Teaching the course on 'sustainable development'

Int. J. Environment and Sustainable Development, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2005

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Teaching the course on ‘sustainable development’ within the ‘ecology and nature management’ profile of training Yury L. Mazurov and Vladimir S. Tikunov* Geographical Faculty, M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, Vorob’ievi Gori, Moscow 119992, Russia E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected] *Corresponding author Abstract: The history of man-nature interactions shows that, the more advanced the human culture, the better the relations with the environment. With the understanding that the culture of the society is, first and foremost, maintained by the educational institutions, one may consider any real education to be an input to sustainable development. And vice versa: practically all failures in social development stem from those in education and training of the people. At present there is no question of whether the ideology of sustainable development should be taught or not. Of course, it should be taught, but with particular responsibility and at the high professional level. With due account to the best home and foreign experience. And basing on the lessons of the past. “Education is of critical importance for sustainable development” – as time goes on these words from the Agenda 21 become a historic statement rather than political declaration. The above-discussed model of teaching about sustainable development has been elaborated for the ecology and nature management academic profile. However, with certain corrections it could be recommended for other spheres of education and training too. Keywords: teaching sustainable management; education.

development;

ecology

and

nature

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Mazurov, Y.L. and Tikunov, V.S. (2005) ‘Teaching the course on ‘sustainable development’ within the ‘ecology and nature management’ profile of training’, Int. J. Environment and Sustainable Development, Vol. 4, No. 1, pp.67–77. Biographical notes: Associate Professor Yury L. Mazurov teaches environmental management at the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, in Russia. Vladimir S. Tikunov is a Professor and Head of Laboratory on Sustainable Development of Territories at the M.V. Lomonosov Moscow State University, in Russia.

Copyright © 2005 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

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Y.L. Mazurov and V.S. Tikunov

Introduction

Triumphant spreading of the ideas of sustainable development suggested in the 1987 Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Brundtland Commission) [1] and adopted by the international community as a universal model at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro [2] has become an incontestable fact in the recent history of human civilisation. Its adoption, as such, has meant that it would be necessary to revise all spheres of life of modern society, and this need has been embodied in the main document of the Rio Summit, i.e. Agenda 21 [3]. It is particularly important that the above-mentioned document lists radical changes of the education system among the indispensable conditions of transition to sustainable development. It seems that humanity has finally realised that under the present-day challenges no other means is so efficient for the shift towards a principally new ethic of man-environment relations than the development of environmental culture through the environmental education. People are to realise that, in the future, there would be no alternative to voluntary and considerable limitation of the freedom of economic activities in the biosphere, which is so vulnerable to anthropogenic impacts. All things, even details, are and should be important for the provision of social sustainability. Economic, financial, technological, legal, political, international and other mechanisms are all essential and indispensable for this process. But the system of education is a basic element in relation to them. The case in point is conceptually an adoption of a global innovative education project providing for the ensured survival of humankind or, at least, greater chance for its survival at the current stage of existence characterised by increased environmental risk resulting from the natural parameters of the biosphere [4]. During the last decade many countries of the world have achieved much success in the realisation of this project. Among them are countries of Europe and Northern America, as well as Japan, which demonstrated their serious attitude to the problem by providing strong organisational and financial support for the education for sustainable development. Despite the lack of adequate financing for education, sustainable development has received considerable attention in Russia too. The Concept of transition of the Russian Federation to sustainable development, which is the principal legal document of this country in the sphere under discussion, has included “the formation of efficient system for dissemination of the ideas of sustainable development and the organisation of appropriate system of education” into “the main lines of transition of Russia to the sustainable development” (cited from Iljinsky [5, pp.494, 495]). The national system of higher education has appeared to be best prepared for responding to the new challenge because during the last few decades it was actively promoting the environmental education which is closely related to the education for the sustainable development in its principal ideas [6–8]. This has the effect of introducing the ideas of sustainable development into a number of environmental, economic and social disciplines. Without any instructions from ‘above’ pioneering textbooks on sustainable development have been prepared; specialised departments and other teaching units were organised in higher schools. The problem of training specialists in the sphere of sustainable development is actively discussed.

Teaching the course on ‘sustainable development’

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Under these circumstances the teaching of a special discipline on sustainable development at higher schools of this country has become an urgent challenge. The discussions among professionals [9] have shown that the problem of teaching the ideas of the sustainable development goes far beyond the curricula of particular specialisations of training. Therefore it is necessary to discuss both conceptual and organisational aspects of introducing the teaching course in sustainable development into the Ecology and Nature Management profile of training, which seems to be the most closely related to sustainable development issues.

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Scientific background of the course

Formulation of the scientific basis of any academic course clearly reveals its target orientation. From this point of view we have analysed several programmes of academic courses in sustainable development, such as ‘The Problems of Sustainable Development’, ‘Sustainable Development of Territories’, etc., as well as pioneering textbooks published for these courses [10–12, etc.]. Target orientation of the programmes under discussion could be fairly judged from the names of their main structural blocks. In the first programme these are as follows: society and the environment; concept of sustainable development; biosphere, its evolution and resistance; ecosystems of the earth; humans as a component of the biosphere; demographic issues; development and natural resources; anthropogenic impact on the environment; climate changes; globalisation and sustainable development; and models of development. Names of the blocks of the second programme are as follows: conceptual basics of sustainable development (theories of global development, sustainable development of Russia and globalisation, global and regional issues of geoecology, national wealth and sustainable development, political geographical and geopolitical issues, and geoinformational and cartographic support of sustainable development); spiritual cultural and historical basics of the sustainable development (ethnocultural basics, natural and cultural heritage, and historical prerequisites of sustainable development); social demographic prerequisites of sustainable development (sustainable development of society, social security of population and risk management, and social health and sustainable development), economic mechanisms of sustainable development (economic mechanisms of transition to the sustainable development, and production resources of sustainable development); natural resource potential and environmental component of the sustainable development (natural resource potential, landscape environmental basics of sustainable development, and prior ecotoxicants. biodiversity); management and sustainable development (sustainable development and the social management issues, models of sustainable management of a region, territorial organisation of nature management, and prospects of the sustainable development in Russia). The majority of available programmes could be classified into two dominant types, which are probably to be named reminiscent and global-problem types. The first of the above-mentioned types includes the programmes, which combine particular themes from a large number of other, mainly environmentally-oriented academic courses to discuss them under the ideology of sustainable development (the first example). The second one embraces the programmes which are somehow akin to the discipline ‘Global issues of

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mankind’ rather popular at a time (the second example). Both approaches could exist with all their merits and demerits. It is worth noting that teaching of such disciplines requires the comprehensive training of teachers who need really encyclopaedic knowledge, and this causes a lot of related problems. The main advantage of both programmes is that they really exist as a result of the efforts of professionals in the sphere of higher education. They could be characterised using Gegel’s definition “Everything that exists is rational”. It can be predicted with certainty that these programmes, and similar ones, would be widely used to learn the ideology of sustainable development. And there can be no doubt that their role in this process would be quite positive. However, such an approach to the teaching of sustainable development, which is socially-oriented in its very nature, is open to practically unavoidable risk of its transformation into a course which could be named something like ‘The Basics of Scientific Capitalism (Neocapitalism, or Post-Capitalism)’. If so it could easily follow the fate of ‘The Scientific Communism’ course, which was then really beneficial in its own way, but too formal and emasculated by late-Soviet officials. As a third type of programmes the ‘problem-professional’ model of teaching sustainable development in higher schools could probably be suggested. This model is based on two interrelated incentives. The first of them is that at present when mankind balances on the verge of survival neither sciences nor applied activities of humans could stay apart from the elaboration of practical suggestions of how to find the way out of this deadlock of the civilisation and turn to the ideas of sustainable development. The second one is that considering sustainable development as a complex social and environmental optimisation of all activities in the society is it safe to say that every science could in some way contribute to the ideology and practice of sustainable development, either working out the most general theories or providing recommendations for the practice? Basing on the above let us formulate the principal idea of the suggested model as professionally the most complete interpretation of a role of particular specialisation, or group of specialisations, in tackling the problems of the sustainable development of individual countries and mankind as a whole. It could be expected that the proposed course would focus on the inventory and critical assessment of achievements within this or that branch of knowledge and apply now-popular gap-analysis to find out the most efficient ways to overcome the problems on the way to the sustainable development. It is rather easy to imagine the general composition and structure of such courses, including: •

theoretical achievements of a science (scientific line) in tackling the problems of transition of the society to the sustainable development

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methodological base of a science and its adequacy to the present-day challenges

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applied and practical results achieved by a science in tackling the urgent problems of social development and evolution of the human civilisation as a whole

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critical assessment of achievements of a science, its contribution to the global mechanism of overcoming the social and environmental crises and the analysis of the future development problems

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finding the role of a science in tackling the future problems of sustainable development and identifying the most urgent theoretical and applied tasks of a science.


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It is easy to understand that there is no discipline with such contents within the ecology and nature management profile, and within other profiles of training too, as far as we know from the relevant publications. However, such discipline is obviously necessary both for the students and for the science itself, because it makes it logically possible to point out the lines of fundamental and applied knowledge development which are the most equal to the present-day challenges. Moreover, not in line with something else, which is possible in other disciplines, but as the main subject of a special teaching course; neither in the beginning, nor in the middle of the training process, but at its final stage after learning all aspects of the future specialisation. In our opinion, the main problem of teaching the so-called sustainable development is the lack of a one-to-one definition of its subject sphere. Traditionally, higher schools all over the world teach the academic disciplines which correlate with the content of these or those fundamental and applied branches of science. The courses in physics, chemistry and biology teach the laws of nature; those in history, sociology and economy are concerned with the laws guiding the evolution of society and its institutions; geographical courses explain the spatial organisation of nature and social living. The courses in nature management present fundamental and methodological issues of the organisation of optimal interactions between the society and the environment. The courses in cartography deal with symbolic representation of natural and social phenomena and their study through maps. The same is typical for practically all higher school disciplines. The content of each particular sphere of human activities dictates the content of the corresponding academic discipline and its subject of study. Let us take this standpoint to describe the subject of a course in sustainable development. According to the most general concepts, i.e. definition of the notion in [1], the Rio Declaration, the Agenda 21 and so on, the ideology of sustainable development includes a set of general scientific imperatives of environmental and social orientation based on two principles, namely introducing the ecological ideas in the life of the society and the socialisation of the nature. And here we meet the first problem of teaching the sustainable development, because the above-mentioned imperatives are already the subject of study within existing curricula of a number of environmental and social disciplines. This makes it rather natural to assume the secondary character of sustainable development courses in relation to traditional environmental, social and social-environmental disciplines. The results of a long discussion on the problems of the sustainable development suggest that the subject of this sphere of study and teaching is a specific technology for establishing and maintaining the environmental and social-environmental optimum. It is the second peculiarity of teaching the sustainable development which allows wide application of experience accumulated in this country in the sphere of the environmental education. It is, however, unreasonable to equalise environmental education and education for the sustainable development, which is rather common, both explicitly and implicitly [13]. The former is aimed at the development of the basics of general and professional environmental culture, while the aim of the latter is to get the skills of identification the environmental limitations of economic development and adaptation of the society to these limitations [4]. Therefore, these branches of education, rather similar in their essence, are principally different as far as their subject sphere is concerned. This sphere is quite clear for the environmental education embracing the interrelations between the organisms and the environment. However, it is still disputable for the education for the sustainable

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development. That’s why while suggesting the content and the structure of the education for the sustainable development we cannot do without the general description of what should be taught within this line of education.

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Principal content

There are two main aspects of teaching the problems of sustainable development, i.e. the content of education (the subject of teaching, the ideology of education, etc.) and its forms. It is clear that the latter follows from the former, which could be clearly and simply described as follows: the sustainable development is the introduction of ecological ideas in the life of the society and the socialisation of the nature. The first principle is commonly understood as the introduction of environmental culture into production and every-day life, as well as into all spheres of social living. The above-stated principle means that the development is only possible in the forms and to the extent, which are dictated by the existing environmental limitations stemming from the natural parameters of the environment. In the most general way of saying, at this planet the humans could be as free in their behaviour, including their economic activities, as Nature allows them to be. The above principles form a summary of the environmental imperative to the society, a kind of an ever-lasting order to the mankind, which have become topical in the epoch of industrialisation and urbanisation. In the end of the 20th century, after publication of a number of bestsellers, such as Before the Nature Dies by J. Dorst, The Closing Circle by B. Commoner, Silent Spring by R. Carson and other, the mankind realised the need to integrate environmental approach into all spheres of life and adopted an environmental imperative in the form of the sustainable development concept set forth in the documents of the UN Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. The most surprising fact is that the idea of introducing the environmental concepts into the life of society is more understandable at the East than at the West. Moreover, the environmental imperative is known to be an indispensable element of many traditional cultures of the East, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. As far as Russia – a country between the East and the West – is concerned, the original ideology of sustainable development was suggested there far in advance of its western analogue. We have already pointed out that the Western concept of sustainable development and the Russian concept of nature management (which became both theory and practice of managing the interactions between nature and society during the 60s of the past century) are rather close in their ideology and content [9]. The ideology of sustainable development in fact follows the well-known approaches that unfortunately have not been implemented in full scope in this country. That is why it appears to be quite acceptable for Russian traditions of nature management and traditional national mentality. An important point is that the concept of nature management itself was not a total innovation of its authors, namely D.L. Armand, Yu.K. Yefremov, V.A. Anuchin, P.G. Oldak, N.F. Reimers and others, but followed the classic ideas of socialisation of the nature inherent in the Russian scientific heritage from M.V. Lomonosov to V.I. Vernadsky and complying with traditions of the environmental culture of the peoples of Russia. This fact would inevitably contribute to the strengthening of positions of the sustainable development ideology in this country.


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It is reasonable that the acceptance of the need to introduce environmental ideas into the life of society has resulted in a boom of environmental education in Russia. While our achievements in the sphere of reducing the environmental risks are still minor we are among the world’s leaders as far as the development of the environmental education is concerned. This would support the progress of the education for the sustainable development, which is rather close to the former in its content. Thus, in the present-day world practically no one casts doubt on the necessity to adapt the society to its environment. The question is of the strategy and practical activities aimed at the realisation of final targets. Another important question is the “rate of movement” – it is vital to manage the situation “before the Nature dies”. The current practice of nature management gives a good reason to regard socialisation of nature and environmentalisation of society as two interdependent processes. The latter is a kind of obverse, while the former is really a reverse with all resulting consequences. The idea of the socialisation of nature, as old as the world itself, is based on the principle of equal access to the natural wealth for all inhabitants of the planet. It is known that the principle is realised in traditional religions of many aboriginal peoples. There is reason to think that it is this principle that for centuries and even millennia provides for environmental and social stability of these ethnoses. Thus the thorough analysis of their experience could be very useful. It is also well-known that the cultures of many ethnoses consider the Earth and everything related to it to be a result of work of a higher being and thus its absolute and indisputable property. According to these traditional views, people are only users of this wealth, not its owners. It is pertinent to note here that during the most part of the history of this country land was also in the community and not private ownership. Such interpretations are based on quite a logical assumption that private property should include only things produced by people themselves. If not, it is common, public property and its appropriation is amoral by definition. Such is the ideal case. It is so in the humanistic utopia by T. Campanella and T. More, in the ideas of Marxism and in the models of real socialism of the 20th century. But in the overwhelming majority of the actual social practices land and other natural wealth, with minor exceptions of air, for example, are the subjects of private ownership which hardly get on with abstract ideas of equity, in this context the environmental equity. The exceptions to this rule, such as the distribution of mineral resources, to be more exact the benefits of their utilisation, in the interests of all people in Norway, Canada or the Gulf countries, deals with ‘internal’ equity only and do not contribute to elimination of inequity suffered by the population of the countries poor in income-bearing natural resources. Under these circumstances the growing number of experts all over the world become aware that it is this inequity that promotes the conservation and even the growth of global instability, as it was many times spoken out, particularly at the recent World Summit in Johannesburg. It is obvious that the inequity is based on the contradiction between the public nature of natural wealth and the private forms of its appropriation, the contradiction which remains intractable despite a great deal of effort by the present-day management. Preservation of the current situation lacks both social and environmental prospects, as it was many times demonstrated and theoretically proved by politically not engaged world experts. Let us recall, for example, a profound monograph on Socialisation of Nature by well-known Western analyst F. Saint-Marc translated into Russian in 1977.

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Since then Western experts have suggested a lot of conceptual solutions of this contradiction. Many of them propose the idea of quotas on the finite natural resources and the mechanisms of their socially oriented redistribution. The concept of global quotation of the so-called ‘environmental space’, i.e. the integral resource of the natural environment, is worth mentioning in particular. It was described in ‘The Sustainable Netherlands’ project of the Dutch ‘Friends of the Earth’ national organisation. It is significant that even in the country with advanced environmental policies the radical ideas of restructuring the global environmental and attendant economic order do not receive support among the authorities and the Establishment. The apparent unwillingness of political and financial authorities in the most economically developed countries of the world to accept the present-day environmental realities is especially paradoxical as they in fact have to recognise the failure of the market as a social institute to resolve the challenges of development at the contact line between the environment and the economy. In theory and in practice this phenomenon has received a widely accepted name of ‘market failures’ and the scientific validity of this notion is not even attempted to be disputed. The alternative to the absolute power of the market is well known and unavoidable in the future. It is strict centralised management of quantitatively and qualitatively decreasing natural wealth in the interests of all, not the richest ones. But the global Establishment is slow to recognise the necessity and the inevitability of the socialisation of nature. It is, however, quite reasonable and even logical in its own way. Otherwise the price for natural resources would be much higher than today. Natural wealth, thus far free of charge for businessmen (but not for people and the society as a whole), such as the assimilation potential of the natural environment, for example, would also have to be paid for. All this means the loss of enormous profits with all the resulting consequences. Unfortunately when the profits are under discussion the arguments of social equity, reason and even common sense are quite ineffective. We have to admit that the environmentally bankrupt ‘business as usual’ is safely guarded by private-ownership instincts and the exceptions like Aurelio Peccei only prove this rule. What is then to be done in such a stalemate situation? In our opinion, the logic pattern could be as follows. If the business is not ready for the socialisation of nature which is, let us recall, vitally important for the social stability, it should be forced to accept it. Who can do it without undermining the democratic basis of the modern society? It is, undoubtedly, the public itself provided that the people adequately recognise the vital necessity of the socialisation of nature. We think that at present the progress in this sphere, as well as in the introduction of environmental ideas in the life of society, is first and foremost possible by means of education and training.

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Organisational aspects

While suggesting a new course in sustainable development we need to explain some organisational aspects of its introduction into the higher school curricula. If it is introduced for the first time it would be necessary to settle the question of its position in the curricula and the time requirements of the course. With the suggested professional-problem model of the course in sustainable development in mind and basing


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upon the above-described characteristics of its content there is no question that the course should be included into the graduate-level curricula. The question of time requirements is more complicated, with a minimum of 32 hours and possibility of 1.5–2 times extension. It is clear that there is no spare time in the existing curricula, therefore some restructuring would be necessary. In this connection it seems useful to look more closely at the courses which are quite common for the last year of training, such as Theoretical Problems of Nature Management, Theoretical Problems of Ecology, Theoretical Problems of Landscape Science, etc. These important courses, however sometimes secondary in their essence, are a kind of ‘conclusions’ of the special training as related to the compulsory courses of Introduction to Specialisation in the beginning of training. We suggest their updating and transformation into the professional courses in sustainable development. Their possible names could be as follows: Sustainable Development and Nature Management; Sustainable Development and Ecology; Sustainable Development and Landscape Studies; Sustainable Development of Territories (Regions), etc. Due to the integration of traditional, i.e. theoretical problems of particular science, and innovative, i.e. ideology of sustainable development, approaches this would provide the above-mentioned and similar courses with a well-defined ‘ideological core’ which identify the social demand for particular line of studies, as well as its current importance. The suggested professional course in sustainable development is to fill a highly important place in the curricula of appropriate specialisations. At the experimental stage of its introduction to the curricula it could be placed among the disciplines of the regional component or among the optional ones. Eventually it should become a discipline of the federal component. To those who would elaborate this new academic discipline we could recommend the following principles of its structuring [14]: •

Sociocentric character: view of the sustainable development as a potential of a social structure, i.e. ethnos, people, society or state, for development with due adaptation to the environmental conditions.

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Integrity: systematically combined teaching of culturological, social, economic, geographical, environmental and other courses.

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Fundamental character: basing on fundamental knowledge about society and nature.

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Historicity: teaching all disciplines with due account to the evolution of traditions, cultural and natural heritage, etc.

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Multi-level character: education for sustainable development at all hierarchical levels of the education system.

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Module structure: possibility to combine individual blocks into a teaching course.

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Harmonisation: logically ordered sequence of disciplines with gradual expansion of material and deepening of the knowledge.

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Modernisation: controlling the quality and updating teaching materials, permanent revision of education programmes, actualisation of disciplines as a result of theory development and emergence of new paradigms.

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Prognostic character: orientation to the future, forecasting the future development of education, including a forestall one.

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Technological character: application of information technologies and technical achievements.

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Practical orientation: response to social demands with account to local, regional and national peculiarities.

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International character: compliance with international programmes.

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Conclusions

The principal novelty of the suggested model is the application of a powerful humanistic potential of the ideology of sustainable development through synthesising the professional skills and highly attractive social ideas. It is well known that the Soviet school ‘produced’ both young specialists and the ‘builders of a new society’. The process of training was filled with a deep social sense, so important for the youth, and it was a reason for the success of the Soviet education process recognised all over the world. This experience could be useful under new historic conditions too. The course in sustainable development is aimed at the training of the ‘builders of a new society’ – that of sustainable development. The well-defined ideological and social component of the courses in sustainable development imposes particular demands on the teachers who need to combine both teaching skills in their professional sphere and the functions of a propagandist or even an advocate of the new social-environmental ethics. Such combination of professional functions is usually typical of the leaders of teaching teams, namely rectors of higher schools, deans of faculties and heads of departments. It is they, as well as other leading researchers and teachers authorised by them and maybe invited from other institutions, who should become the main teachers of the suggested course. This is their mission, their principal responsibility for the training of specialists, for the future of their branches of knowledge and for the future of this country. The suggested discipline could have both formal (exam or test) and informal testing of the results of training. It is strongly recommended to integrate sustainable development ideas into the degree theses and projects of the graduates. This is practicable in almost all works of this kind and would provide not only for the necessary socialisation and environmentalisation of students’ research work, but also intensify the accumulation of new fundamental and applied knowledge for the sustainable development of society.

References 1 2 3

Our Common Future (1989) Report of the World Commission on the Environment and Development, Russian Translation, – M., Progress (in Russian). Action Plan, Agenda 21 and Other Documents of the Rio de Janeiro Conference (1993) Compiled by Kiting, M., Centre ‘For Our Common Future’, Geneva (in Russian). Agenda 21 (1992) UN Conference on Environment and Development, Rio de Janeiro, NY, UN (in Russian).

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Mazurov, Yu.L. (2003) ‘Education in the sphere of sustainable development: content and macrostructure’ Vestnik Mosk. un-ta. Ser. 5. Geogr., No. 4, pp.3–9 (in Russian). Iljinsky, I.M. (2002) Revolution in the education. – M., Izd-vo Mosk. gumanit.-sotsialn. Akademii (in Russian). Kruzhalin, V.I. and Mazurov, Yu.L. (2002) ‘Education and the environmental culture’, Vyssheye obrazovaniye segodnya, No. 12, pp.34–40 (in Russian). Tarasova, N.P. (2002) ‘Education for the sustainable development at higher schools’, on the way towards the sustainable development, No. 20, pp.20, 21 (in Russian). Filho, W.L. (2002) ‘Towards a closer integration of environmental education and industrial ecology’, Int. J. Environment and Sustainable Development, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.20–31. Mazurov, Yu.L. (2003) ‘Education for the sustainable development: the first all-Russian meeting and its results’, Prirodnoresursnye vedomosti, No. 3, January, p.5 (in Russian). Tikunov, V.S. (2002) ‘Atlas information system ‘sustainable development of Russia’, Vestnik Mosk. un-ta. Ser. 5. Geogr., No. 5, pp.21–31 (in Russian). Introduction to the theory of sustainable development (2002) Course of Lectures, – M., STUPENI (in Russian). Danilov-Danielyan, V.I. and Losev, K.S. (2000) Environmental challenge and sustainable development, – M., Progress-traditsiya (in Russian). Education for the sustainable development (2002) Interview with N.N.Marfenin, On the way towards the sustainable development, No. 20, pp.18, 19 (in Russian). Tikunov, V.S. (2002) Teaching Sustainable Development at the Chernomorsky Institute of the Moscow State University – Planet, December, pp.27, 28.