Envisioning: The first step of the process

   After realising I was getting  more and more confused about the general topic Sustainable development, last Sunday we had our first session of Research for Sustainable development. Interestingly a contemporary issue arose that most of us would be familiar with, the over consumption of alcohol and violence in Kings Cross. For those who don't know Kings Cross, is a section of the city in Sydney full of night clubs and famous for large congregations  of young people (not under 18 off course) having a good time and many of them with the aid of alcohol. However, just like in most social aspects of society, there are always those few individuals that do not know their limits and end up getting in trouble or even worse getting others in trouble. After all the past incidents surrounding Kings Cross, including the death of a male teenager, Sydney authorities are attempting to reduce the opening hours of Clubs, Pubs and Bottle shops across Kings Cross in a attempt to curve the violence and social issues surrounding the area. A similar action has taken place in Newcastle, another coastal city in NSW where the levels of violence involving young people related to alcohol were the highest in the state. Numbers show that 37% of the incidents have reduced but no one knows if the consumption of alcohol by teenagers has reduced as well. The point I am trying to make here is simple, we are trying to learn that education is the only way possible to empower individuals to change their behaviour and attitudes towards a common goal, a better future. 
Now what if we just start pressing charges against everyone that doesn't eat organic vegetables or doesn't drink certified coffee or even don’t have a hybrid car? Do we think that they will change their perceptions and mind set about their impacts on the environment? Or they are just going to pay a fine and keep the old cars and eating the same cheap vegetables? At the moment we are only fixing problems after the damage has been done. We are not trying to understand the causes of the problem. Why do we have so many teenagers at Kings Cross consuming alcohol until late? Or isn’t that maybe a problem where we should raise the age limit for alcohol consumption? We may see the numbers being reduced in that area but we don’t see the increase on house parties and the increase of violence within the other neighbourhoods. It seems to me that all we care about are the numbers, and not causes of the problems in the first place. I am learning new mind blowing concepts every day in class, I am reading more and more cases where through education communities, individuals and countries have changed their future. So why are the government and authorities are still trying to impose on how we should live our lives? Isn’t that common sense? Tilbury and Cooke (2005) say, “learning for sustainability does not rely on experts to determine how people should behave or how they should think, rather it promotes the learner’s active engagement in decision making and developing policy”, so as per the Kings Cross case, to learn how to not just fix the problems after the damage is done, we should take ownership of our decisions, commitment to the action chosen and be aware of the impact that we create.

Parts of the process of the learning or education for sustainable development are future thinking and envisioning. They are both pivotal components of sustainability and act as a transformation tool where individuals change the way they relate with their future through the way they act today. The individual process of “envisioning” a better future is the same as an organization trying to define its vision and mission. It is, in a way, where and how people want to live in 10 or 20 years, it is what a organization wants to achieve in short medium and long term. It is about a process of engaging people to share their aspirations and dreams and possibly make them come through. Future thinking is a tool to get people actively involved in imaging a sustainable future, “People need a direction, they need a vision they can aim for” (Amanda Keogh, 2005).

To exemplify, at the workshop, our facilitator asked us to close our eyes and imagine a world where we would like to leave in the next 5 or 10 years, then we had to draw a scenario of exactly what we thought and outline five key values that we based our vision on. That exercise is used to empower and motivate people to change. It makes people start to understand what values underpin their vision for a better future. This process is also a great way to uncover the real values that drive our lives such as adaptive, resilience, flexible, respect, tolerance, unity, equity or justice to name a few. It was fascinating to see how many different kinds and perceptions of future people had. Some looked at the integration and relation between individuals around the world, others looked at how the use of renewable energy could change our future and even others looked at how we could introduce more green to our busy cities. I guess that is the first step where you start to share your ideas and dreams with others and you really get to start to think that some people out there have similar, or the same visions and perceptions and values as you, and you both share the same dreams that motivate you towards taking action on those dreams.  We all know that if a company does not have a clear vision of where it’s going, what it wants to achieve and who they are, their business is doomed before it has even started. So how can we work towards a more sustainable world if we don’t even know what kind of world we want? To make things easier I drew my dream world (I know it doesn’t look that great LOL).

  

            

           My vision was based on a “new world” where everyone would have to get in through a door of a new beginning for a better future. This new world would be full of new ideas integrating rural areas, metropolitan areas our homes and how we generate our energy. Maybe I was trying to express this feeling of “we are all part of one ecosystem”, so my key words were integration, participation, sustainable, renewable and equity. I found out two things after doing this exercise, first I am a terrible drawer, and second, I had this invisible barrier about the way in which I see the world. In undertaking that exercise of sharing experience and expectations I was able to better communicate with myself and find a common goal similar to that of  my colleagues.

            Reading through the literature, I found many other ways to facilitate an envisioning process such as:

·   Future trees, which allow people to consider in depth possible future impacts of a particular change;

·        Timelines, where people construct individuals or communities timeline of important past events up to the present.

·        Change Cards;

·        Future wheels; (Tilbury and Wortman 2004)

Future = Imagination it is a process of:

Vision                           Choice                    Plan                     Action

               "Vision" process creates something concrete/desirable, 
         "Choice" is an alternative of sticking unsustainable practices or moving towards sustainable practices. 
              "Plan" is the measurement tool, setting goals, achievement, targets of short and long term.  
            "Action" is your attitudes based on the values that you clarified and discovered about yourself while envisioning what would be a more sustainable world. Actions can be on a personal or group level.

        So this process of future thinking and Envisioning offer us the opportunity of take ownership of our own visions towards change. It creates an atmosphere of sharing and participation. It clarifies what is really important to us and what and why we value certain things. And finally last but not least it starts to create a sense of critical thinking challenging us to question what we really want for our future.

     I Just thought I would share with you guys this image because it really caught my attention on the same day of the workshop about visioning. That is an Ad from Warringah council trying to urge the community awareness to create a holistic view of a new strategic plan and vision of the council.   Thanks

Environmentalism x Sustainability

    Previously, we have tried to identify all the meanings (or part of them) about Sustainability and Sustainable development. Throughout my readings I came across with a lot of others co-existing movements, and one that really got my attention and made me think about the similarities and differences was ENVIRONMENTALISM.

     By definition, Environmentalism means:

"Environmentalism advocates the preservation, restoration and/or improvement of the natural environment, and may be referred to as a movement to control pollution". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmentalism#Environmental_movement)

     The reason I would like to clarify those 2 concepts is that not only myself but a whole bunch of other people and The government, who advocate for Sustainable development or Sustainability, don't really know the real difference about them and in order to really bring about education for sustainable development we need to have a clear understand about it. So lets first try to understand the concept mentioned above, as stated the main concern of environmentalism is preservation, conservation or improvement of natural environment therefore there are no other inclusions such as social, human and economical aspect. However the term environment itself has at least 2 different definitions: 1) "The social and cultural conditions that influence the life of an individual" and 2) "The physical, chemical, and biotic factors that act upon an ecological community and ultimately determine its survival" (http://www.anus.com/zine/articles/cladrastis/environmentalism/). Obviously, It does have two different concepts, one that relates to "Humans" and the other "The natural" (or non-human).

     In fact, environmentalism groups have been trying to define themselves since when the movement started 40 years ago, and since the lack of definition and clear purpose had lead the group to a failure on achieving sustainability. Authors around the world say that the reason of this "failure" is because environmentalists act towards natural environmental problems after they had happened so they will never be able to change individual's behaviours and actions if they don't understand the causes of the problems.    

        So do we really need a movement only focused on preservation and conservation of our natural resources or it is the time to have a more complex and broader knowledge that address  all the problems caused by us "Humans" to our natural environment that later will reflect back on our society, economy and our future generations? "Sustainable development's main goal is to do things differently in the first place, instead of just cleaning up the symptoms and underlying problems." (Morgan Williams, The parliamentary commissioner for the environment in New Zeland).

        Sustainable development is a movement that sees problems through all varies spectrums. It does involve every individual along the process in order to empower, engage and promote creativity from all stakeholders and therefore bring about the change. Sustainability is  a continuous process of learning that challenges our mental models to make us reflect upon our actions and decisions. It not only links social, environmental and economical plates but it challenges the systems that link those three dimensions.

      Small, medium and large companies have already started to understand that nowadays their "GREEN" actions such as recycling their waste, are not longer accepted and enough to label then as Sustainable businesses. On our today's society the impact that you as an individual or as a company imprint in our planet is hold accountable against you. The quality of air that we breath, the unfair division of wealth in the world, the inequity of opportunities, starvation are some of the problems within the scope of Sustainable development.   

   

  

What does education for sustainable development mean?

    Of course that by the end of this process we will all have a better understanding of the real meaning of Sustainable development, however at this point I am still a little confused. The first definition that I have found  is the one proposed by UN (United nations) which is the most commonly reffered to as the Brundtland definition, 

"Sustainable Development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs" (Report of the world commission on Environmental and development: Our common future, www.un-documents.net/wced-ocf.htm). 

    Does that mean we all have to stop consuming and using any natural resource at any price so our future generations will them be able to consume and use? Or is the case where we have to make wiser decisions on how we use those resources such as water, energy, fossil fuels and so on? I guess we can all see the result of a generation of unsustainable people where the only objective was to consume consume and consume again without any concerns about the environment. Climate change, shortage on food and water supplies, starvation and a lot of other examples are a result of our ancestors, so from now on, is up to us a generation of knowledge and understanding to make better decisions and to take ownership of our actions. It is on this scenario that Education for development will help us to become better citizens, to really know our own values and put in check our actions towards a better future. 

    During our first workshop, we were asked to describe changes that we would like to see in our world that would help make it a more sustainable place. Lots of different ideas had emerged from that dynamic such as change on consumerism habits, the way we generate energy, a more equity world, less injustice, better conservation of our fauna and flora. Different views and expectations, but all with a common goal SUSTAINABILITY. All that process is a path on defining sustainable development to each one of us because it can have different meaning to different people of different culture and values, however the process of defining Sustainable development is a process of sharing our views, interactions within people and communities, process of continuous learning and education. So this whole process of visualising a better future is a process of sharing ideas, setting common goals, developing communication skills and making sure that all of us are on the same page. 

    To help us define EFSD, we need to understand first what are the core components of it, how do you implement the idea of EFSD and what are the results of the program. We had a very interesting activity where we were given quotes about Sustainable development and had to find within those quotes content, process and outcome related to EFSD. I have a photo below that illustrates that activity.

    Every single one of those orange cards work as a "brick" on the process of conceptualization and importance of EFSD, they are the content. The blue cards are the processes which are used to get the content or message across to learners or facilitators. Finally the green cards are the results of the process of education for sustainable development. From this point we can start to understand some of the key purposes of the EFSD such as empowering people to through their actions bring about the change, to motivate and provide skills to individuals where they can be part of their community change and also to empower individuals to assume responsibility for creating a sustainable future.
    So how do we engage a group of directors or executives or even a whole company to find a definition for sustainable development? How about a community here is Australia, where you can find individuals from all different backgrounds? How do we get all that diversity with different beliefs values and culture to have a common goal? My answer is to make them ask questions to themselves about their community where they live in, if, for example, the park where their children play is inviting and available to all for all. On the corporate side, making employees part of the decision making process or the new vision that the company wants build is part of the process. EFSD is inclusive, it is about diversity and it is about engaging and empowering. Getting people talking about problems can instigate them to be self aware about the challenges that they will face in the future, but also will make them more creative and educated to come up with more sustainable solutions.

    EFSD shifts the way that education in all levels has been provided until now. It is about understanding the real cause of problems, encourages people to evaluate themselves other then set certain rules and values to be followed, it empowers people to be the "agents of change" of their communities and society. 

    A lot of information isn't it? Does that make us all think believe that our actions today will set our own tomorrow? Wouldn't be much easier if we all could make the right decisions when making use of our resources? Unfortunately not, we are human beings and we all need that extra motivation and engagement to be able to create a more sustainable future. Education for Sustainable development provides exactly that extra kick where all levels of our society can be stimulated to develop the necessary skills to work collaboratively and shift to sustainability thinking and action.

    On the posts to come we are going to work on the components of education for sustainability that will help us have a better understanding on how this other way of thinking can change our future and world.

    

First steps towards a more sustainable thinking..

My name is Caetano Mantovanni. I relocated to Sydney, Australia, nearly four years ago from Brazil. I have just begun a new exciting chapter in my life, which is a post graduate study in Sustainable Development at Macquarie University. My academic background is in Business, and I have completed some MBA units. I believe this experience will be valuable in getting me through a new process of learning.

The reason for initiating this Blog is to help me follow an organized form of learning, together with tracking the process of development of my ideas about sustainable development. This creative process called ‘Learning Journal’ helps students and professionals to access ideas along the way. What we intend to achieve is a structured process of reflective thinking where we "log" all our experiences gathered in the workshop - at the same time being both participant and observer.

For more information on what a reflective journal is please visit:http://www.uta.edu/ccsl/students/reflection-journal.

Sustainable Development is a concept that you really can't define in just one word or a sentence. It is a group of definitions that lead you to a new and improved way to think and act. Think: you start to ask questions about your community, your environment, and on how you interact with people on a daily basis. SD is a way to understand that our actions today will reflect on our future tomorrow. Act: there are no changes without action. Education for SD gives you the tools to act towards creating a better future, transforming you into an "educator" - capable of passing this message on to others. For instance, I viewed SD as just a concept related to environment, climate change and renewable energy, where all these "green" people would protest to protect whales or Gorillas in Africa. Yet, now, I have not found the exact meaning I am looking for, however, I hope by the end of this semester I will be able to adapt and narrow down what those definitions mean to me. For the days and posts to come, I will describe the various definitions, content, processes and outcomes of ESD and perhaps we will all have a better understanding of it.

I hope this journey will be as exciting and motivating for my readers as it is going to be for me.

http://www.totallygreen.com/blog/putting-some-muscle-into-sustainability.html