Page 115 - Sustainability Communication Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Theoritical Foundations

98 I. Bormann

In fact Chapter 36 of Part IV of Agenda 21 is entitled ‘Promoting Education, Public
Awareness And Training’ and calls for a re-orientation of education so that it can
better contribute to increasing public awareness of sustainable development. Even
though this goal of re-orienting education has been, and still is, the subject of innu-
merable publications, projects and campaigns in a great variety of educational
areas, it is not uncritically shared by all scientists. There is no generally shared
definition of the regulative idea of sustainable development, or of the associated
concept of ESD, which would help further agreement on goals, tasks, methods etc.
nor is it even self-evident that education should be in the service of political objec-
tives, as it would effectively functionalise ESD.
(ii) In view of the at times overly emphatic reference to the concept of sustainable
development, Vare and Scott (2007) identify two different forms and objects of ESD,
one of which is more and the other less politically ambitioned. The predominant
form of practicing ESD is the “promotion of informed, skilled behaviours and ways
of thinking, useful in the short term” (ibid, 191). They call this ESD 1, which as
“learning for sustainable development”, is preferred especially by political decision-
makers (ibid, 193). ESD 2 is a critical version of ESD 1 and is about “building capac-
ity to think critically about what experts say and to test ideas, exploring the dilemmas
and contradictions inherent in sustainable living” (ibid.). Vare and Scott identify this
version as best corresponding to the ‘real’ goal of education as a permanent, open-
ended learning process and describe it as “learning as sustainable development”
(ibid. 194). Vare and Scott thus address one of the main problems of ESD, which
according to Bonnett consists of “the notion of SD as a statement of policy” (Bonnett
1999; also Sauvé 1996). This notion leads in turn to – as yet unsolved – semantic,
ethical and not least epistemological problems.A brief discussion of this issue from
an educational theory perspective as to whether and to what extent ESD can be a
legitimate object for educational processes can be found in the third section of this
paper. At this point it should be noted that the difference in contextualising ESD is a
further reason for communicating scientifically about the concept of education.
(iii) This draws attention to a further aspect. Not only is there dissensus concern-
ing the legitmation of ESD but different approaches can also be identified regarding
what exactly is meant by sustainable development and education for sustainable
development (IRE 2010). There is a general understanding today regarding the
goals of ESD. It is to enable individuals to change their actions so that future gen-
erations have a chance to lead a good life (see for example the Bonn Declaration
2009). However, what this exactly means, how this goal can be achieved and how
the success of actions can be evaluated are all questions that have widely different
answers, as can be seen in the identification of an ESD 1 and an ESD 2. Due to the
unequal division of social, ecological and economic resources worldwide, there are
not only different claims made on education in general but also differences in the
understandings and expectations attached to the functions of ESD. While in Western
industrialized countries the issue is more about an ‘alphabetisation’ in non-sustainable
development, in Southern countries it is often about access to basic school education
– about the opportunity to be able to read, write and do basic mathematics
(EFA – Education for All). And in a report for United Nations Economic Conference