This review has been accessed times since September 23, 2005
Scott, William, and Gough, Stephen. (2003). Sustainable
Development and Learning: Framing the Issues. London:
RoutledgeFalmer.
Pp. xviii + 173
ISBN 0-415-27648-9
Reviewed by Mitiku Adisu
Peabody College of Vanderbilt
University
September 23, 2005
Twenty years ago "sustainable development" was a newly-minted notion.
Unlike theorists of modernization and economic growth, the proponents of
sustainable development promised that growth and environmental
protection are not mutually exclusive and that one can have the cake and
eat it too. Therein lay the charm—and the risk. The risk is in
overlooking the fact that humans had, from time immemorial, a sense of
the benefits of coexisting with the natural world and with each other
(Chapter 5). The charm is in that the new term engendered great optimism
and created space for multiplicity of voices. Twenty years later,
however, the promise remains as ambiguous and elusive as ever. Today,
the respectability of the phrase is being contested by emerging
definitions and by variant terms (p.12). Then as now, the focus of such
inventiveness was decidedly to create awareness and improve the quality
of life in a world of disparities and limited resources. Unfortunately,
the minting of new phrases also favored those better disposed to set the
global agenda.
Not wasting collective wisdom
Scott and Gough readily admit that their project is built on the best
available research in development practice and theory. (p.xi) This alone
is a commendable start in that the world of development agencies and
education reformers is littered with impracticable, re-packaged and
increasingly non-participatory propositions.
The authors also attempt to make the “essentials and complexities”
manageable for both the professional and the layperson (p.xiii). Indeed,
the pressing challenge has always been how to bridge the widening
communications, resource, and time gap while highlighting the
indispensability of one sector to the other. Scott and Gough envision a
multidisciplinary route in order to offset the tyranny of any one
discipline to address the complexity and risk that affects us all.
In a mere 147 pages (not including the references and index), the
authors succeed, to a remarkable degree, in bringing together an immense
strand of information in an effort to make sense of the contradictory,
the inconspicuous, and the time-constrained features of our individual
and collective lives.
Chapter One posits that the way humans relate to the environment is a
two-way activity; that it takes piecing together the jigsaw-puzzle of
our respective experiences and that the certainty of change could become
the means by which we learn about ourselves and the natural world. In
other words, our knowledge is evolving and hence, only in sharing this
knowledge do we come to grips with what is an appropriate response in
any given moment or situation. The rest of the book explores the
practicability of the proposition, the transmission of generational and
contemporary wisdom, the challenges of broad-basing such efforts, the
mechanism for gauging them and, finally, which tested values should
under gird and inform local, regional, and global practices.
Resurrecting Schumacher
A little over thirty years ago, E.F. Schumacher (1973) wrote
Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if people
mattered. The subtitle is telling. In it, Schumacher endeavored to
present a coherent philosophy of life that explained how humans could
relate to the environment, to the world of business and to "appropriate"
technology. Heretofore, technology only made workers redundant and their
escalating costs disallowed self-employment. For workers to remain
productive and fulfilled, argued Schumacher, the use of an
"intermediate" and ecologically-friendly technology was imperative.
Schumacher was a first-rate economist who dared to defy some of the
propositions of his own tribe. He rejected the underlying tenets of both
capitalism and Marxism on the grounds that these did not respect the
dignity, community and well-being of the human person. He understood
that reducing humans to the material alone is unfulfilling and,
ultimately, dehumanizing. For Schumacher, religious notions could and
should inform economic practices and that distributist ideas should not
be thrown out on flimsy charges of some socialist plot (Chapter 1). The
perennial question is, however, how much socio-economic restructuring
should be allowed before it impinged on individual freedoms and
rights.
Our world is a sphere of intense religious activity. According to the
Pew Global Attitudes Project (2002), those who responded to the
importance of religion in their lives represent more than 80 percent of
the population in Africa, 90 percent in Muslim nations, 60-80 percent in
Latin America. Except for the U.S. (59 percent) attitudes toward the
importance of religion fall to between 11 and 33 percent in the G-8
nations. What do these figures tell us about wealth disparity and the
locus of global policy decision-making? Is secularism capable of
comprehending religious sensibilities?
In 1977, a little-known theologian by the name of Ron Sider came up
with Rich Christians in an age of hunger (249p). That book was to
have a profound effect in sensitizing the otherwise complacent
evangelical Christians of America to the plight of the rest of the world
and to their own consumption habits. Considering the influence of the
U.S. evangelical community on the outcome of recent domestic politics
and its current interests in international issues, one could expect
increased engagement in the areas of poverty and debt relief, HIV/AIDS,
and human rights. Will this be a transitory event? What are the possible
unintended consequences?
Change, no change
The world of the seventies has changed radically. Today, the effects
of wholesale market liberalization are being felt everywhere. There is
no consensus on the efficacy of this global phenomenon (p.134). The
premier multilateral institution, the World Bank, now advances Faith and
Development and Knowledge Bank. Will the faithful learn to have faith in
the Bank? Or worse, will they be pressed into the awkward position of
having to choose between God and Mammon? Will the world know anything it
did not already know? The Bank may have chosen to work with religious
institutions because the State and its institutions are deemed inert and
corrupt. After all, goes the argument, in a post-Cold War world,
weakening the State to strengthen private, non-government organizations
is a necessary good. Consequently, education, especially higher
education, is increasingly being privatized and internationalized.
The idea of a Knowledge Bank hints at the rise of a class of experts
and points to a trend towards institutional and cultural homogeneity
and, in the process, to the sidelining of local expertise (Samoff and
Stromquist, 2001). Education has become a consumer item. Grants,
endowments, and current politics continue to influence the direction of
research programs, course restructuring, library subscriptions, and the
like in institutions of learning. Students are continuously challenged
by fluid value systems. Though conflict could be conducive to learning
and development, neglecting “core values” to adapt to a fluid
environment could also undermine the practice of locality and community
cohesion (Chapter 13).
International aid to education is increasingly tied to the
proposition that efficient use of resources requires that curricular
design be labor-market sensitive (see also Chapter 7). That is, in a
world of limited resources, issues of cultural and environmental studies
will see fewer days in the classroom. Certainly, that is not the best
way to raise an engaged and informed citizenry; education, in the final
analysis, should lead one to become a responsible user and preserver of
common and scarce resources.
The history of poverty
With rapid changes in our world, it seems little has changed. In the
sixties, the global agenda was "poverty eradication." Later, it was
subtly toned down and replaced by "poverty reduction." The poor are
still with us—and more of them. Once again, we have come full circle to
Making Poverty History (see Chapter 14). That poverty should receive
greater attention is not the issue here. The reality and causes of
poverty have always been known. On the other hand, aid disbursements are
often excused on the premise that corrupt local officials siphon off
some and the rest is suspended for lack of absorptive capacity. That's
only half the story. According to ActionAid and the World Bank,
consultants and donor businesses absorb 40-60 percent of global aid
budget. Is the current occupation with global poverty simply the new
face of the "Lords of Poverty" (Hancock, 1989)? Have we learned much in
terms of caring for our "neighbor" and the environment? Has
globalization delivered an improved quality of life? Do communities now
have greater say in matters meaningful to them? Why is aid not working
as it should?
Perhaps it is time to revisit Schumacher's “meta-economic” values of
“smallness within bigness” and the importance of regional development
and local production to satisfy local needs. Indeed, there will be
disagreements on how we respond to these queries. But consider the
following: global poverty is real, deep and extensive; wars, pollution
and diseases are reducing the quality of life for the majority world.
For those who live on less than a dollar a day, chopping down a tree to
build fire is of immediate relevance than hugging it. Local and
international authorities routinely break their promises; or if they
kept, it is often for reasons that advanced the collusion of local elite
and foreign interests. The few enjoy a great harvest of borderless
labor, non-taxation and a fat bottom-line. We can go on.
To catch up or not to catch up
The Chinese and the Indians are modernizing at a breakneck speed.
With a third of global populations within their borders, it is not
difficult to imagine the costs to the environment consequent to their
chosen path to production and consumption. Energy security is becoming
the burning issue of the day. Whole communities are being displaced in
the search for energy sources. The UN Security Council could not put
sanctions on the Sudan over Darfur because China has a veto power and a
significant oil interests in the Sudan. Will Africa be seeing the
re-emergence of coups d'état, and despots to keep “law and order” for
the energy-thirsty?
China is building the world's largest hydroelectric dam on the
Yangtze River and 13 more over the pristine Nu River. With over 4,300
dams in place, India has one of the world's largest dam construction
projects. Russia's oil pipeline will soon be running to a Pacific
outlet. Environmental concerns over such grand projects are simply taken
as petty posturing and hypocritical. The problem is further compounded
by the refusal of industrialized nations to ratify and duly implement
international agreements. The new giants are poised to repeat past
economic blunders. Perhaps a significant aspect of the book under review
is that it will generate lively debates that could result in greater
mutual trust and understanding. The fact that the UN held World Summit
on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002 and declared 2005 a
Decade of Education for Sustainable Development only adds to the
relevance of the book and the companion volume, Key Issues in
Sustainable Development and Learning: a critical review [2004,
London; New York: RoutledgFalmer].
Development and learning
Formal and informal learning is at the heart of sustainable
development. “To be environmentally literate…is to read and write the
world… to be taught how to learn and how to be critical” (pp.29, xiv).
These statements touch upon several issues. First, as expounded by
Schumacher and now affirmed by Scott and Gough, market-driven education
is not always conducive to a critical orientation of what is just and
“meta-economic.” Second, the majority world is distinguished by
dislocation and rampant illiteracy. The illiteracy is not only in the
three R's but also in democratic processes and institutions. Hence, an
Amazonian or Ethiopian may well be a fluent "reader and writer" of the
environment without having much influence on local or global
policy-making. Indeed, this situation harkens to failures of the present
past; policies flourish to the extent that they are inclusive and
represent stakeholder interests. Despite the arguments for diffusion and
globalization, power is still concentrated at the top and in few
mega-cities of the developed and developing world (Sassen, 1998). What
must happen for de-concentration to flourish trans-nationally?
Moreover, the political elite in those countries may have all the
necessary training but lack the will to be inclusive or simply fall for
the seduction of power and money to sustain their short-term interests.
Third, institutional life-long learning may produce negative
socio-ecological results in different contexts. For example,
Chevron-Texaco or Shell Oil may establish sustainability in its overall
domestic business strategy (p.3). Internationally, however,
Chevron-Texaco had to be "shamed" by Nigerian village women into making
environmentally-friendly policy concessions; Shell Oil's activities have
been a source of ethnic and economic conflicts; Bechtel in Bolivia had
to bow to the wrath of the Cochabamba desert people when it attempted to
marketize God's water. Respecting local input and ownership is a matter
that cannot be left to any one agency. Finally, there is a culture of
consumption that needs to be steered in the direction of responsible
pleasure. Eco-tourism often divorces Nature from people and their
communities; Bali, Cancun, Mombassa remain the pleasure backyards of the
developed world, even though they generate badly needed revenues.
Learning to be sensitive
That is why some tourist destinations following the Tsunami disaster
carried on their operation without much thought or sensitivity. By the
same token, wrong government policies pit local communities against each
other and the immediate ecology. The result is unsustainable livelihood,
conflict and massive rural-urban migration. The fact that the 2004 Nobel
Prize for Peace was awarded to the Kenyan environmentalist, Dr. Wangari
Mathai, speaks volumes in recognizing the importance of women in
development, the interconnectedness of the socio-ecological world to
shape economic and social attitudes, and the effectiveness of civil
societies to build, define, and protect their stakeholder roles.
In other cases, the same governments that are entrusted with
protecting the rights and welfare of their citizens have been known to
withhold critical information. In Thailand, for example, the Tsunami
death toll could have been minimized (even averted) and scarce global
funds allocated for other purposes had the responsible government
officials shown care for the people over the booming tourist
business.
Conclusion
Sustainable Development and Learning superbly frames the
salient features of sustainability, development, and pedagogy and the
importance of engaging stakeholders. The challenge now is finding an
acceptable resolution to issues raging between the political and the
scientific community, within the community of environmental activists,
and between those who understand sustainability as a present but also a
long-term proposition and those who trust in human ingenuity to find
alternatives and thus prefer profit now (Chapter 12). For the poor
majority, organizing and networking with global allies has been found to
be working. In the end, not acknowledging that we share the world and
its resources only hastens our undoing. As Hamm and Muttagi (1998)
stated, sustainability demands that we constantly adapt and organize in
order to strike a balance that will ensure long-term benefits.
References
The Economist. (June 30, 2005). Saving Africa, the
conservative way. Economist.com
Hamm, B and Muttagi, P.K. (1998). Sustainable development and the
future of cities. London: Intermediate Technology Publications.
Hancock, Graham. (1989). Lords of poverty: the power, prestige,
and corruption of international aid business. New York: Atlantic
Monthly Press.
Marshall, Katherine and Keough, Lucy. (Eds.) (2004). Mind, heart,
and soul in the fight against poverty. Washington, D.C.: The World
Bank.
The Nation. (December 31, 2004). What if an early warning had
been given? http://www.nationmultimedia.com
The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.
(December 19, 2002).
http://people-press.org/reports/display.php3?ReportID=167
Sachs, Jeffrey. (2005). The end of poverty: economic
possibilities for our time. New York: The Penguin Press.
Samoff, Joel, Stromquist, N.P. (2001). Managing knowledge and storing
wisdom? New forms of foreign aid? Development and Change 32(4),
631-656(26).
Sassen, Saskia. (1998). Globalization and its discontents. New
York: New Press.
Schumacher, E.F. (1973). Small is beautiful: economics as if
people mattered. New York: Harper & Row.
Sider, Ronald. (1977). Rich Christians in an age of hunger.
Downers Grove, Ill: Intervarsity Press.
Silverstein, Ken. (Jan 20, 2003). Oil boom enriches African ruler.
Global Policy Forum.
http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/natres/oil/2003/0122gui.htm
About the Reviewer
Mitiku Adisu was for many years involved in youth
training and development in Ethiopia. He has a doctorate in Higher
Education Leadership and Policy from Peabody College of Vanderbilt
University. Email: mitiku_adisu@hotmail.com.
Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who
grants right of first publication to the Education Review.
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