In Praise of Environmental Education - SAGE Journals

Policy Futures in Education, Volume 3, Number 3, 2005

In Praise of Environmental Education PABLO ÁNGEL MEIRA CARTEA University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain

ABSTRACT Environmental education (EE) is going through a critical stage. The wide acceptance of education for sustainable development (ESD) as a reference guiding the educational response to the environmental crisis has strengthened the critical views of EE. This article tries to refute the arguments put forward by those who criticize EE and advocate its ‘substitution’ by ESD. The article points out the theoretical weaknesses and the political and ideological bias of the notion of ‘sustainable development and sets these against the rich historical development of EE. In this approach, ESD is shown to offer no original responses to the challenges of the environmental crisis and of development. The author admits that ESD may be one of the options in the multi-paradigmatic essence attributed to EE, but believes that other interpretations of educational action are coherent with a view of society which is equally sustainable, but which is at the same time oriented towards the attainment of justice and equity today and in the future of mankind.

La civilización consiste en dar a una cosa un nombre que no le corresponde y después soñar con el resultado. Y realmente el nombre falso y el sueño verdadero crean una nueva realidad. (Fernando Pessoa, 2002, p. 82) (Civilization consists of giving something a name that does not belong to it and afterwards dreaming of the result. And really, the false name and the real dream create a new reality). (Fernando Pessoa, 2002, p. 82) Introduction An ancient Chinese proverb says: ‘May you live in interesting times!’ Written in this way, it seems to wish good luck, but really it was used as a subtle curse. It is true that ‘interesting times’ tend to coincide with historic moments of upheaval and crisis, with stages in the personal or collective development in which the established structures and conventions are questioned, and in which it is necessary to devise new alternatives, which all those involved do not always understand or agree on. I sincerely believe that environmental education (EE) is experiencing one of those ‘times’, even though a large part or the majority of the ‘practising community’ is unaware of it. As with all critical times, anxiety coexists with opportunities for reflection and, perhaps, for improvement, which arise from the necessity to explore possible alternatives. On the one hand, we are in a phase of certain unease in which the very existence of EE is being questioned up to the point (and I do not know if this comes from the field of theoretical and methodological deliberation or from the marketing of ideas laboratories) that it appears to be that type of market which is so closely related to the financial markets that have a new name: education for sustainable development (ESD). This is a name and a ‘focus’ that is being driven, adopted and promoted by different institutional platforms, including the United Nations (UN) system through such organisms as the Economic and Social Council, UNESCO and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), amongst others, and that takes the place of an EE that is deemed to be reductionist, anachronistic and inefficient in the face

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In Praise of Environmental Education of the challenges set by economic globalism and the irruption of a supposed ‘knowledgeable society’. On the other hand, this time of crisis and deconstruction (or ‘destruction’) in the field of EE offers a unique opportunity to reflect on its purpose and nature, on the meaning or meanings that its identification as the means of changing a reality that it considers socially and ecologically unsustainable has, and on the plural connections of theoretical, ideological and methodological approaches that have been formed in its 30-year history. This ‘interesting time’ could be taken advantage of, in a positive sense, in order to review the course that has led us from an embryonic form of EE in the late 1970s up to the present, and, above all, to meditate on and debate with a certain critical spirit its identity and the horizons that are opening up (and closing) at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Maybe what has been presented as transcendental ‘progress’ in the educational treatment of the environmental crisis, ESD, is just ‘one’ of the possible approaches, models and currents – using the terminology of Lucie Sauvé (2004, p. 170) – that have been coexisting and competing in the development of EE. In fact, using a fairly liberal extrapolation of the paradigm concept introduced by Kuhn in the philosophy of science, one could assert that EE is a ‘multi-paradigmatic’ discipline (Meira, 1991): un ámbito de pensamiento y acción en el que predomina la heterogeneidad y el debate; la diversidad de paradigmas teóricos, de estrategias de actuación, de sectores y disciplinas implicadas, de practicantes y de escenarios. (García, 2004, p. 12)[1] Opening this debate now, when we have just entered into the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005-14), lead by UNESCO, might seem to be swimming against the tide and a useless task, but I wish to call on another old proverb to justify my audacity: ‘Only dead fish don’t swim against the current’. With this, I do not mean to say that those enthusiastic promoters of ESD are ‘dead’. I do not wish to insinuate that they are wrong, either. All I wish to do is highlight that it is not certain that this is the best possible position or the only means of viable education in face of the complicated challenges arising from the environmental and development crises. I also wish to make it clear that it does not seem necessary or opportune to create a new ‘disciplinary field’ whose identity is defined, significantly, with a certain, essentially negative evaluation of what EE is and has been. I take, from the start, the following position: I can find no logical, epistemological, theoreticpedagogical, methodological or ideological reasons to accept without question that ESD is or could become something substantially different, ‘superior’ or more ‘efficient’ in answer to the socioenvironmental crisis than EE. Furthermore, the process that led, at a certain time (1987? 1992?), to the split of the itinerary from the educational response to the environmental crisis through two means, EE and ESD, is far from transparent and far from obeying those generalized debating and consensus dynamics in the very field of EE. We should not forget, to bring forward a fundamental argument, when and how the concept of sustainable development emerged, nor the difficulties in setting a univocal and operative definition of a construct that has ironically been defined as an oxymoron (a combination of two antithetic and contradictory concepts, that is to say: ‘a longhaired bald man’) or as some type of useful obsession, in as much as its meaning depends on who uses it and to what end. In this article I illustrate some of the arguments that support my praise of EE (which I hope will not become an ‘epitaph’). The thread I follow is historic, although this point of view has more ‘archaeology’ or ‘genealogy’ to it –in the sociological sense that Foucault attributes to these concepts – than a revision of past events, whose chronological order appears to provide it with a certain degree of logic in terms of historical progression. That is, this article attempts to provide more of a ‘genetic’ view than an exactly historical one; a point of view in which the discontinuities, ruptures and controversial factors in the social surroundings act in each moment on the way the field of EE is conceived and the practices that are associated with it. The result is, or rather, I hope it will be, a praise of EE that will serve to support its identity against the institutional strength of ESD. However, I am also aware of the weaknesses and different inconsistencies that affect EE, as well as of the fact that intense and conscientious collective work is needed in the fields of investigation, training, didactic development and theoretical reflection in order to give it greater epistemological and methodological solidity, and in the interests of a desirable political and social coherence. I am aware that this reflection could be interpreted as a

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Pablo Ángel Meira Cartea questioning of ESD, and to a certain extent, it is. And I take on the wise words of Bourdieu (1999, p. 158) when, meditating on the meaning of controversy in the field of social sciences, he says that: nadie puede forjar unas armas que puedan ser utilizadas contra sus adversarios sin exponerse a que sean esgrimidas inmediatamente contra él, por ellos o por otros, y así hasta el infinito.[2] The Weight of History It is unquestionable that since the Stockholm Conference in 1972, the UN system, especially UNESCO and UNEP, has played an important part in the institutional development of EE and the public recognition of its role in answer to the environment problem. Any user manual that reviews its beginnings and historical evolution cannot avoid referring to the Stockholm Declaration (1972), the Belgrade Charter (1975), the Tbilisi Conference (1977), the Moscow Congress (1987), Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 agreed at the Rio Summit (1992), etc. as milestones that have marked an apparent progression in the theoretical, methodological and social adjustment of EE over the course of three decades. It is curious and paradoxical to observe how the idea of ‘progress’, one of the obsessive beliefs in which advanced modernity has settled itself and which is identified in the ecologist discourse as an ideological, cultural and political myth created to legitimize unequal relationships between Man and the environment and between men (relationships that have tended to ignore the existence of biophysical constrictions of the capacity of the biosphere to receive an unlimited expansion of human activity), is also applied to the recreation of a historicist discourse on the evolution of EE itself. Almost always implicitly, although also explicitly, it is supposed that each of these international or regional events has meant an advance, a step forward, in the construction of EE and in its increasingly successful adjustments to the human necessities it hopes to satisfy. That is to say, it is assumed that the documents and proposals made at the Moscow Congress outdid those of Tbilisi; that the Rio Summit went beyond the doctrine that originated in Moscow; that at the Thessaloniki Conference (1997), what was outlined in Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 was perfected, and so on and so forth, up to the present, with initiatives such as the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, in which the recommendations from the Johannesburg Summit (2002) will be turned into more concrete initiatives. This linear and progressive reading ignores the conditions in which those documents were elaborated. Behind their elaboration there lie conflicts and interest and power games, many of which are completely alien to the dynamics of the EE field, and are unclear to the large majority of educators. This does not happen only with those documents or resolutions that mention EE, it is an extended feature in all areas, educational or otherwise, in which the UN system makes pronouncements or in which it operates. All of the cited documents were the result of arduous negotiations between governmental representatives, directly affected public and/or private plaintiffs, UN civil servants and external experts with different conceptions of EE or with conflicting corporate interests (for example, struggles between different UNESCO administrative divisions to ‘control’ EE). In them, the pressures the work of the UN suffers are expressed, from states jealous of their sovereignty and national interests to non-governmental organizations (economic, religious, multinational groups, etc.) that attempt to limit or influence its actions. Obviously, any discourse on what education in general, and EE in particular, should be is submitted to this type of tension in public confrontations and conflicts with other formations; there exists, however, an excessively marked and established tendency in the field of EE to accept the ‘UN discourse’ as the main doctrinal reference, quasi-natural, giving it properties of consensus and neutrality that, as with any proposal to represent and orientate reality (and here lies the educational reality), it does not and cannot have. In comparative terms, I do not think that other educational fields exist inside the so-called transversal ‘themes’ or ‘areas’ which are as conditioned as EE is by the decisions and directives that originate in the UN system. It can be said that this is one of the main structural traits of the configuration of this field.

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In Praise of Environmental Education The Sudden Emergence of an Education for Sustainable Development Along the same lines, the key question could be formed thus: why did EE, in a given moment, stop being the main disciplinary reference of the UN in the educational response to the environmental crisis to give way to a new discourse centred on ESD? We shall see how this process developed and, perhaps, we can formulate, at least partially, a reply to a very ambitious question. Although it passed, in general, unnoticed, Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 (MOPT, 1993), fruit of the Rio de Janeiro Earth Summit (1992), does not really talk about EE, rather it uses in its composition the denomination ESD. In the official text, there are only two literal mentions of EE, one to designate the Tbilisi Declaration and the other to call on UNESCO and UNEP’s international programmes of EE as relevant antecedents, reflecting the historicist and progressive reading I have condemned above. These references are made, moreover, in Section A of the chapter with the revealing title of ‘Reorientation of Education towards Sustainable Development’. This nuance did not go unnoticed by some, above all those educators most committed to the most radical – in the etymological sense of the word, not in the sense that is normally given to it – ecological line of thought and amongst those connected with the critical pedagogical movement in its different tendencies and approaches. It is significant that in the local document approved by the Global Forum, meeting in Rio de Janeiro at the same time as the official summit, the treaty on Environmental Education for Sustainable Societies and Global Responsibility does use the term EE, situating, however, the educational response in other political, ethical and pedagogical coordinates. It is sufficient to recollect the composition of the well-known Principle 4 of the treaty, in which it is stated that: ‘Environmental Education is not natural, but ideological. It is a political act, based on values for the transformation of society’ (MOPT, 1994, p. 31). Obviously, this sentence situates the EE discourse and practice at opposite ideological and strategic poles to Chapter 36 of Agenda 21, which is characterized – as with the document as a whole – by plain and aseptic language. The doctrinal reference for Agenda 21, and in general for the discourse on sustainable development that was publicly consecrated in 1992, is the only too well-known Brundtland Report (Comisión Mundial para el Medio Ambiente y el Desarrollo, 1987). The truth is that in this report there is no reference to EE, although there is to education – in general – as one of the principal instruments in the construction of a different future, assuming the now well-known Prometheusstyle discourse so linked to UN literature. One of the peculiarities of this discourse is the reference to education almost always to orientate the role of underdeveloped countries and based on the basic teaching of literacy to the population and, principally, to those ‘most underprivileged’ social groups (women, infants, minorities, the poor, etc.). It assumes, implicitly, that basic, universal education is the main building block on the road to a more sustainable and equitable world. This explains, for example, why Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 gives such importance to the Jomtiem Declaration of the World Conference on Education for All (Thailand, 1990), rather than to other documents or declarations more specifically conceived to orientate the educational response to the environmental crisis. I am not the one to question the importance of universalizing access to education – it would be difficult for someone to oppose something that is presented as a basic human right (at least, from a Western point of view). One could question, however, the existence of an automatic positive correlation between having a certain educational level – given that it talks essentially of graduate or formal education – and a more equal relationship with one’s immediate surroundings, or greater solidarity with others, and that, therefore, an increase in educational level would better or betters automatically, in a cause and effect relationship, the conditions of the local surroundings and, additionally, those of the global environment. If this is so or not depends, and will depend even more in the medium and long term, on many factors that formal educational action can reinforce, but also obstruct, depending on the contents, methodology, values, learning concepts, and forms of organization, etc. that are adopted in the curricular frame of school practice. In other words: there is an evident correlation between high levels of education in more advanced societies and its ecological impact calculated in terms of adaptation and consumption of resources and production of refuse (it is easy to prove statistically that the levels of schooling in developed countries have increased in parallel with clearly negative environmental indicators, such as the production of household waste, consumption of water, the consumption of fossil fuels, etc. per capita); whereas there still exist on the planet human communities with absolutely no formal educational

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Pablo Ángel Meira Cartea experience that, however, maintain a notable balance in their interaction with their environment. I do not mean to affirm by this that high levels of schooling are the cause, or form part of the causes, of the environmental crisis, but it is evident that they are fundamental vectors in the reproduction of Western societies and in their own particular way of appropriating the world and of mixing with other societies. It must also be acknowledged that high levels of schooling positively correlate with satisfaction in other parameters related to welfare and quality of life: longevity, equality between men and women, health, etc. This longing for a generalist focus on education is one of the common denominators in discourses on ESD. This is accented, if that is possible, in the educational recommendations gathered in the Action Plan which was approved at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in 2002. The International Programme for Environmental Education (IPEE), set up in 1975 as part of the application of the Action Plan agreed three years previously at the Stockholm Summit under the patronage of UNESCO and UNEP, and cited in Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 as an instrument to reorientate towards sustainable development, was cancelled in 1995, just three years after the Rio Summit and without having been evaluated (González-Gaudiano, 1999). Its demise coincided with the build-up to the international conference ‘Environment and Society: education and public awareness for sustainability’, celebrated in the Greek city of Thessaloniki in 1997 and organized by UNESCO with the support of the Greek Government. This event served to emphasize the transition from EE to ESD, a step that UNESCO could not take without confronting certain resistance and controversy within EE sectors, who could not understand why such a conceptual and doctrinal change was necessary. The late John Smyth (1998), with the lucidity that characterized his view of our field, wrote a brief text on the lines of this confrontation with the revealing title of ‘Environmental Education: the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning?’ It was an ironic commentary on the nature of the change – rupture or continuity – that UNESCO seemed to be promoting. Edgar González-Gaudiano (2003a) also highlights that the proposals made in Thessaloniki: dio lugar a una gran discusión y se sugirieron conceptos alternativos que en la declaración final de la Conferencia fueron aparentemente aceptados, pero que no fueron retomados en documentos posteriores.[3] UNESCO, González-Gaudiano observes: insiste en extender el acta de defunción de la EA y continúa hablando de Educación para la Sostenibilidad o para el futuro sostenible; lo anterior, además, en el marco de un doble discurso que ya tiene sido denunciado.[4] The document that served as a base for the Thessaloniki debates (UNESCO, 1997) already established a discourse in which EE and ESD were differentiated and, although it is recognized that ‘las lecciones que vienen de la EA brindan elementos valiosos para la determinación de una noción más amplia de una EDS’ [5] (p. 33), the new denomination is considered to be more appropriate in comparison with others that, at that time were (and even nowadays still are) arising in the EE field: ‘environmental education for sustainable development’ (as a committed alternative to EE and ESD), ‘education for sustainability’ (avoiding the appeal for development and its association with ‘neo-liberal environmentalism’), ‘ecopedagogy’ , ‘earth pedagogy’, ‘global education’, etc. (Caride & Meira, 2001, pp. 180-181). However, these denominations were formulated more as currents or tendencies within a disciplinary field still in formation – that of EE, which can be characterized by its theoretical and methodological plurality – than as attempts to subvert or monopolize it. What underlying tensions were expressed in Thessaloniki on the organization and identity of EE? In my opinion, and in that of other authors, what was (and is still) in play was the symbolic fight for the appropriation of the concept ‘sustainable’. On the one hand, it is used as a model to identify, explore and promote alternatives (ideological, political, economic, cultural, etc.) to the existing environmental and social crises. From this perspective, the concept of ‘sustainability’ is associated more with those concepts of ‘equity’, ‘emancipation’ and ‘social change’. On the other hand, an attempt is made to use it in order to legitimate the idea that it is possible to maintain, within some tolerable ecological limits, a rhythm and model of economic growth, which, in the priorities of the market, is judged to be indispensable in order to be able to satisfy the necessities of

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In Praise of Environmental Education humanity. From this perspective, only an increase in production and capital would allow the freeing up of resources necessary to repair those environmental excesses already committed or to be able to prevent them in a future difficult to determine. In this interpretation, the notion of ‘sustainability’ is associated with notions of ‘development’, ‘competitiveness’ or ‘economy’ – ‘the market’, of course – and it is linked to the contemporary faith in ‘science and technology’. It concerns, then, representation in the field of education, the controversy between ‘environmentalism’ (the approaches to the environmental crisis that can be resolved or overcome within the framework of a now globalized, neo-liberal market economy) and ‘ecologism’ (the approaches that defend the necessity of a change in the socio-economic model as a premise in order to tackle the environmental crisis and the development crisis), as has been shown in other texts (Caride & Meira, 2001). In fact, the preparatory document for the Thessaloniki Conference subtly announced its ‘environmentalist’ vocation: it stated that ‘la sostenibilidad acarrea la tarea compleja de reconciliar y tomar decisiones sobre reivindicaciones que se contradicen entre si y de avanzar hacia un desarrollo que sea ecológicamente racional’ [6], to then go on and resolve this awkward situation by using an ecumenical formula: ‘el concepto de desarrollo sostenible acoge las advertencias de los ecologistas y los argumentos de los economistas a favor del desarrollo’ [7] (UNESCO, 1997, p. 17). Being thus, sustainable development can be interpreted and recreated according to the tastes of the ‘consumer’, following a line that breaks with the current social and economic order, or it can be an integrated accessory in order to environmentalize the dynamic (which is presupposed to be intrinsically positive) of a market that is, as Lucie Sauvé (1999) has condemned, basically preoccupied with the ‘environment as a resource’ or as a ‘natural resources bank’ that it is necessary to manage wisely in order to maintain the productive and reproductive machinery of capital. The truth is that, since Thessaloniki, UNESCO has definitively centred its greatest effort in fostering ESD. To this new route can be added the weaknesses of EE, which are many, beginning with the intrinsic difficulty (shared with other ‘educations’: for peace, for equality, for gender equality, for human rights, etc.) of working on the construction of a new moral and social order, which implies the cultivation of values, of forms of social representation and appropriation of nature, and of patterns of mutual distribution of the environmental loads and resources, which goes against the grain of the values and forms of representation and appropriation of the market society in its current investments. Just like Penelope’s cloth, what is sewn by day by the protagonists of EE is unsewn by the market at all hours through the powerful apparatus of symbolic inculcation that serves to feed the production–consumption cycle, stimulating oversatisfaction in basic needs and creating other needs – above all, in the most subjective terrain, that of desires – accompanied by new products and services to satisfy them, in a never-ending consumerist cycle. In this sociocultural context it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that EE has not achieved its aims, that it is inefficient and that, therefore, it is a ‘social technology’ which is redesignable if not disposable. In a declaration full of positivism, in contrast to the moralist discourse that impregnates the basic document of Thessaloniki, statements such as this can be read: que la eficacia de la concientización y de la educación para un desarrollo sostenible deberá en última estancia cuantificarse por la medida en que modifica las actitudes y el comportamiento de los individuos en tanto que consumidores y ciudadanos. (UNESCO, 1997, p. 6; emphasis added)[8] It is yet to be explained why, in this quote, a difference is made between ‘consumers’ (consumidores) and ‘citizens’ (ciudadanos). It is without a doubt an ideological lapse that is ever more frequent. In short, an ESD that must ‘empirically prove’ is set against an EE that has already shown its ‘inefficiency’, given the few real advances towards sustainable development that have been made since it was marked down as a world objective in 1992. Another weakness that is condemned time and time again by the most solid and critical discourses of EE is the naturalist and conservationist deviation that characterizes many of the activities and practices found in our disciplinary field. This is still an important obstacle, but I do not think that it is attributable to a theoretical or methodological weakness in EE; rather it is the cultural dominance of a reductionist and one-dimensional stereotype of the environment (equating it with ‘nature’) anchored in certain romantic and Eden-like perceptions of the rural environment

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Pablo Ángel Meira Cartea fostered, and this is an important detail, in and from the symbolic factories of the more advanced countries. I predict that this deviation, which is especially functional when not wanting to adopt environmental or social policies that question profoundly the established politicoeconomic order, will not change significantly merely because of a change in denomination and an apparently renewed educational practice centred around the notion of sustainable development. ‘Naturalist’ reductionism and its ‘conservationist’ expression are not attributable to EE as a field or discipline – although some of its practices and practitioners do cultivate them – rather they are an expression, which is widely criticized and questioned within the same field, of a representation of the environment and the environmental crisis that is still dominant in society. This explains why, for example, those public and private institutions that wish to contract environmental educators tend to think about biologists first, rather than philosophers, when designating an ‘expert’ of whom no special qualification or competence is expected in order to perform the duties of an ‘expert’. That it is necessary to adopt a concept of the environment that is more integrated and multidimensional, and that the social sciences, among them economics, should play a role which is equal to or more relevant than that of the natural sciences in the type of changes it is necessary to bring about in the relationship between human systems and the biosphere, are premises that already formed part of EE from its first stutters back in the 1970s, above all in those sectors most closely linked to critical pedagogy insofar as they announced that the necessary change was social, and not just changes in ‘behaviour (lifestyles)’, ‘knowledge’ or ‘values’. One should reread the recommendations published by the Intergovernmental Conference on Environmental Education in Tbilisi in 1977 (UNESCO, 1980) to discover that they were already talking about giving ‘atención particular a la comprensión de las relaciones complejas entre el desarrollo socioeconómico y el mejoramiento del medio ambiente’ [9] (p. 74); of adopting a ‘perspectiva interdisciplinaria y globalizadora’ [10] (p. 74); of the need to take into account the ‘interdependencia económica, social, política y ecológica en las zonas urbanas y rurales’ [11] (p. 75); or that educational actions ‘debe vincularse con la legislación, las políticas, las medidas de control y las decisiones que los gobiernos adopten en relación al medio ambiente humano’ [12] (p. 74). What is really new, then, in the apparently reformist and even breakaway discourse of ESD? Strictly speaking, after Tbilisi, and save the controversial appearance of ‘sustainable development’ on the stage, we have advanced little with regard to theory, and even less in its transformation into reality. It is exactly this often abysmal distance between the theory and practice of EE, and between the grand aims identified and the pedagogical-didactic actions, that has been and is part of the huge deficit in the discipline (García, 2002, 2004). However, economic and social aspects have been present in the EE discourse since the start. Furthermore, the structural change promoted by educational action in these dimensions has been limited. However, that is not the responsibility, or at least it is not the exclusive responsibility, of EE, unless, of course, one naively wishes to solve the problem by shooting the messenger, that is to say, EE. From this point of view, I predict that ESD will not be the solution either and that, in all probability, it will end up being sacrificed as just another inefficient and useless social technology against the socio-environmental crisis, whilst this same crisis worsens due to not being combated at the socio-economic, political and moral roots. González-Gaudiano (2003b, p. 18) highlights how in the Latin American community – including both Spain and Portugal – and also in some Canadian collectives (to which I would add certain authors of pedagogical criticism such as Robottom or Fien, for example), there has been: handling of this same more social orientation that is now being promoted by ESD, by the same EE, by which, simply substituting concepts, as well as meaning the loss of a political activist that has taken a lot to build, would also contribute to the confusion of those who have entered this field in the last decade. The result of this analysis is obvious: why create a new ‘field’ when the existing one already considered those objectives and discourses that are now being announced as ‘different’ and more ‘advanced’? The Perception of Change in Environmental Education The controversy surrounding EE and ESD has led to different studies being carried out to explore the real or apparent dilemma within the EE field. The first of these I wish to comment on was

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In Praise of Environmental Education sponsored by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) Education and Communication Commission (Hesselink et al, 2000). Fifty experts from twenty-five countries participated in it, answering a series of questions over the Internet and sending their opinions to a person in charge of moderating the debate over the Internet. One of the topics explored was precisely the relationship between EE and ESD, and from the contributions received, the graphical representation reproduced in Figure 1 was constructed. This representation has the advantage of visualizing graphically the notion of the ‘field’ that I have been using.

Figure 1. Possible relationships between EE and ESD that were expressed by the participants of the ESDebate (Hesselink et al, 2000, p. 12).

The editors of the conclusions of this process of debate point out that the vision shared by most of the participants is that of D), that is ‘ESD as a stage in the evolution of EE’, highlighting that it would mean an advance in that EE understood in naturalist, apolitical and scientific terms, which in the opinion of some experts was being carried out in the 1980s and 1990s. Curiously, this is not the ‘official’ concept held regarding the EE–ESD dilemma in UNESCO documents. It is precisely in the Draft International Implementation Scheme, published in October 2004 and elaborated as a reference guide for the recently inaugurated UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, that it is stated that: Education for Sustainable Development should not be considered the same as Environmental Education. The latter is a well-established discipline that concentrates on the human relationship with the natural environment and in the ways to conserve and preserve it and adequately manage its resources. Sustainable Development, therefore, includes EE, situating it in the larger framework of socio-cultural factors and the socio-political aims of equity, poverty, democracy and quality of life. (UNESCO, 2005, p. 18) This definition of the ‘field’, apart from the evident contradictions, situates us much closer to the alternatives A) and C) reproduced in Figure 1 than to the alternative recognized by the majority of the participants in the IUCN debate and, possibly, the alternative thought of as ‘common sense’ by the majority of practitioners of EE when evaluating the appearance of ESD. It is curious to note how, in the UNESCO Draft (which reiterates arguments already exposed in the Thessaloniki basic document), the status of ‘discipline’ is attributed to EE while emphasizing that it is ‘only’ concerned (sic) with the ‘human relationship with the natural environment’. Another, similar study was carried out recently by Edgar González-Gaudiano (2004). In this case, the consulted community of experts was limited to the Latin American and Caribbean geographical areas and the study collected the opinions of 101 experts from 17 countries. Fifty-three per cent of the sample believed that the transition from EE to ESD was ‘inconvenient’, whereas

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Pablo Ángel Meira Cartea 38% felt it was convenient and the other 9% leant neither one way nor the other. It should be mentioned that the formulation of the question takes as given that ESD is a continuation of EE, but the rejection of this representation by the majority is what I wish to highlight. The arguments given to consider inconvenient the implantation of ESD as opposed to EE were precodified in the survey instrument, which was used: thus, 35% pointed out that ‘EE constructed in the region already has those social and economic elements promoted by ESD, but without the institutional and political support’; 34% understood that ‘it represents the loss of a symbolic capital constructed in the region with many difficulties and a great potential for transformation’; and 16% noted that ‘ESD still presents a conceptual and operative opaqueness’. Amongst those who thought that the transfer was convenient, the two main arguments were: ‘that it allows the involvement of social and economic themes and not merely ecological ones in educational intervention’ (34%); and that it ‘represents the natural evolutionary process of EE’ (11%). It is paradoxical, or perhaps not, that of the majority of the Latin American experts consulted by Edgar González-Gaudiano, 46% also viewed the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development as a ‘great achievement’ and only 29% considered it a problem, whereas 23% withheld their opinion. The reason for this apparent contradiction with the previous data lies in the pragmatic vision that these protagonists have, which is perceived in the supposed benefits that await: the Decade will favour the channelling of financing and political support for EE actions and programmes, it will stimulate the involvement of more institutions, etc. This perspective probably coincides more with the interpretation that is being made of the EE–ESD relationship in Spain and other territories in our orbit, than that reflected in the IUCN debate. Conclusion The reasons given to justify why EE should take a step towards a discourse centred around ESD do not seem to be very consistent. It is difficult to find solid arguments beyond the use of the concept ‘sustainable development’ as an attraction, a ‘framework’, an obsession, or even an aesthetic, which connects with a certain ‘neo-liberal’ environmentalism that is a success nowadays, especially in more advanced societies. Nobody can be so clumsy as to reject a model of development that promises ecological sustainability and social equality, with the added value, for those who regard it as desirable, of not questioning the established economic and socio-political order. This explains why politicians, scientists, educators and diverse protagonists in the environmental field, for example, allude to sustainable development, giving to it substantially different, and even opposing, meanings and operative consequences. One of the concepts of the profusion, confusion and associated policies that is easy to verify is, for example, the inflationary expansion of Local Agenda 21 projects (Ramos & Meira, 2003). A large part, if not the majority, of the community of practitioners of EE watch the irruption of ESD indifferently or naively, implicitly assuming that it is a new form of designating what they have been carrying out under the name of ‘environmental education’. In my view, and taking up again the representation in Figure 1, ESD is or can be considered to be a ‘current’, a ‘tendency’, a ‘model’ or a ‘paradigm’ within the plurality of ideological and methodological visions that have arisen in the evolution of the discipline we know as EE, whose identity is recognized by UNESCO, which helps to increase the confusion. Other closely related fields with a more consolidated epistemological and scientific status, and less dependence on the comings and goings of specialist international organizations, such as environmental psychology or environmental sociology, are not experiencing similar situations – nobody talks, as far as I am aware, of replacing them with psychology or sociology for sustainable development – even if this is used as a political-ideological and normative stick in the representation of the environmental crisis and in the definition of response policies. It is useful to remember, following Foucault’s analytical path, that the truth or the falsehood in a discourse is not relevant when one observes the practical effects (Foucault, 1980). From Foucault’s point of view, any discourse tends to produce ‘true effects’ as it influences in the form in which the social agents use it or believe it to represent social reality, and they act on it. Escobar (1995), for example, understands that the power of the concept of ‘sustainable development’ does not lie as much in its theoretical consistency (of which there is little), nor in its real capacity to

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In Praise of Environmental Education transform environmental policies (which are directly associated with a liberal ideology), but rather that it is shown in its participation in the symbolic production of reality. The same can be said of ESD: for example, we can reveal its theoretical inconsistencies; prove that it does not bring any relevant new features to the educational response to the environmental crisis (except to call attention to some important inconsistencies in the practice of EE); show that it assumes a neoliberal conception of development and human relationships with the environment; or demonstrate that in its historical beginnings, games of power and interest weighed more in UN circles outside the dynamics of the EE field than other types of argument. But we have already entered the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, and we must wait until these facts have repercussions in educational and environmental policies at different levels (international, regional and local). We can ignore ESD, but ESD will ignore with difficulty those of us who (still) move in the field of EE. I want to finish by citing another Chinese proverb, attributed to Deng Xiaoping, the instigator of the last modernization of China, and inspired by Confucius, which says: ‘black or white; the colour of the cat is unimportant as long as it catches mice’. This could be the most intelligent attitude to adopt in this case, if one understands intelligence as the capacity to adapt to circumstances without too many ideological or ethical scruples. It does not work for me, given that behind ESD there is a clear ideological project, clearly orientated towards a resolution in a liberal code of the market of the dual crisis – the ecological and that of development, which are both sides of the same coin. It is the only thing that explains the attempts to convince us that ESD surpasses EE. I respect and understand those who take it on board as an educative tool in order to transcend the environmental and social excesses of modernity – a postmodern education – but I think that within EE there are other perspectives and alternatives which are more critical and consistent with an equally sustainable construction, but also emancipating, equitable and orientated towards the achievement of social justice in the present and future of mankind. Perhaps we should start thinking about celebrating, modestly and frugally, the Century of Environmental Education or, being even more ambitious, the Millennium of Environmental Education. Hopefully, the quote from Fernando Pessoa that heads this article will serve as an optimistic prediction for the resolution of this controversy. Notes [1] ‘a field of thought and action in which the heterogeneous nature and debate dominate; the diversity of theoretical paradigms, of strategies for action, of implicated sectors and disciplines, of practitioners and of settings.’ [2] ‘no one can forge arms that can be used against his adversaries without exposing himself to the possibility that they be immediately wielded against him, by them or by others, ad infinitum.’ [3] ‘led to a big debate and alternative concepts were proposed that, in the final declaration of the Conference, appeared to have been accepted, but which were never taken up again in later documents.’ [4] ‘insists on extending the death certificate of EE and continues talking about Education for Sustainability or for a sustainable future; the former, moreover, in the framework of a dual discourse that has already been condemned.’ [5] ‘the lessons learned from EE offer various useful elements for the determination of a wider notion of ESD’ [6] ‘sustainability gives rise to the complicated task of reconciling and making decisions on contradictory vindications and of advancing towards an ecologically reasonable development’ [7] ‘the concept of sustainable development takes in the warnings of ecologists and the arguments of economists in favour of development’ [8] ‘that the efficiency of conscience-raising and of education for sustainable development should ultimately be quantified by the measure in which it modifies the attitudes and behaviour of individuals, both consumers and citizens’ (emphasis added). [9] ‘particular attention to the comprehension of the complicated relations between socio-economic development and the betterment of the environment’

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Pablo Ángel Meira Cartea [10] ‘interdisciplinary and globalizing perspective’ [11] ‘economic, social, political and ecological interdependence in urban and rural areas’ [12] ‘should be related to the legislation, the policies, the control measures and the decisions that governments adopt in relation to the human environment’

References Bourdieu, P. (1999) Meditaciones pascalianas. Barcelona: Anagrama. Caride, J.A. & Meira, P.Á. (2001) Educación ambiental y desarrollo humano. Barcelona: Ariel. Comisión Mundial para el Medio Ambiente y el Desarrollo (CMMAD) (1987) Nuestro futuro común. Madrid: Alianza Editorial. Escobar, A. (1995) El desarrollo sostenible: diálogo de discursos, Ecología Política, 9, pp. 7-25. Foucault, M. (1980) Microfísica del poder. Madrid: La Piqueta. García, E. (2002) Los problemas de la educación ambiental: ¿es posible una educación ambiental integradora? Investigación en la Escuela, 46, pp. 5-26. García, E. (2004) Educación ambiental, constructivismo y complejidad. Seville: Diada Editora. González-Gaudiano, E. (1999) Otra lectura a la historia de la educación ambiental en América Latina y el Caribe, Tópicos en Educación Ambiental, 1(1), pp. 9-26. González-Gaudiano, E. (2003a) Atisbando la construcción conceptual de la educación ambiental en México, in M. Bertely (Coord.) Educación, derechos sociales y equidad: la investigación educativa en México 1992-2002, pp. 243-275. Mexico D.F.: Consejo Mexicano de Investigación Educativa. González-Gaudiano, E. (2003b) Hacia un decenio de la educación para el desarrollo sostenible, Agua y Desarrollo Sostenible, 1(5), pp. 16-19. González-Gaudiano, E. (2004) Encuesta latinoamericana y caribeña sobre la educación para el desarrollo sostenible, paper presented at the International Conference on Education for Sustainable Development, University of Minho, Braga, Portugal, 19-22 May. Hesselink, F., van Kempen, P.P. & Wals, A. (Eds) (2000) ESDebate. International Debate on Education for Sustainable Development. Gland: International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources. Meira, P.Á. (1991) De lo eco-biológico a lo eco-cultural: bases para un nuevo paradigma en la educación ambiental, in J.A. Caride (Coord.) Educación ambiental: realidades y perspectivas, pp. 87-126. Santiago de Compostela: Tórculo. MOPT (1993) Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Medio Ambiente y el Desarrollo: Programa 21. Madrid: Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes. MOPT (1994) Construyendo el futuro. Foro Internacional de ONG y Movimientos Sociales. Tratados alternativos de Río 92. Madrid: Ministerio de Obras Públicas y Transportes. Pessoa, F. (2002) Libro del desasosiego. Barcelona: El Acantilado. Ramos, J. & Meira, P.Á. (2003) Educación ambiental y diversidad cultural: procesos de participación social en la Agenda 21 escolar como estrategias para la sostenibilidad, in IV Congreso Iberoamericano de Educación Ambiental, Havana, Cuba, 2-6 June (CD-ROM). Sauvé, L. (1999) La educación ambiental entre la modernidad y la postmodernidad: en busca de un marco de referencia educativo integrador, Tópicos en Educación Ambiental, 1(2), pp. 7-25. Sauvé, L. (2004) Perspectivas curriculares para la formación de formadores en educación ambiental, Carpeta Informativa Ceneam, November, pp. 162-170. Smyth, J. (1998) Environmental Education: the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning? Environmental Communicator, July/August, pp. 14-16. UNESCO (1980) La educación ambiental: las grandes orientaciones de la Conferencia de Tbilisi. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO (1997) Educación para un futuro sostenible: una visión transdisciplinaria para una acción concertada. Paris: UNESCO. UNESCO (2005) United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-2014. Draft International Implementation Scheme. Available at: http://www.unescobkk.org/fileadmin/user_upload/esd/ documents/Final_draft_IIS.pdf

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In Praise of Environmental Education PABLO ÁNGEL MEIRA CARTEA has a Ph.D. in Educational Sciences and is senior lecturer in environmental education at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), Spain. His research interests include environmental education and social pedagogy. His more recent books and articles are about the theoretical basis of environmental education, education for climate change, and the cultural and social dimensions of the Prestige catastrophe. He is USC coordinator for the Interuniversity Doctorate Programme in Environmental Education, which has been developed by nine Spanish universities. Correspondence: Pablo Ángel Meira Cartea, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Facultade de Ciencias da Educación, Campus Universitario Sur s/n, 15782 – Santiago de Compostela, Spain ([email protected]).

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