitating the development of this paper, along with facilitating the RCE SL and SCP workshop held at the 5th World Environmental Education Congress on May 11, 2009, in Montreal, Canada. In addition, the authors would like to thank the UNU-IAS for their case examples, along with the RCEs and the members of the projects that have been profiled. These RCEs include RCE Rhine-Meuse (Netherlands), RCE Saskatchewan (Canada), and RCE Skåne (Sweden). In addition, representatives from several other RCEs participated in the workshop’s question and discussion period, providing valuable insights. These included: RCE Kano (Nigeria), RCE Curitiba-Parana (Brazil), RCE Grand Rapids (USA), RCE Graz-Styria (Austria), RCE Greater Sendai (Japan), and RCE Western Jalisco (Mexico).
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Edited by Didac Ferrer Balas, Technical University of Catalonia, Spain.
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Petry, R.A., Fadeeva, Z., Fadeeva, O. et al. Educating for sustainable production and consumption and sustainable livelihoods: learning from multi-stakeholder networks. Sustain Sci 6, 83–96 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-010-0116-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11625-010-0116-y