Transformative Sustainability Education: From Sustainababble to a Civilization Leap

Transformative Sustainability Education: From Sustainababble to a Civilization Leap Elizabeth A. Lange Abstract With the realities of climate change pressing in on us, sustainability discourse has gained currency, although some consider it to have been coopted and emptied of meaning—“sustainababble”. This chapter reviews the state of sustainability education, including a brief update on the state of sustainability vis-à-vis climate challenges, the contested meanings of sustainability, and the historical development of sustainability education particularly in relation to environmental education and the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. The chapter ends with a glimpse into the polyarchy of learning edges in transformative sustainability education and the shift toward a relational ontoempistemology, creating conditions for a civilizational leap. If this world does not have a place for us, Then another world must be made. Zapatista saying Introduction In the era of “sustainababble” (Engelman 2013), it is important to question if sustainability discourse is still relevant or whether it has been so coopted that it has been emptied of meaning. Twenty years ago when I began my research into sustainability education for adults, the concept of sustainability had not yet fully permeated public discourse. Learners commonly defined sustainability as ‘keeping things the same’ rather than maintaining the life-giving conditions of the Earth for continued habitation of all existing species, including humans (Lange 2001). Now, the term sustainability has reached general currency but has become an adjective for almost any undertaking, implying something “a little bit better for the environment” (Engelman 2013). This has only increased the contestation around the term, political rifts among proponents, and the search for a new concept. Many consider sustainability to be a social movement (Hawken 2007), however, it is common that the spirit or intent of a movement becomes attenuated when it becomes mainstreamed and institutionalized (Johnstone 2002). This further exacerbates the babble and transformative loss of sustainability education (Selby & Kagawa 2015). Drawing on a critical understanding of lifelong learning that requires the development of reflexivity for self and social questioning (Edwards, Ranson & Strain 2002; Chappell, Rhodes, Solomon, Tennant & Yates 2003), the polyarchy of learning edges in sustainability education are richest in “the dense and creative networks of ‘civil society’” (Williamson 1998, p. 2), such as NGOs, civil society organizations, continuing education, and social movements. Paul Hawken (2007) asserts that the sustainability movement is now the largest social movement in history if you connect the dots between a myriad of sectors, initiatives and movements. Andre Edwards (2005) calls it the Sustainability Revolution given the magnitude of changes occurring. David Korten (2006) calls it The Great Turning. Others call it The Great Transition in relation to capitalism (Brown 2015) and energy (Bonaiuti 2014). The term Quantum Shift describes the transformation of human consciousness (Laszlo, 2008). According to the New Science, reality is highly sensitive, nonlinear, relational and self-renewing, thus 1

Charlene Spretnak (2011) asserts we are undergoing a ‘Relational Shift’ from a mechanistic consciousness to a relational one. A relational ontology recognizes the ‘constitutional nature’ of relationships (p. 12). For Barbara Thayer-Bacon (2003), relationality precedes knowing. Further, Karen Barad (2007) argues that matter and meaning are entangled and do not hold a priori agency to phenomena. Fritjof Capra (2002) suggests it is the entanglements of form, matter, process and meaning that co-emerge into new patterns, social and physical. This new ontoepistemological framework, as Barad calls it, offers significant groundwork for new research into transformative sustainability education as part of adult and lifelong education and learning. Boldly, Naomi Klein (2014) suggests that the climate movement will be the culmination of the liberation movements of the 20th century, such as slavery abolition and civil rights, but will now demand economic as well as political and social transformation. She suggests what is common across these historical movements are two elements: questioning the legitimacy of the current system, and grassroots people simply taking the future into their own hands. She argues for a “civilizational leap” that includes a “major transformation in moral perceptions” (p. 461). This simultaneously involves an alternative ontoepistemology, a liberated political imagination to finish the transformation toward economic democracy, a mass social mobilization for addressing what our current political classes cannot, and then many, many local people reknitting the tissue of what it means to be a village in relation to the land. Fundamentally, the challenge is a learning one (Orr 1994), across the life spectrum and facets of being. The generations alive today are considered to be the transitional generation—the first with a global consciousness as well as the capacity to reimagine our communities to be truly lifegiving and enact far-reaching changes in the manner of human habitation (Korten 2006). Nevertheless, education should not be an instrumentalizing mechanism for sustainability or employed as a doctrine (Jickling 1992), further contributing to sustainababble. Rather, it is an argument for a profound ontological, epistemological and ethical transformation and a process approach to learning. There is no blueprint for this, only the human creative capacity for “reorienting education” (UNESCO 1992) and “re-educat[ing] humanity” (Kennedy in Orr 1994, p. 126). In this context, sustainability education is a profound act of hope in the future. As Vaclav Havel, poet and past president of Czechoslovakia, has said, “Hope is a dimension of the spirit.…[Hope] is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out” (in Westley, Zimmerman & Patton 2007, p. vii). This chapter reviews the state of sustainability education, including a brief update on the state of sustainability vis-à-vis climate challenges, the contested meanings of sustainability, the historical development of sustainability education particularly in relation to the environmental education and United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, ending with a glimpse into the polyarchy of learning edges and a relational ontoepistemology. Climate Basics We are living in the era of climate change, posing increasing challenges for the living systems of Earth. We are now considered to be living in the Anthropocene era, the age in which human actions are a key force impacting planetary wellbeing (Folke 2013). While the first generation environmental movement was known for its fear, shame and blame tactics, we do need to take an unflinching look at the science, as well as the causes for hope, to guide us as educators and researchers. 2

While there have been some encouraging trends and progress reported by scientists over the past few decades, it is still clear that exceeding two to three degrees of global climate warming beyond the pre-industrial temperature will have irreversible effects (UN-IPCC, 2007). The European Union adopted 2 per cent as the goal for a human-imposed limit and the 2015 Paris Agreement specified a long-term goal of keeping the increase in global average temperature to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels, with the aim to limit the increase to 1.5°C (European Commission 2015). Respected climatologist James Hansen et al (2008) explain, If humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm, but likely less than that (p. 1). We are now over 400 parts per million, the highest in two millennia (Associated Press 2015) and so far there has been a one degree rise in global temperature, as detailed by the latest United Nations report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (UN-IPCC 2013). If we reach 450 ppm, it is estimated that this will lead to 2 degrees of warming (Dresner 2002) which scientists describe as the beginning of a disaster scenario (Hansen 2009) including starvation, water famine, land loss, significant population displacement, and violent conflict. The science is in. This is the hard reality we are facing. Contemporary dialogue now takes for granted the coming upheavals and turbulence, a “gathering storm” (Hansen 2009) or “dark age” (Jacobs 2005) expected for at least two generations to come. Discourse is filled with calls for climate change mitigation and adaptation, disaster preparedness, displacement planning, and crisis governance during the ‘forced decline’, all illustrating the increasing normalization of catastrophe (Jickling 2013). Strategies for community resilience along with “teaching for turbulence” in the “long emergency” are now the current discourse (Worldwatch Institute 2013). Is Sustainability Even Possible?: Recent Trends In 2013, the Worldwatch Institute asked if sustainability is even possible, given that numerous ecological tipping points have been exceeded. There are some encouraging trends, including: the decline of ozone-depleting substances enabling the ozone layer to begin repairing itself; reaching one of the Millennium Development goals early by reducing the lack of access to safe water in half; a significant reduction in global poverty; a more rapid growth of renewable energy than fossil fuels; the lowest rate of Amazon deforestation in Brazil since 1988; and a strong commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in many nations by 2020. However, the discouraging trends include: the continual escalation of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide with a millennial high over 400 ppm; passing critical environmental thresholds or ‘tipping points’ in nitrogen pollution and loss of biological diversity by 30%; increase of extreme weather; acceleration of Arctic ice and permafrost melting; and ocean acidification up 30% which is the highest rate in 300 million years (World Watch Institute 2013; The Associated Press 2015). Where does this leave us in the attainability of sustainability? Robinson (2013) suggests that we do have time to turn things around and that it is physically possible given the current knowledge and technology available. However, the ability to flex our social and belief systems is in question. The hegemonic material practices include the naturalness and inevitability of capitalism, with increasingly predatory and monopoly forms, as well as fossil fuels as the primary energy source. The constellation of modernist ideas which continue to dominate include: progress, freedom, private property, change, rational empiricism, autonomous individualism, 3

empiricism, managerialism, androcentrism where males are standard of measurement, and anthropocentrism where only those categorized as human are given moral consideration. These practices and ideas have shaped our ontology or notions around the nature of existence, our epistemology or notions around the nature of truth and knowledge, our cosmology or notions about the origin and nature of the universe, and our ethics or notions about moral values and conduct. It is this ontoepistemological framework that is now in question across the sciences and social sciences (Barad 2007). Despite the enormity of the task, Robinson (2013) concludes that “life is robust” (p. 375) and that with a polyarchy, where power is dispersed across many global loci, all the work for change does make a difference. So, as theorists and educators, we are left sorting through the fragments to determine what is still useful to inform our field. This historical moment calls us to rethink our theory and practice to address the profound and complex issues facing us. The contention here is that sustainability discourse still holds significant potential to create conditions of transformation to shift the dominant ontoepistemological framework, create materials conditions for justice and sustainability, and generate renewal for adult and lifelong education and learning. Sustainability: Conceptual Contestation While the environmental movement began in the 1960s, the concept of sustainability did not enter discourse until the 1980s. The 1987 Brundtland Report, Our Common Future, contained what became the most quoted definition for sustainable development: development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (p. 42). Since then, dozens of definitions have circulated, but none has been as universally accepted despite deep controversies, contesting ideologies, and disparate visions. Realizing that environmental protection could not be achieved on the backs of the world’s poor, the Brundtland Commission attempted to link environment, economy and equity concerns. Known as the ‘three Es’ of sustainability, it was a way to bridge the concerns of both the North and South hemispheres. Many social movement members and institutional actors began to realize that there was a confluence of environmental, social and economic crises that could no longer be addressed independently (Selby & Kagawa 2015). Further, the concept of sustainability helped highlight the need not just for intragenerational equity but intergenerational equity, between generations (Dresner 2002). The Brundtland Report led directly to the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero, generating 27 principles which recognized the indivisibility of environment, economy, peace, and social development (Tilbury, Stevenson, Fien & Schreuder 2002). This was called the Rio Declaration and it represented a global consensus on sustainable development. Agenda 21 was the accompanying framework of action that was considered the first global partnership for sustainable development (Tilbury et al). It was further determined that an international charter of principles and an inclusive ethical vision be developed. In 2000, the Earth Charter included the four interlocking pillars of respect and care for the community of Life, ecological integrity, social and economic justice, and democracy, nonviolence, and peace (Earth Charter Initiative 2012). In the end, member states did not become signatories but it became the most significant global civil society document, signed by thousands of scientific, municipal, religious, professional, business, community and other nongovernmental groups. Kahn (2010) considers the Earth Charter to be a “bold educational reformulation of how people should maintain sustainable cultural relations with nature and between each other” (p. 13). 4

However, the concept of sustainable development was soon regarded as a product of too much compromise between the environmental and development lobbies (Selby & Kagawa 2015). Charges were that it was an oxymoron in assuming that current economic principles could be kept in place for rapid economic growth of ‘developing’ countries to address poverty, while ‘developed’ countries could green their growth but protect their affluent lifestyles. This assumes unlimited growth and is a technocratic approach predicated on global-scale management by a centralized international elite (Orr 1992). Further, it is founded on the belief in market solutions and technological fixes that can develop substitutions for depleted natural ‘resources’. Many consider the concept of sustainable development as reformist, by perpetuating many modernist assumptions and practices rather than challenging them. It is now termed weak sustainability (Orr 1992; Dresner 2002). In contrast, strong sustainability argues that unlimited growth is not possible in a finite natural system, and that humans cannot definitively determine carrying capacity or rather the level at which the total population multiplied by the resource-use level will exceed the ecosystem capacity to renew itself. Further, humans do not have the capacity to coordinate activities at a global scale foreseeing the multitude of interacting factors. Thus, strong sustainability proponents argue that change will need to be decentralized using self-organizing principles that rejuvenate civic cultures and create an ecologically literate population drawing from place-based knowledge (Orr 1992). This view also asserts that a more fundamental transformation of human habitation is needed that mimics designs in the natural world or biomimicry – for agriculture, shelter, energy use, urban design, work practices, healing, politics, transportation, economics, and ‘resource’ use (Orr 1992; Benyus, 1997). Alternatives beyond industrialism, fossil fuels and homo economicus are needed and the precautionary principle should be used so risk-laden activities are not undertaken. Since the 1990s, the adjective of ‘sustainable’ has proliferated: sustainable living, sustainable livelihoods, sustainable agriculture, sustainable cities, sustainable food systems, sustainable design, sustainability science, sustainability literacy, sustainable governance, sustainable business, and sustainable consumption. Engelman (2013) claims it is a diffuse synonym for something considered ‘green’, an equally vague adjective often coopted as a form of corporate greenwashing. Nevertheless, there are many declarations, statements of principles and accompanying criteria that act as commitment documents for each of these foci (see Edwards, 2005). In an effort to bring meaningfulness to signed declarations and claims of sustainable practices, new measurement systems, performance indicators, audits and independent verification bodies have been developed for individuals, communities, institutions, businesses and nations to determine progress toward sustainability. In sum, the diffusion of the term and related activities can lead to contradictory conclusions. First, it is clear that sustainability is a key environmental concept that now has gained currency in popular culture over the last twenty years. Second, there is a rising public awareness of climate science and the consequences of human action on the environment. Third, environmental concerns have now entered into global and national economic discussions. Fourth, ‘sustainability’ as a theme has been more palatable than ‘environmentalism’ in providing conditions for a global debate and some consensus (Selby & Kagawa 2015). Fifth, on the flip side, the vagueness and the vast political disagreements illustrate the growing meaninglessness of the concept. Sixth, it has become clear that sustainability is an interdisciplinary and holistic endeavor and thus is difficult to implement in disciplinary silos. Seventh, the spectrum of sustainability claims illustrates it might indeed be emptied to a 5

buzzword or vacuous fad. Eighth, and more critically, it has been argued that the term is used by corporate business to camouflage the results of disaster capitalism, as global corporations over the last thirty years use disasters and crises to push through exploitative policies and practices while the public is distracted (Klein 2007). New language to replace sustainability or envision beyond it continues to emerge, such as ‘vibrant, resilient, thrivable or even flourishing’ societies. But no other concept as yet has captured the multi-faceted vision as sustainability. Despite the struggle for new language, the contestations, and elasticity of the concept sustainability as well as its cooptation in some quarters, it still has meaning if it points to a general consensus about what has value (Dresner 2002). It is suggested here that the concept of sustainability can be seen as a floating signifier that can produce alliances across diverse groups and can assist in rethinking educational discourse. Maser (1996) argues for a process view of sustainability that is flexible and open to community definition in local contexts. Eichler (cited in Clover, 2002) and Tilbury et al (2002) agree sustainability is a fluid concept that best evolves in relation to context. Historical Context of Sustainability Education A proliferation of monikers related to environmental and sustainability education, underlaid by theoretical as well as political differences, contribute to sustainababble. In national contexts, the most common usage tends to relate to governance, funding, education structures and environmental history. The more common terms are: Environmental Education (EE); Environmental Adult Education (EAE); Education for Sustainability (EFS); Sustainability Education; Ecopedagogy; and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). Over all, environmental and sustainability education typically occur across four learning sites: primary and secondary schooling; higher education and vocational training; civil society including nongovernment organizations (NGOs), continuing education, social movements and social media; and workplaces, professional associations, and unions. As the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO, 2009) has indicated, the richest and most creative environmental and sustainability education is generated by NGOs and civil society organizations who work in nonformal and informal settings, without significant funds. The initial slow uptake by policy actors and governments led to NGOs taking the lead in terms of community activism, social learning, organizational learning and awareness raising (Atkinson & Wade, 2015). However, it is clear in many sectors that strong political leadership led by and supported by grassroots activism and community education is most effective. However, the role of civil society in sustainability education and the linkage between politics, pedagogy and sustainability has not been well captured by research. The following provides an overview of the linkages between the environmental movement, environmental education, and education for sustainable development prior to a discussion of current sustainability education. Environmentalism The roots of the environmental movement could be said to have originated in a moral and cultural critique of the Industrial Revolution, beginning in Britain (Guha 2000). While the environmental movement commonly marks its inauguration from Earth Day in New York, 1970, there were three significant antecedents which continually play out in environmental politics and environmental education.

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The rise of nation states and rapid deforestation by newly industrializing powers led to legal interventions to create forest preserves. The scientific conservation movement promoted ‘wise use in the “public interest” using scientific management’ (Guha 2000). With the destruction of wild animals through the continual hunting expeditions of colonials, the nature and wilderness conservation movement emerged yielding international conventions, wilderness and wildlife societies, and the creation of wildlife reserves and national parks. The concept of wilderness arose, land whose integrity should not be disturbed particularly as an important site for the leisure activities of growing numbers of city dwellers. Today, the 1980 World Conservation Strategy still remains an influential document, receiving periodic updates. The Sierra Club and World Wildlife Fund, for instance, are still players in the environmental movement and act as informal and nonformal sites of environment education for the public. Related to these movements, conservation education, nature study, and outdoor education became the earliest forms of environmentally-focused education (Disinger 2005). With decolonization in Africa, Asia and Latin America in the mid-20th century and the preoccupation with productivity and production after WWII, international development became an era of activity predicated on ‘deeply humane and democratic sensibilities’ (Guha 2000, p. 65), although it was equally shaped by calculated national and corporate self-interest (Sachs 1992). By the 1960s, social and cultural revolution in Western nations was symbolized by May 1968 in Paris as students occupied universities and factories triggering mass strikes and the Berkeley University protests which coalesced the anti-war, civil rights and free speech movements. Many new social movements emerged at this time: the peace/anti-war, feminist, civil rights, Indigenous rights, gay rights, anti-capitalism, anti-consumerism, and other counter-cultural movements against the ‘establishment’. Into this vibrant context, Rachel Carson (1962) released her seminal research Silent Spring accounting for the loss of songbirds due to the unregulated rise of chemical pesticides and herbicides. It was a statement not only on the widespread contamination of invisible toxins but also the interlinked nature of ecosystems and the delicacy of living relationships. By the 1970s, there was a global consensus that there was a global environmental ‘crisis’ in terms of pollution and that Limits to Growth were needed (Meadows & Club of Rome 1972). The pressure of activists led to environmental protection law, protection agencies, pollution controls, international treaties as well as initiatives in the formal education sector in many countries. This rise in public environmental discourse is a testament to the compelling achievement of environmentalism as a social movement with a learning dimension. They engaged in public communication using their own interpretive frames (Della Porta & Diani 1999), triggered informal and incidental learning, created space for organized, experiential and action learning, and generated knowledge through their research and study (Kahn 2010; Hall 2009). Yet learning has remained a hidden dimension of social movements until recently (Hall 2009). Many NGOs would arise at this time, as a professionalization and routinization of the movement (Guha 2000). Environmental NGOs (ENGOs) typically incorporated public communication and educational materials as part of their mandates but remained aloof from the education field. Typically, they used one-way communication campaigns or informationeducation-communication strategies, largely as a top-down transmissive methodology (Belanger 2003). However, there was a growing realization that public awareness, cultural attitude shift, and legislation were not enough (Martin 1996). Given limited monetary and volunteer resources, NGOs needed to target their focus and develop niche marketing, whether endangered species, 7

animal rights, wetlands protection, and so forth. Yet, this structure maintains separateness from other sectors and competition among each other (Martin 1996). Eventually many NGOs would turn to the education field, not for pedagogical insight, but as an access point to influence primary, secondary and higher education audiences and curriculum with their messages. Measures of success are most commonly evidenced by curricular inclusion and project development. In Canada, Pierre Walter (2009) analyzed the educational philosophies that informed the work of many ENGOs to illustrate the commonality of behaviourist, liberal, humanist and radical approaches with that of the adult education field, to encourage the field to engage with ENGOs. In the late 1970s, after the oil crisis and expansion of nuclear power, environmentalists realized established political parties were unlikely to embrace an environmental platform. Thus, in a daring political experiment, the German Green Party established itself in 1979, representing a unique coalition across a rainbow of green (eco) and red (socialist) perspectives. They won significant political victories and continue to stand as a “moral challenge…to the governing beliefs of industrial civilization” (Guha 2000, p. 90). The continual rise of green parties elsewhere illustrates the importance of informal political and civic education through families, community organizations, and political parties, though remaining little theorized. Environmental Education The early decades of the environmental movement touched off the first wave of environmental education (EE) evident in the launch of The Journal of Environmental Education in 1969 and the formation of several organizations. The flagship North American Association for Environmental Education (NAAEE) in 1971 now has connections to 55 countries, many regional affiliates, and partner organizations in Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the United Arab Emirates. The UK Council for Environmental Education and the Scottish Environmental Education Council were also established in the 1970s. The 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment recommended that ‘environmental education’ be recognized and promoted in all countries. This coalesced into the Belgrade Charter (1976) representing the goal of environmental education: to develop a world population that is aware of, and concerned about, the environment and its associated problems and which has the knowledge, skills, attitudes, motivations, and commitment to work individually and collectively toward solutions of current problems and the prevention of new ones (UNESCO, 1976). The next year, the Tbilisi Declaration (1977) identified three objectives for environmental education in terms of fostering awareness, providing opportunities for knowledge acquisition, and creating new patterns of behaviour (UNESCO 1978). Much of the early conceptualization and promotion of environmental education came from these international gatherings and international agencies. In North America, environmental education grew initially in the higher education sector to assist college educators with resources, but it quickly expanded into and remained rooted in primary and secondary schooling (Disinger 2005). Seminal theorist Stapp (1969) theorized the role of environmental education as generating an ecologically knowledgeable citizenry, interdisciplinary problem-solving, and motivation toward action. The most significant debate became whether public educators needed to maintain ‘value-neutrality’ or ‘bias-balance’ by presenting all sides of an environmental issue, lest they become propagandists (Disinger 2005). 8

In a more nuanced argument, Bob Jickling (2005) asserted that the purpose of education is critical inquiry not environmental advocacy. One of the early critiques of environmental education regarded the affiliation with schooling (Simmons 1989). Adult educators critiqued the exclusion of adults from environmental education based on the old view of adults as “beyond learning” or ‘too irremediable’ (Jarvis 2009; Russell in Clover 2002). The importance of nonformal education and non-education sectors was largely ignored until the North American Association for Environmental Education conferences began to attract a wide range of professionals outside of classroom teachers and teacher educators—interpretive naturalists, conservationists, environmental researchers and scientists, museum and nature centre educators, resource and environmental managers, outdoor educators, government and industry communication specialists, and environmental activists. This led to tremendous organizational strains and tensions regarding philosophical approaches and vested interests (Disinger, 2005). It also highlighted the differences in privileging either the “environment” or “education”. Another early critique of environmental education was its home in the science curriculum and the focus on scientific investigation. Not only did this exclude many public school and higher education educators by subject discipline, it required high level science knowledge and field skills. In this way, science was not only exclusionary and often elitist but reductionist science was one cause of the epistemological predicament. It was proposed by David Orr that all education should be environmental education, as it concerns the human prospect (Orr 1992; 1994). Yet, another debate became the difficulty of integrating the holistic nature of environmental education into a discipline-specific schooling system. Even the architecture of schools reinforces separation, artificiality, passivity, monologue, and domination. The field then shifted the focus from environmental issues to the human-environmental relation and from attitude change to behaviour change. Environmental literacy became the key model (Roth 1992): building from awareness to environmental understanding; fostering an emotional, caring connection; capacity-building in terms of issue analysis, in-situ research and problem-solving; and community empowerment for resolving environmental issues. To capture the widening spectrum of practice in environmental education, Arthur Lucas (1991) distinguished approaches to environmental education as ‘education about, in and for the environment’—the first as information transmission, the second as a site for inquiry, and the latter as transformative in ethics and values. In the field of adult and lifelong learning, the dominant approaches of information transmission, behaviour modification, and attitude formation were critiqued as antithetical to sound educational inquiry (Clover 2003; Cole 2007). On one hand, some felt environmental education was too highly politicized for the adult education field (Imel 1990; Boggs 1986) while on the other hand it was critiqued for the focus on individual change rather than social movement engagement (Field 1989). Matthias Finger (1989) asserted that the problem-solving approach needed to give way to transformative learning regarding worldviews. In 1991, the International Council for Adult Education established Learning for the Environment Programme (LEAP) to provide one “place of encounter” for adult educators interested in an ecological framework for their practice (Clover 2004, p. vii). At Rio in 1992, Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 specifically focused on the critical role of education, public awareness, and training as a vital tool or instrument for promoting and achieving the goal of sustainable development. In a parallel gathering at Rio, the NGO Alternative Treaty on Environmental Education was signed, choosing to replace the word 9

‘development’ with ‘equity’. Out of this, the World Environmental Education Network (WEEC) was established. Nevertheless, education became the forgotten priority of Rio, as little activity ensued (Hamú in Tilbury et al 2002). With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the late 1980s and 1990s witnessed the acceleration of neoliberal economic globalization and structural adjustment programs. This shift denigrated social welfare infrastructure, promoted the privatization or market provision of formal education, defunded many sites of adult and lifelong education including development and environmental NGOs, and concentrated on ‘learning for earning’ in North America and ‘learning pays’ in the European Union. It decreased the role of the State as regulator and arbiter of social goods while increasing the power of economic elites and corporate freedom around the globe (Harvey 2005). Ortega (cited in Barber 1992) calls this an “artificial intensification of practices” (p. 62) that has led to decay, including a significant increase in environmental destruction, climate emissions, and social inequity over the last thirty years. Education for Sustainable Development Five years after Rio in 1997, UNESCO hosted the Thessalonikki Conference, profiling UNESCO’s responsibility in “reshaping education so as to promote attitudes and behaviours conducive to a culture of sustainability” (UNESCO 1997). The term sustainability had gained broad currency and this conference moved ahead to determine the key messages for what they called education for sustainable development (ESD), again acknowledging the concerns of both the Northern and Southern hemispheres. It emphasized that sustainability education needed to occur across the spectrum of lifelong learning: in the family and community, basic education and literacy, schooling, teacher education, public communication and awareness, and higher and vocational education. At this time, John Huckle and Stephen Sterling (1996) published one of the first books on Education for Sustainability (EFS) which examined the theory and practice across various formal, nonformal and informal sites engaged in sustainability education. The Thessalonikki conference triggered a heated dialogue about the connection between environmental education and education for sustainability development and whether the latter should supersede the former as a broader concept that included socio-cultural and economic concerns (Jickling, 2012; Monroe & Fien, 2015). Sterling (1996) questioned if sustainability was a fusion of environmental education and development education, while others suggested perhaps this concept would represent the confluence of many ‘adjectival educations’ including peace education, development education, multicultural and anti-racist education, feminist and sexual rights education, citizenship education, futures education, global education and human rights education (Goldstein & Selby 2000). Some, like Peter Martin (1996) advocated that environmental education be phased out and education for sustainability replace it. Pushing back, the World Environmental Education Congress held its first international conference in 2003, illustrating the tensions of conceptual territoriality. At the Rio+10 in Johannesburg (2002), UNESCO announced the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2005-2014), designed to go well beyond ecological concerns. The overall goal of the DESD is to integrate the principles, values and practices of sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning in order to encourage changes in behaviour that will create a more sustainable future in terms of environmental integrity, economic viability, and a just society for present and future generations (UNESCO 2005). 10

By the DESD mid-term report in 2009, a consensus on the meaning of education for sustainable development became less important and more a context for national dialogue. It was acknowledged that there were three kinds of relationships between environmental education and education for sustainable development, dependent on national context:  where the environmental education field was narrowly conceived, education for sustainable development updated or reformed it;  where the environmental education field was broadly conceived then education for sustainable development was understood as synonymous and terms were used strategically for funding purposes and initiatives used overlapping infrastructures; and  where the environmental education field was relatively undeveloped, education for sustainable development provided the concept and processes for initiating sustainability education nationally. However, with the global financial crisis in 2008-2009, funding became the key inhibitor to momentum. Then, with the 2009 Bonn Declaration, education for sustainable development was declared an integral component of all quality education for the 21st century, connecting the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals, Education for All, and the Literacy Decade (Duke & Hinzen 2012). Sustainability Education in Adult and Lifelong Education and Learning With the new millennium, thinking about environmental education and education for sustainable development began to deepen. John Huckle and Stephen Sterling (1996) and Martha Monroe and John Fien (2005) saw liberal and nature-based environmentalism as too shallow and narrow without the political economic and social analysis necessary for the creation of sustainable communities. In a potent critique, Anna Gahl Cole (2007) suggested environmental education needs cultural diversity to overcome its Western-centrism and the white, middle class, male orientation that parallels the environmental movement. Further, she called for a rethinking of the ways in which power, race, class, gender, and politics shape human interaction with land. New adult education publications appeared by Edmund O’Sullivan (1999) and Darlene Clover (1995) identifying the need for a new cosmology to guide education and drawing attention to the domination matrix where women, children, people of color, Indigenous people, and the natural world are oppressed, demanding a critical and transformative form of learning. In getting beyond environmental education’s implicit universalism, David Gruenewald (2003) encouraged place-based education, appropriate to a bioregion, in ways that resonate with local community. Jennifer Sumner (2005) suggested that sustainability requires the rebuilding of lifebased values and the civil commons. Robert Hill (2003) and Tuere Bowles (2007) advocated for an environmental justice orientation that examines unequal exposure to environmental risks by race and class. To enact an inclusive, anti-racist approach, Sandra Tan (2004) promoted alliance building with immigrant newcomer and visible minority communities. Paul Belanger (2003) offered a framework for environmental lifelong learning (ELL) to recognize the role that adult education could play in the ecological transformation of all educational practices. He identified the three most effective elements for environmental lifelong learning as: educating in the natural environment; pursuing content rooted in daily life contexts; synergy between lifelong and lifewide education across sectors; and interactive communities with feedback cycles connected to sustainability initiatives. For Karen Malone (2004), given that environmental adult education has its roots in the environmental movement and critical theory, it

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should be involved in critiquing hegemonic constructions of truth, constructing alternative worldviews, and nurturing educator-activists in social movements and community initiatives. In the final report for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNESCO, 2014) education was found to be an enabler for sustainable development. UNESCO helped to activate many international and national strategies that mandate education for sustainable development across formal education institutions and helped establish extensive partnerships and networks globally. They found that political leadership and multi-stakeholder partnerships are particularly effective in institutionalizing education for sustainable development. Yet, it is clear that short term electoral mandates are not amenable for making difficult, long term policies and that practice lags far behind policy commitments. However, there is now a strengthening global agenda. Other key findings were that: education for sustainable development is a lifelong learning process; community engagement is growing; and pedagogical innovation is advancing across all levels and areas of education, toward the central goal of learning to live and work sustainably. Early critiques of the Decade have centred on the instrumentalist approach to education and the top down implementation that treats educators as technicians rather than participatory contributors. The mid-report on the Decade did recognize that there was a spectrum of approaches, from an instrumental approach of behaviour change to more ‘pedagogical’ approaches that emphasize social learning, critical and imaginative thinking, democracy, and participatory collaboration as the reciprocal exchange of ideas (UNESCO, 2009). Impatience with the ponderousness of bureaucratic approaches and charges that UNESCO was perpetuating weak sustainability short on a critical and ethical view, resulted in calls for deeper change that could lead to societal transformation (Kahn 2010). Formal education sectors are important to change but this change process is difficult and time consuming. That said, the most effective approach has proven to be the ‘whole school’ and ‘whole institution’ approaches. However, what has become clear is that the most fruitful sites for sustainability education are nonformal and informal sites, largely in NGOs, civil society organizations, continuing education and social media. Practice on the ground is far ahead of policy and research. In these nonformal education and informal learning sites, educators note that the primary inhibitors are misunderstandings regarding the terminology, lack of networks for educators in terms of capacity-building, and lack of funding. Often these educators see education for sustainable development as formal education-centric with little acknowledgement of the importance of nonformal and informal sites, nationally or internationally (UNESCO 2009). The key issue remains funding, yet practitioners note the limitless scope for augmenting existing sustainability education in community learning spaces. To date, there is limited research addressing this potentiality in community-based sustainability education. The new 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals represents the merger of the Millennium Development Goals and Education for Sustainable Development. Goal 4.7 stipulates that inclusive and equal quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all must ‘ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including, among others, through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s contribution to sustainable development’ (United Nations, 2015). The 17 indivisible goals are a plan of action for people, planet and prosperity within a transformational vision which is meant to be farreaching and historic. This poses significant research potential and need for educator vitality. 12

The Polyarchy of Learning Edges in Transformative Sustainability Education Most intriguing has become the emerging discourse about the “exploration and implementation of new forms of teaching and learning across all sectors and interests” (UNESCO 2014). As the 2006 German UNESCO Commission (cited in Duke & Hinzen 2012) summarizes: Because of its interdisciplinary nature, the global image of sustainable development poses a challenge to the entire education system, calling for new teaching methods and a cross-subject approach. Out-of-school education…react[s] flexibly to consequent new demands and to promote new initiatives… [and offers] skills which are indispensable for the future shaping of our society and for meeting our responsibilities as world citizens (p. 22). Educational institutions are straining at their edges to accommodate transdisciplinary approaches to education and the profoundly different cosmology, ontology and epistemology that are part of deeper understandings of sustainability. Managerialism, institutionalization and disciplinary silos form the core of formal education, isolating it from other sectors and sites of learning. Further, current schooling structures emerged as an integral part of the Industrial Revolution and thus are deeply implicated in the current economic structure. One learning edge is the discussion at UNESCO and other mainstream institutions which now point to the elephant in the room: the global economic structure. It evident that the selfinterestedness of political and economic systems as well as self-perpetuating bureaucratic institutions cannot fundamentally question the operational assumptions upon which they are built. Yet, a fundamental transformation in human habitation, harmonized with living planet dynamics, is needed. This is what we are learning our way into, through many community innovations, but it is highly contextual. Many suggest that a new world is already being built on many fronts and on many levels by individuals and communities willing to experiment and learn into a new way of being (Turner, 2007; Wheatley & Frieze, 2011). These hope-filled community experiments, despite all the pitfalls and human frailties, are well documented around the globe (Esteva & Prakash, 1998; Estill, 2008; Turner, 2007; Bernard & Young, 1997; Wheatley & Frieze, 2011). They are creating the understory of new societies from where the tissue of family and village can be reknit. In essence, they use self-organizing principles that rejuvenate civic cultures and create an ecologically literate population based on knowledge of their geographic place, part of placebased education (Orr, 1992; Grunewald & Smith 2008). A vital learning edge comes from complexity science and living systems theory which move beyond the scientific epistemology of empiricism and logical rationalism and the ontology of autonomous individualism as independent rational agents. Quantum physics describes the subatomic reality of the universe as interchangeable between matter and energy, part of a vast creative and living network (Barad, 2007; Spretnak, 2011). As Spretnak (2011) asserts, we have only begun to explore “the deeply relational nature of reality” (p. 1). Challenging Cartesian habits of mind implicit in both traditional realism and representationalism, feminist physicist Karen Barad proposes a relational ontology that rejects ‘thingification’ or the metaphysics of individual entities/relata which preexist any relations that hold them together. Her starting point is the phenomena itself or the relations within which the entities/relata emerge. She uses the term intra-action, contrasting with the term interaction between independent entities, to illustrate the inseparability of the observer and the observed and the subject and object, within the phenomena. Boundaries and properties of entities/relata are 13

performed into existence (see also Fenwick and Edwards, 2013). Thus, she rejects the classical ontology of exteriority between observer and observed or of the gap between representations and that which they represent. The self is considered “porous and permeable, in interdependent corelation” with all other entities (Danvers, 2009). “Existence is not an individual affair…To be entangled is not simply to be intertwined with another, as in the joining of separate entities, but to lack an independent, self-contained existence. Individuals do not pre-exist their interaction; rather individuals emerge through and as part of their entangled intra-relating” (Barad 2007, p. ix; italics added). Moreover, matter is not a fixed substance or thing, but “a doing, a congealing of agency” (Barad 2003, p. 822). As part of posthumanism, matter is not dead but “an active participant in the world’s becoming” (p. 803). Spretnak (2011) explains that “[i]nherent relationships with our bodymind, with other people, with animals, with the rest of nature all interact and infuse each other, making us what we are. It is not merely a matter of having relationships but being relationships” (p. 11). Our being is a constellation of relationships and our mind is a collective affair, largely opposed to what we have been taught in modern education, including academe (Spretnak, 2011). In a radical reconception of epistemology, then, knowing is part of being (Barad 2007). “Humans are part of the world-body space…where knowing is a distributed practice” (p. 341). We are embedded and embodied in a particular context which shapes us, but it is not a containerself bounded by skin and brain and it is not something inside/outside self. “All knowers are social beings in-relation-with-others, and therefore separation or detachment is now seen as a particular [culturally informed] way of relating to others” (Thayer-Bacon, 2015, p. 10). Relational ethics, then, extends the moral scope to the integrity, stability and beauty of whole ecosystems, including all living and nonliving elements. But this is not relational ethics that refers to a relation between two subjects but rather where we are fundamentally individualsin-relations, with the human and more-than-human world. As humans, from birth on, we are embedded and embodied in a particular social and ecological context which shapes who we are and our perceptual cognition (Thayer-Bacon, 2003). In understanding that our bodymind is composed of relationships that are not bound by our skin and that are constantly changing, we become part of the visible and invisible patterns of energy as well as materiality. Also from the New Science, Swimme and Berry (1992), O’Sullivan (1999), Hathaway and Boff (2009), and Macy (2015) advance that a new cosmological story is available to us in which humans situate themselves in the unfolding universe story. This story is the convergence between New Science and some ancient spiritual wisdom traditions, moving beyond a mechanistic cosmology of a linear cause-effect universe to a vast, creative living network embedded in a subtle energy force field and a multidimensional space-time continuum. Research is only now emerging on a posthumanist, agential realism approach to sustainability education, with much more to be done (O’Neil 2015). The last learning edge, discussed here, relates to critical pedagogy, based on the work of Paulo Freire (1970), which has been largely quiet on the environmental front. In the vociferous debates in Rio, the South argued that the concept of environment and proposed environmental frameworks were all constructions of the North who remain uncritical of their hemispheric perspectives. They argued against the common perception that “societies of the Third World are too poor to be green” and that modernity and affluence are the conditions that spawn environmental movements (Guha 2000, p. 99). Yet, the Save the Narmada River Movement in India, Kenya’s Waangari Matthai and the Green Belt movement, Nigerian Ken Saro-Wiwa and 14

the Survival of the Ogoni People movement, the Chipko or hug-a-tree movement in the Himalayas, Brazilian Chico Mendes and the rubber-tappers or the Landless Rural Workers’ Movement are just a few examples of well-known movements opposing oil production, dams, mining, logging, monocultural agriculture and privatization of resources. Typically, these movements do not artificially separate “environment” into an object or category. More often, social justice and environmental concerns are part of the defense of rural or indigenous livelihoods (Guha 2000, p. 105). Too often, subsistence dwellers and Indigenous peoples are asked to make a “national sacrifice” of their land, water and livelihoods for progress. Thus, environmentalism in the South is rooted in material conflicts aimed at changing production structures, rather than value and lifestyle change. Moreover, a key feature of the ‘environmentalism of the poor’ is not only the role of spirituality but the “determining part played by women…assuming leadership roles and making up the numbers in marches and demonstrations, strikes and fasts. They have been unafraid, in an often brutal political culture, of being harassed, beaten or jailed” (p. 107). These movements build on Traditional Ecological Knowledge of indigenous peoples in opposition to the scientism that proliferates in environmentalism. Out of these debates and movements, grew the nascent international ecopedagogy movement (Kahn 2010). A colleague of Freire, Gadotti (2008) argues that sustainability will not be possible in an economy centred on profit and competition that rewards greed and predation. Only social mobilization against this current economic model and the strengthening of global civil society experimenting with models predicated on a gift economy and an economy of solidarity and cooperation will bring about sustainability. Maximizing social well-being and happiness is the goal, rather than maximizing economic growth (Hathaway & Boff 2009). This international movement is starting to synthesize grassroots social movements, alternative social institutions, community-based learning and popular education movements (Kahn, 2010). To rethink the dominant education and learning paradigm, Gadotti (2010) summarizes “Simply improving the current model of education is to continue to follow the educational model that has been destroying the planet since the nineteenth century” (p. 210). The artificial separations of disciplines, ages, institutions, community and movements need to blur. ‘Educating for another possible world is educating for life in networks, being capable of communicating and acting in groups, and creating cooperative methods of production’ (Gadotti 2008, p. 26). Learning in community clusters that partner existing government, formal education, NGOs and civil society organizations in intergenerational, experiential and transformative learning processes begins to move toward a more expansive view of a ‘learning society as sustainability’ (O’Neil 2015). A Civilization Leap Hawken (1997) concludes that this is the movement with no name. Sustainability has been used to denote it but really it has no ideology, no universal goals, slogans or key leaders. Its form grows from the context. It is a polyarchy of learning edges. Thus, deep sustainability education is not instrumentalist or doctrinal, but profoundly relational work. As faith in the current systems fail and climate change progresses, the basic purpose of sustainability education is to link people, help to reclaim and generate needed knowledge, and foster the free flow of information for self-organization. For a civilizational leap, transformative sustainability education toward a relational ontoepistemology and ethical sensibility is important but restorative learning to revivify subjugated ways of knowing is also vital (Lange, 2004; 15

2015a; 2015b). Creating space for a political and economic imagination and for mobilization in the face of turbulent times is an act of hope in the future.

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