VOICES RISING - SPECIAL ISSUE
YEAR III - VOL 3. Nº157.1
October 18, 2005
CONTENT
1.- CONFINTEA VI
2.- THE THIRD WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION CONGRESS
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1. CONFINTEA VI
From ICAE, we would like to thank all the people who responded to our Call for Action, and contacted official delegations, making possible the adoption of the draft resolution presented by Canada. We would like to give our special thanks to Sofia Valdivielso, member of our Gender and Education Office, for her advocacy efforts during the recently held UNESCO’s 33rd. General Conference.
We have transcribed below the text of the resolution.
11. The Commission recommends to the General Conference that it adopt in extenso, for the records of the General Conference, the draft resolution contained in document 33C/COM.II/DR.1 submitted by Canada, as amended by the Commission.
The text of the resolution reads as follows:
The General Conference,
Reaffirming the strategic importance of adult education,
Noting that CONFINTEA VI (2009) offers a unique opportunity to undertake a mid-term review of the United Nations Literacy Decade (2004-2013) and that it provides the opportunity to promote and reaffirm support for the Education for All goals related to the literacy and life skills of young adults and adults (Dakar goals 3 and 4),
Recognizing the importance of advanced planning by UNESCO and its Member States to success of CONFINTEA VI,
Invites the Director-General to consider the inclusion of provision for CONFINTEA VI when preparing document 34C/5
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2. THE THIRD WORLD ENVIRONMENTAL EDUCATION CONGRESS
Robert Hill
bobhill@uga.edu
Sketches from 3WEEC (the Third World Environmental Education Congress)
Turin, Italy, 2-6 October 2005
Introduction
From 2 October through 6 October, 2005, a large number of people from inter-governmental agencies (such as the United Nations), universities, Non-government Organizations (NGOs), civil society organizations (CSOs), policy-makers and public administrators, various associations, learners (from formal, informal and non formal settings), networks, parks and forests, environmental education centers, businesses and industry, labor and trade unions, and the media gathered for the 3rd World Environmental Education Congress (3WEEC) in Turin, Italy. The theme was “Educational Paths Towards Sustainability.” Participants came from more than 100 countries, and represented interests from all sectors: global, regional, national, and local. Previous Congresses were held in Espinho, Portugal (2003) and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2004). The next World Environmental Education Congress will be in Durban, South Africa from 2 6 July 2007.
This Congress was organized along 12 threads, or thematic sessions: (1) Research and assessment in environmental education, (2) “Sustainable” education, (3) Training the trainers, (4) Community awareness’ importance, (5) Promoting participation and “governance” and “creating a network,” (6) Communication and the environment, (7) Paths of sustainability, (8) Economics and ecology: A union to forge, (9) Environment and health, (10) The key role of farming and the related issues, (11) Ethics, and (12) Emotional involvement.
Because a participant in a Congress such as this can only be attentive to a fraction of the many opportunities offered, this reflection is written more as “sketches” than a formal report. Official data on the Congress can be found on the formal website at
< http://www.3weec.org/>. This website is an example of international environmental education in that it is translated in 9 languages: Italian, Spanish, French, Portuguese, German, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and English.
During the Congress there was an online newspaper and, for those with Macromedia Flash Player, the website supports a video blog. For students at my institution, the University of Georgia, I point out my interview that can be found at http://www.intermedia-to.it/vb/videob/dsl/17_robert-j.htm.
Although I have attended many meetings, conferences and congresses beforethis is the first one that actually was concerned about the environmental impact that occurs when people gather for such an event. In order to limit the “ecological footprint” left by the harmful emissions incurred in organizing and attending the meeting, a portion of the registration fee was used to compensate for carbon emissions. Ways to do this include planting “carbon sinks” such as trees which sequester carbon through the process of photosynthesis.
The list of supporters of 3WEEC was impressive: the President of the Italian Republic, UNESCO, UNEP, the European Parliament, the World Wildlife Fund, Provincial governments, businesses, universities, and more than 70 other patrons, sponsors, and supporting members!
The 3WEEC was held at a significant time, e.g., it transpired within the UN Decade for Sustainable Development (2005-2014). Although it was not mentioned in any session or talk that I attended, it is also significant that 3WEEC coincided with the 33rd General Session of UNESCO in Paris, whose theme was “Education For All (EFA).” There is a direct link between the two gatherings, illustrated by the EFA theme that stresses, education is a human right, a tool for personal empowerment, and a means for cultural development. In fact, 6 October, the day 3WEEC closed in Turin, members at the 33rd General Session in Paris held a panel debate on the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, exploring how to promote sustainability through education.
My Presentation at the Congress
I was pleased to present a paper and participate in the subsequent discussion in Session 5, Promoting participation and “governance” and “creating a network.” This presentation, titled, “Grassroots Environmental Education for Social Change: The Historical Legacy of Race Relations in the Southeastern USA” was based on two years of research I conducted on environmental organizing to promote community education in a region of the USA where people in the civil rights movement have struggled to overcome the institutionalized oppression of African Americans. This research was supported by a grant from the Cyril O. Houle Scholars in Adult and Continuing Education Program (http://www.coe.uga.edu/hsp/) funded by the Kellogg Foundation.
My research found that organizing and mobilizing occur in the Southeastern USA in polychromatic ways, that is, in a rainbow of “green” (environmental) adult education. Educational efforts are built on paradigms ranging from “collectivist” and “social justice” models to “corporate bureaucratic” ones. Barriers to environmental organizing and mobilizing for educational change, and successes resulting from collective gathering in the southeast, were discussed. The presentation explored two fundamentally different strategies used to create spaces for environmental education in communities: One is employed by African-American-centered groups who have developed a “Consciousness from the Margins,” based on a Civil Rights Model, and the other is by Euro-Americans that exploit a more dominant cultural perspective and utilize a “Status Quo Consciousness” based on a Corporate-Business Model.
The African-American-centered groups’ Civil Rights Model promoted environmental education, and organized their communities based on a racialized view of social justice. These groups often use informal locations from the everyday life of the community to educate. The African-American-centered groups lean toward “things sentient”that is, the emotional, relational, and feeling. Social behaviorbehavior that is specifically oriented toward peopleis centered on interpersonal relations. Social behavior is followed by social action. There is a sense of kinship and emotional relationships. The racialized emotional relations induce cognitive streams that are unique to this group.
The Euro-American-centered groups’ Corporate-Business Model educates from the perspective of an ostensibly race-neutral perspective. These groups employ, telephone hotlines, the media, annual reports, factsheets, law suites, and computer technology in their efforts. The Euro-American-centered groups stress the value of “things sapient”the cognitive, empericist, positivist ways of knowing and meaning making. I employ the term “status quo” as a reflection of bureacratic processes, administrative execution of ideas, regularized proceedures, formal division of responsibility, and consciousness of the necessity of social normseven if contested.
The tendencies found in the two types of groups are not absolute characteristics since both types of organizations employ both forms of perceiving and processing of environmental information.
The presentation highlighted how in the southeastern USA, there are different mechanisms to promote environmental education for social change. The various strategies have been heavily influenced by historical legacies of race relations. The significance of the study is that it shows there are many ways to arrive at environmental education for sustainability.
Grassroots environmental groups operate from the perspective that learning is a sociocultural experience that fundamentally involves identification with and within a community of theory, practice and identity. General principles, drawn from the study’s key findings were presented:
1. Context may be significantly more important than knowledge and skills in the learning process, i.e., context makes the difference. Community environmental education is often a cultural project as much as it is an intellectual endeavor.
2. Groups, in various ways, explore the intersections of cultural, social and economic interests within their environmental work: poverty, social justice, human rights, health, etc. are a part of how they construct environmental education for sustainability. That is, intersectionality is key.
3. Communities make meaning, construct knowledge, identify problems, formulate decisions, and solve issues that plague them in culturally sensitive and culturally suitable waysbased on their perceptions of what is real in their communities.
4. Learning communities function in multiple ways, such as to make sense of experience, to reproduce dominant discourses, to resist contrary discourses, to practice hegemony (and counter-hegemony), and to circumscribe who and what constitute legitimate authority.
5. Communities of learning (e.g., communities experiencing environmental issues) reproduce what is judged as valuable in the context of the group. This has strong implications for African Americans who identify as marginalized within society.
6. Context, situation, and intersections can create appropriate models in which learning to organize and mobilize for sustainability occur.
7. Grassroots, liberatory adult educators empower and challenge adults to do what is just and equitable.
8. Society is transformed by social movements contending in a variety of cultural and political arenas, including in the southeastern USA, where race has beenand continues to bea significant factor.
Brief Overview of the 12 Strands
During a session discussion, a scholar offered that 90% of learning is done “out of schools”for both youth and adults! He encouraged governments to take the courageous step of allocating a portion of resources normally given for “preparatory learning” (e.g., for children and youth) to support non-formal learning opportunities for adults. If most learning is done “out of school”should governments spend money in the various settings that constitute this venue? Why are they not doing so? I offered that much education, including environmental education, is domesticated, depoliticized, acontextual, and at times bankrupt, however, it is certainly not innocent or naïve. When money is funneled into children- and youth-education, many of these learners have time to become co-opted, and caught in consumerism, and they become products of privitization, individualism, and an unrestrained capitalist system. If, on the other hand, money would be spent on education, especially in the nonformal sector with adults, that was creative, radical, challenging to the learner, and produced “nonconformists”how might that affect the status quo, which generally governments support?
When educationespecially environmental educationis politicized, and contextualized, support is rapidly withdrawn by governments! This intervention caused an immediate silence and then a lively stir in session 5! One panelist supported the contention that governments withdraw funds when environmental education becomes politicized, citing is own country as an example.
Of the 12 sessions at Torin, number 11, as mentioned below, seemed to me to offer the most progressive vision and most potential for environmental education for sustainability.
Note that all of the thematic sessions were populated by international participants, and that the number of presenters in each session varied, but many of the 12 sessions had 20 or more papers offered to attendees. Papers were in different languages, and were in many cases simultaneously interpreted into a few others. While I do not have empirical data, it seemed anecdotally, that individual papers were interpreted between Italian, English, Spanish and French.
Thematic Session 1. Research and assessment in environmental education
The Rapporteur offered that sustainable development was beginning to be a theme and an objective of research. Research is positioned as a means to ensure conservation, and an instrument in measurement. The social role of the responsibility of researchers is important. The objectives of sustainability include changes in behavior, and are a result of education. The participants in this session listed some needs as: to develop a culture of research; to respond to the lack of health studies; to clarify and explain the epistemological framework of research; to develop critical reflection and internal critique of research in light of the many methodologies being employed; to open ourselves to new paths of research; and to clarify research goals, objectives and processes.
Thematic Session 2. “Sustainable” education
A key question posed by this group is how to maintain education for sustainable development in a non-sustainable world. It was noted that there are more than 30 years of research from which to draw; there are a variety of paradigms, yet, we must develop new ways of understanding sustainability. Challenges to sustainable education include lack of attention to human agency and a lack of societal models for sustainability. Education for sustainable development must include human rights, social justice, pluralism and inclusivity, health, cultural relevance, and education that is contextual and emancipatory. Education for sustainability is eclipsed by 3000+ messages that a person receives daily concerning consumption; as environmental educators, our task is cut out for us in light of this.
Thematic Session 3. Training the trainers
The presenter remarked that this session was heterogeneous which added value, but also made summary of the session difficult. Training must pay attention to diversity. There needs to be: better networking between trainers to exchange conversations about their experiences, and specific training methods developed to match the various settings for environmental education for sustainability in formal, informal, and nonformal venues. It was pointed out that training trainers requires funds.
Thematic Session 4. Community awareness’ importance
The importance of culture emerged in this session. Although traditional knowledge is essential, knowledge imported from elsewhere may be adapted for local use and thus be modified over time. Human rights must be kept in line with traditional values. The community is a place where we see the value of environmental education for adults. Community awareness involves the translation of universal rights to local realities. Communities need to be free to make changes, and to provide a space for diversity according to culture and tradition. Key words in this session were: natural content, local knowledge, and community-based participation.
Thematic Session 5. Promoting participation and “governance” and “creating a network”
This session, focused heavily on “intersectionality.” Links between “peace studies” and “environmental education” were made. Through participation, community values and rights can be identified and communicated. Members were asked to think beyond their ideologies and pedagogies. We must be aware of the tyranny of participation (inauthentic participation). It was mentioned that “local networks” are superior to larger-scale ones.
Agenda 21 (http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/documents/agenda21/english/agenda21toc.htm) was discussed. The roles of governments and civil society, the role of major groups, women, and NGOs should be to engage in active involvement. Education for sustainability must be about the future, based on common values. It was noted that “A sustainable world is possible”!
Thematic Session 6. Communication and the environment
This session explored communication, television and the media. We must employ communication tools that: can be continuously improved, involve the Internet, are based on standardized services, involve social communication campaigns, and are used for natural protected areas. A barrier to communication is “incredulity.” The participants offered that to overcome the barrier, multi-media approaches must be developed, and youth must be targeted before they become adults.
Thematic Session 7. Paths of sustainability
While most of the thematic sessions had broad international participation, session 7 was populated mostly by Italian nationals. It was noted that “paths to sustainability” must include context, emotions, and adequate funding. Settings for education toward sustainability include formal, informal and nonformal locations. Paths to sustainability should prepare people to live with uncertainty and to be ready to respond to emergencies. Pathways also need to take local conditions into consideration; practice should be based on both values and knowledge.
Thematic Session 8. Economics and ecology: A union to forge (Economy, Ecology and Public Policy)
The Rapporteur stated that the diversity of papers, and the number of papers presented, made it difficult to identify a unifying theme or set of concepts. Some of the disparate notions that emerged in this thematic session were: business must take up responsible practices for sustainability (recognizing that businesses and trade unions are often now “getting the point” that environmental protection is important); pollution prevention, and manufacturing products with limited environmental “foot prints,” are key; universities are showing interest in environmental career tracts; ecotourism allows, on the one hand, cultures to be kept intact and viablethe topic of ecotourism is evolving, and countries are becoming aware of the diversity of tourists while not losing the cultural context in which ecotourism occurs; and it was pointed out, there seems to be little conversation on public policy related to this theme.
Thematic Session 9. Environment and health
The topic seemed limited to natural catastrophes and focused toward children and youth education. Topics presented and discussed in this theme were reported to be: children’s environmental health; school environmental health; water sanitation and children; the role of NGOs in environmental health awareness; children’s risk perception; health education and health promotion; natural disasters; and major risk education. A sub-Saharan Africa case study was presented. Recommendations and suggestions related to this session were: multidimensional activities aimed at mass media, health ministers, teachers, doctors, engineers, etc. The key messages could be: commitment to a healthy environment, especially for children; greater attention to environment and health at the national and local levels; and promotion and incorporation of environmental health issues in curricula and continuing education programs.
Thematic Session 10. The key role of farming and the related issues
I have no notes on this thematic session.
Thematic Session 11. Ethics
The presenter briefly mentioned the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) publication on practical ways to make ethics a part of everyday pedagogies and our “stories of place”combining a sense of ethos and oikos (ethos as the distinctive spirit of a culture and oikos as our “household” or home, i.e., our environment). Environmental education is always ethical. The session confirmed that environmental education must be embedded in ethics and values in the globalized and over-consuming world in which we generally live. Environmental ethics must become a political and transformative ethics that helps people to deal with power imbalances.
The Rapporteur for session 11 quoted from a “Manifesto for Life” that positioned the “sustainability ethic” as an ethic of solidarity that goes beyond individualism to base itself on the recognition of otherness and differencea participatory democratic ethic that promotes pluralism and recognizes the rights of minorities. It is an ethic of “being more” in terms of personhood, rather than “having more.”
The comments of session 11 were reminiscent of the “Manifesto for Life: In Favour for an Ethic of Sustainability” which claims,
The environmental crisis is a crisis in civilization, a crisis in the economic, technological and cultural model that has plundered nature and subjugated alternative cultures. The prevailing civilization model degrades the environment, looks down on cultural diversity and discriminates against “others” (indigenous people, the poor, women, black people and the South), while it gives priority to an exploitative form of production and a consumerist lifestyle that have become dominant in the globalisation process. (http://www.rolac.unep.mx/educamb/esp/manifest.htm)
Session 11 also was imbued with the spirit of the Earth Charter which argues that we stand at a critical moment in earth’s history (see http://www.earthchartercitizens.org/earthcharterpreamble.htm) and we are responsible for agency to make the necessary changes for sustainability.
Thematic Session 12. Emotional involvement.
This session offered that environmental education can not be so much “taught” as it can be “caught” through lived experiences. Ways into these experiences are varied, and sentientor emotion-based. The questions were raised, “Who should decide on the experiences to be had in environmental education?” and “What is the relationship between “sustainability” and “compatibility?”
These notes are drawn from the “sketches” I made while a participant at the Congressmusings on the various thematic sessionssome drawn from my active participation, and others from the reports presented to the Congress by session Rapporteurs.
All in all, the 3rd World Environmental Education Congress organizers should be applauded for their massive efforts at producing an informative and educational gathering, and the high degree of success that marked this meeting. By all accounts it was very productive. For those who want to learn about the official response to the gathering, please see the Congress website at http://www.3weec.org/.