This story is about ourselves...

Knowing about ourselves might not be a easy task to achieve, it might not take a couple of hours or even a couple of days, but it is the only way to guide us towards sustainability. This video is about rediscovering, putting things in different perspectives, trying to find a reason of our existence or even making a difference. For more information about Chantelle  Baxter and her project in Sierra Leoa, One girl, please visit http://www.onegirl.org.au/.

It is about creating a connection with each other, a connection with nature. As UNESCO (2012) points out, "The values and attitudes we live by affect how we relate to other people and to all our activities in the environment, and so are a major influence on our prospects for achieving a sustainable future".

One of our activities in class was to put in perceptive our own values and then make a comparison with the values from The Earth Charter (http://www.earthcharterinaction.org/content/). The purpose of the activity was to make a cross over with what we really value and the principles of The Earth Charter. By doing that comparison we are able to create a shared and more holistic view about the problems our world is facing and also provide an ethical foundation for the emerging world community.The principles are:

"1. Respect and care for the community of life"  

This principle resumes our roles within the society and why we have to work "in it not on it". It is all about interconnection and preservation.

"2. Ecological integrity"

This principle resumes how we see and act upon our natural resources. Conservation and shift of old productions models are key topics.

"3. Social and economic justice"

This principle resumes the individual and organization participation in problems such as poverty and human development. It also gives a good framework for organizations where sustainable development is going to be implemented.

"4. Democracy, non-violence and peace"

The fourth principle resumes the relation between individuals and the government. It proposes that every government has to be accountable and provide transparency in decision making. Highlights the importance of education, it looks at the respect and consideration amongst each other.

I strongly agree that the Earth charter can definitely set a bar to help organizations and individuals make a commitment to the world and to themselves. It can be used as a guide of good practices as well. Taking the Chantelle Baxter as an example. we can see her whole process of values changing or discovering. From a suburban girl from Melbourne into alcohol drugs and clubbing to a person who cares about others, a new spirit of human solidarity. The Earth charter says that "the emergence of a global civil society is creating new opportunities to build a democratic and human world", and that was exactly what she did. Chantelle went to Sierra Leoa trying to find a meaningful life and found people and experience that she really identified with. She created her own "universal responsibility" by help and understanding a completely different community and out of her comfort zone.

The earth charter activity really make me think on what do I really care about? Do I really make an effort to make a difference on others life? Do I really value nature and what It provides? It also makes me think if the organization that I work for really care about long term sustainability, and how could I show them the importance of it? It is a tipping point for me where I need to embed those concepts into my life or I will never be able to be a effective educator.

Two principles really caught my attention and I may show them here and perhaps I will be able to understand them and give some examples on how some individuals or organizations are already making use o them.
1 - Require multinational corporations and international financial organizations to act transparently in the public good, and hold them accountable for the consequences of their activities.
This principle is the new challenge faced by not only large organizations but any Small or medium business where they are held accountable for the consequences of their activities. It not just improve their long term development but it is extremely important for the success and message that their brand communicates to its costumers and stakeholders. Puma again is the firs organization to create a report where their measure in dollar value their impact in the environment and society, this report is a great step and example for other organizations to adequate themselves to the new necessities of the the World.
2 - Empower every human being with the education and resources to secure a sustainable lively hood, and provide social security and safety nets for those who are unable to support themselves.
This is exactly what EFSD is all about, the role of education is to support and empower individuals in order to make them provide for themselves social security and be able to cooperate with nature preservation.

As all the previous tools or steps, clarifying our own values and beliefs is part of the development towards a more sustainable world. Individuals, private sector and the government are more than ever trying to embed such practices into their everyday tasks. There is no one more important than the other, they are all part of the shift in our old way of thinking, consuming and behaving.

Promoting self reflection and values clarification enable us to understand how our backgrounds and experiences have influenced how we think towards the environment and our society. This can be applied either for an individual or for an entire organization. How can an individual work in a community garden if he/she doesn’t believe in community participation? Or if his/her values about people’s diversity don’t match with the ones promoted by the program? Or how can employees, from an organization who doesn’t care about their impacts in the environment and society, are able to develop their own awareness? So first of all the individual and the organization have to organize and map the values that underpin their efforts upon the environment.

On an organization level, one of the major challenges is to implement their policies at the same rate of growth as the company. On the other hand, individuals major challenge is adequate their values and beliefs towards sustainability to a new level where each one of them understand and take ownership of their impacts in a global scale.

Values clarification helps us to clarify our values in order to understand how they are expressed into our society and also underpins our responsibilities as citizens within our society.

Systems thinking: Shifting from the parts to the whole

I believe that the best way to understand systems thinking would be doing a parallel comparison with the construction of our workshop about sustainable development. Let’s start with the definition of systems thinking provided by “the Shaping the new education - UNESCO report 2012”:

“Looking for connections, relationships and interdependencies to see the whole system and recognize it as more than the sum of its parts; and to understand an intervention in one part affects other parts and the entire system”.

The definition above states that we have to shift our linear way of thinking – where we focus on quick fix and short term return – to a Systems perspective that brings thought and behaviour into line with the natural laws of sustainability. When we develop the ability to better understand and manage complex situations within and external to your organization we are able to make long term, successful change for sustainability. Using the definition, our project is based on a community garden where different members of a community are urged to participate and collaborate towards a more sustainable community. The aim of the project is to raise awareness about climate change (related to food waste), food security (shortage on global production and price rises) and also that sense of building partnerships within your local community. So, to solve problems such as climate change and food security, there is no other way but to find a holistic solution for it and underpin all the other hidden problems related to it. Sometimes complex problems need complex solutions and our traditional problem solving techniques analyse and “deconstruct” situations to make it looks simpler than they really are, this means that simple solutions will not fix the root cause of the problem, it might only solve the results temporary but will not impact on a long-term change.

Systems thinking approach aim for a long term solution trying to tackle issues from its root cause and work its way through the impacts of the problem. “Our lesson that nature teaches is that everything in the world is connected to other things” (Ecoliteracy.org), taking the nature as an example, we can come to the conclusion that a system is any collection of things that have some influence together, it is a pretty straight forward concept. However the shift on problem solving technique is one of the biggest challenges of individuals, government and private sector. System thinking is a way to provide meaningful context to achieve sustainability, individuals need to understand that their local actions have a global impact.

So the work shop about community garden does not look at single problems such as food waste on its own, but it does try to identify the ways households dispose their waste, how or if their re-use it and also the consequences of that waste on landfill and climate change. It tries to educate households on why is important for their health and their long term benefit the importance of growing their food locally instead of buying from big supply chains where a lot of other “environmental” costs are added to the produce they buy and consume every day. We also believe the environment awareness is a much bigger topic than it apparently is, it is not just about knowing facts, but is a state of mind, a way of thinking about sustainable development in a holistic way, Sterling on WWF – Linkingthinking report says:

“I am environmentally aware because:

• I am aware of the underlying causes of environmental degradation.

• I am aware of the global effects arising from these causes.

• I recognise my own responsibility for environmental problems.

• I am dimly aware of how we might go about solving these problems”

So if we look at environment awareness conceptualizations I would say that it is a combination of:

1.      Environmental Sensitivity: more than aware, in touch in every way with subtleties and symptoms of surroundings.

2.      Environment Literacy: ability to read the signs and subtle changes.

3.      Environment Contextualization: able to adapt/adjust to conditions and make sense of apply ES, EL and EA in different settings in order to adapt cope and survive.

4.      Environment competency: Sum of total that result in environment awareness.

 System thinking is an important shift of mind set because it gives us a holistic view of the problems the earth is facing. This new way of thinking helps individuals to set their own sustainability plan in order to start that sense of what is really important for them personally and how that plan will impact on the environment as a whole. This process leads us to value clarification which will be discussed on our next post.

Incredible video featuring Pam Warhurst co-founder of Incredible Edible, an initiative in Todmorden, England dedicated to growing food locally by planting on unused land throughout the community.

Strong capacity-building through participation

Nowadays, individuals are manipulated by media, government and organizations to make decisions without even realising. Most of us don’t know or don’t want to know about the problems and challenges the world, as a whole, is facing. With the globalization, my actions attitudes and behaviour will probably affect people in all different parts of the globe. Just think about the shoes or clothes that you wearing just now, where are they made? Where do the raw materials come from? How does it get to stores and them you can buy it? In order for Individuals to full fill their consumerism patterns, it is apparent that not many consumers care about all these questions. “It is just a shirt” they would say, or “why should I care, at least whoever is making it has a job”.

The question is, how could we make these people aware that their choices will make a big impact on someone’s life who they don’t even know? One of the answers is through a development of critical thinking explored on the previous post but another way is to build people’s capacity in order to make wiser decision towards the environment and other individuals. Capacity building is defined as “Human resource development, the process of equipping individuals with the understanding, skills and access to information, knowledge and training that enables them to perform effectively” (Wikipedia, capacity building). Capacity is crucial for individuals at any level of society to carry out functions and achieve their development objectives. It is not just about skills and knowledge but also to relationships, values and attitudes.

Sustainable development is a changing process that requires people to be able to adapt in a changing environment where we live today. So how can we build capacity within individuals and organizations? One of the tools is through participation, and why participation? Because it is the only way individuals can really share their experiences, necessities and knowledge and at the same time being able to act together and build a common capacity as a group and as individuals. Participation engages people and empowers them to participate on the process of decision making and feel part of the change, it gives a sense of importance to participants where everyone can give their insights to develop for example a community garden, a community action plan or even a policy. It would be impossible to roll out any project or plan about sustainability without the participation of the community, organizations and government. However the right level of engagement needs to be implemented for an effective participation. Meaningful participation is not easy to achieve, participants most of the times don’t have the same access to power and influence as others participants, but by putting the decision making process and leadership in the hands of the participants you can break hierarchies and create a more deeper and permanent change within the group and/or organization.

During our workshop some of the tools or methods to create participation were shown to us in order to facilitate our own level of participation within us students and with the lecture. One the really got my attention was “The world Café” which consists in a “informal” meeting style where people can share their knowledge about a critical issues but at the same time create a new common knowledge throughout the collaboration of the group. This kind of meeting are held in a more informal way at cafes or even at places where organization creates the whole café experience in order to promote the natural creation and sharing of knowledge. The process encourages individuals to contribute with their opinions in order to generate consensus knowledge. It works in rounds of conversations with a number of small groups organized in tables where all of them are discussing about the same topic and them after a while some participants travel between tables adding their insights to other tables. This process of sharing and participation creates capacity in its participants, it shares the decision making process, it brakes hierarchies and create that connection between individuals.

Just would like to feature a great work done by one of the sports gear industry leader PUMA who is the first company in the world to create an environmental profit and loss report where they measure the organization’s impact in the environment and society but not only that they put a price on their impact within all levels of their operations. For more info on the report please visit http://safe.puma.com/us/en/2008/11/puma%E2%80%99s-capacity-building-programs/.

This report is a great example of the two topics discussed in this post. The first one is capacity building, where PUMA runs projects in parallel with their suppliers in different parts of the world in order to improve their ability to make improvements within their operations on their own. The second is the level of participation and engagement promoted by PUMA through their whole tier of suppliers, employees, community and costumers embedding sustainability in all levels of its operations.

Is Education the answer?

I would like to start just mentioning once more about the Linkedin discussions that I have mentioned on the last post. I was going through my workshop notes and noticed that we had the same discussions in the workshops as the discussions on linkedin, how cool is that? Seriously, I thought I had learnt so much from the workshops and all of sudden I had completely different views about the same subject.

From our literature we see “education” not just as formal or high education but a new learning approach that build skills that enable change and also emphasises the creation of relationships, collaborative learning. It is a completely shift from old styles of education such as seeing people as problems, teacher behaving as experts not facilitators or even trying to teach people values and attitude other them make them reflect and clarify their own. Considering those assumptions, I had a great example of other forms of education where high and formal education is really inaccessible and hard to achieve, so please read as per below:

“Hello there, here in Africa, people have just started educating girls, so this means some of us (old women) are not highly educated. [I] Am a good Example, I recycle used straws so a to make a living, but this has led me to be recognized both nationally and internationally but  am not highly educated and this is called sustainability”(BENEDICTA, linkedin Jul/12)”

Benedicta believes from her perspective, and she is right, that sustainability and education for sustainability can be achieved through an activity that she created even though she is not “highly” educated. She already understands that paradigm shift from old ways to delivery education, she is aware that theory is meaningless without practical applicability. Not even to mention that she is applying a lot of other key components of ESD such as partnerships (consumer entrepreneurs and the women in Uganda) Participation (even member of the community is part of the production) Critical reflection (ways they could improve their income and at the same time contributing to the environment). If you would like to see more about Benedicta and her community work please visit http://www.strawbags.org.

It is fascinating how people around the globe can and are introducing sustainability practices into their everyday life and don’t even realize. Now looking at the role of education, we see people not so sure about its effectiveness and so some of them don’t believe that the education is the answer. UNESCO says that education might not be the answer for all our problems but it will create new relations among people and it will foster greater respect for the needs of the environment. So educations is a long term answer, a more understand and responsible approaches to the root of problems not to its causes.

Some people believe that educations shouldn’t be “FOR” something, it might sound an oxymoron (ie. No development is ecologically sustainable) and have a very anthropocentric-economic position in order to perpetuate the status quo (ie "accelerated economic development" UN, 1992 etc). Learning should be based on a “Sustainable education” where people really get to connect with nature, community practices and have a deep understand of ecological principles. New research is coming out exploring the question of "what actually changes people's behaviours and values towards the environment" and the vast majority of answers are that "time spent in 'wild' nature" (e.g. woods, rivers, ponds, nature) and "time spent in 'domesticated' nature" (e.g. gardens, parks, backyards) makes the biggest difference - way more than formal "environmental education."

How deep do we need to go?

I know it has been a while since my last post…and yes I know there is so much to cover that I don’t really know where to start! Believe or not, this is the right way to learn about sustainable development or sustainability…there is no start or end, write or wrong…Sustainability is a continuous process of learning, kind of a “live” process that changes our way of living and interacting. It is not simple, it is not something easy to define and it is not an easy and calm sailing trip with a straight line to follow. As we have seen previously, we have to create our own definition, what sustainability really means to us, into our activities, social behaviour and the way we dream about our future.

Sustainability is a concept that sees things in different ways, dealing with problems and difficulties with different perspective. Asking yourself why every little action counts and how important is to understand that we are all part of the process.  As Tilbury and Cooke (2005) mention, “Sustainability depends on fundamental changes in lifestyles and the choices people make day-to-day”. Yes, that is right, changing lifestyle, how we perceive the world and others human being. And it is exactly about this deep changing, deep self understanding and deep transformations that I am going to talk about in this post. The beginning is  essential part of the learning for sustainability, the questioning process that can take place any time of your day, other watching TV or listening to the radio or at work at Uni or even talking to your friends and family. That questioning process is defined as Critical thinking, “Uncovering the layers of assumptions that inform our thinking and actions, much like peeling back the layers of an onion” (Tilbury and Cooke, 2005), by underpinning those underlined assumptions and influences, individuals can build and create their own knowledge and really understand the real meaning of systems working around them. “Peeling” the problems and looking at questions deeply might be a confronting process for some people because it really uncovers personal values, culture and beliefs. Thus, knowing better yourself and your cultural background will help to understand many of the complex issues about sustainability.       

We are everyday bombarded with thousands of information and messages trying to catch our attention and make us to behave on a certain way. Critical thinking helps us to ask questions such as, what is the reality behind that message? What does that advert really mean? What are they trying to sell? The media is realising an election poll, but are they passing the right message or are they trying to manipulate us? What is behind the products and services that we buy every day? Such critical questions lead individuals to causes of problems, builds capacity for learning and change towards sustainability.

Critical thinking empowers the individual to separate the causes and effects of a problem. Most of the time organizations and individuals try to solve problems by tackling the results, but they forget that the problems may happen again if they don’t solve the root causes of the issue, so looking at situations on different perspectives is a result of critical thinking.

Thinking itself is already a very hard and time consuming task, imagine in addition to that we have to critical think? It can be a rewarding and empowering process because it gives us meaning and purpose to what we are trying to achieve. It helps groups to find the motivation for their fight, in this case sustainability, to really understand that our decisions today will reflect upon our and others future tomorrow. Sometimes, after going through all the process of critical thinking, I feel like a stranger amongst other people because of the power that this tool provides, it feels like you can see what others can't see and understand what others can’t. 

During our lecture we were asked to look through what a specific advertising was trying to say behind its picture. The advert was just a little hamburger box in the middle of a jungle saying “I think I am going to stay here for the rest of my life”. All sorts of views came about trying to really underpin the causes of a box being in the middle of a jungle, or what sort of materials was the box made of? Who would have thrown that box there? Or even the box asking itself why “she” was there. That activity proves to me that there are a lot more behind the things we consume on our everyday life than we imagine. Organizations are trying really hard to mislead us with false ads selling experiences and sensations that their products “supposably” provide. The box “in” the jungle is just a great example to instigate individuals to make better decisions when buying products on the market place.  What about the bottled water (how is the bottle produced? Where does that water come from? Is that really better than tap water? Where does the empty bottle go? Will that be recycled?), or the vegetables we eat, the coffee we drink or the electronics we are so dependant.

Sustainable development needs that shift on the way we perceive the world, the way we consume, the way we utilize our natural and human resources. Organizations and leaders use critical thinking as a tool to bring about the change with its employees, the process helps individuals to reflect upon themselves and their role within the organization. Digging problems deeply make employees address their real concerns about sustainability enabling the company to access those issues more accurately. The process of critical thinking creates a skilled population who makes informed decisions in their home, community and working lives and their leisure activities (UK department of environment).

I am part of a group on Linkedin (online social media) about Sustainability professionals, and around a week ago I started a discussion with the question “Is education an important path to achieve a more sustainable world?” and surprisingly a lot of the participants think that education itself is not the answer for that problem. Some of the comments are as per below:

“I don’t think education will really work, consumers around the world appear to be little concerned about sustainability. Nothing appears to work..(Venkatasamy Linkedin Jul/12)”

“Consumers appear to have never known their power over organizations. They appear to be totally influenced by adverts….I wonder who are those skilled population?”(Venkatasamy Linkedin Jul/12)
   

“Sustainability may involve education, but at a much more fundamental level, it seems to involve qualities like awareness, integrity and respect” (Beth Ann Lederer Linkedin Jul/12)

Annie founded the non-profit Story of Stuff Project in 2008 to respond to tens of thousands of viewer requests for more information and ways to get involved. We create short, easily shareable online movies that explore some of the key features of our relationship with Stuff—including how we can make things better; we provide high quality educational resources and programs to everyone from teachers and people of faith to business and community leaders; and we support the learning and action of the over 350,000 members of the Story of Stuff community. (http://www.storyofstuff.org/about/about-the-project/)

These comments are real people trying to understand deeply the real meaning of EFSD and thinking critically upon concepts already in books, theses and journals. Critical thinking stem from basic understandings of self/self identity/self wellness. To achieve sustainability we need to go through a COMBINATION of changes, and surely start to think critically is one of the most important.

Will leave that one up to all of you...Enjoy!