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
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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,
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