3 + 1: The Environmental, Social and Economic Dimensions Within a Specific Cultural Context

Let's consider this model, and understand the importance of the place where we live — the concept of “locality.”

When we talk about Sustainable Development (SD), I mean a harmonious, balanced development. Economics might say that combining these two concepts creates an oxymoron, since everything that is developing can't, by definition, be sustainable. In the case of Education Towards Sustainable Development (ESD), what we're after is development that balances environmental, social and economic aspects within a specific cultural context — this is what I call 3 + 1.

The first dimension is the environmental one. This was the dimension that woke humanity up. Books like Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, in 1962, drew attention to the relationship between economic growth, development and environmental degradation. Another example is the Club of Rome and its 1972 report The Limits to Growth, which lays out the gap between the exponential growth of variables like population, industrialization and pollution, and technology's inability to increase the availability of resources. People who studied nature realized that human behavior was creating a gap between our way of life and what the planet can actually offer. It wasn't easy to accept, and to this day we're still trying to convince people of it, even though every year we have more and more evidence of this gap — and that it keeps growing.

ESD tries to develop new patterns of behavior in our students, and to teach them what nature is and how it works. ESD practices focus on the environment and on our resources, with the goal of educating future generations and preparing them for a tough duty: closing the gap, and leaving it narrower for the next generation. ESD practices will depend on the area you're in, and will vary according to the needs and problems that arise. Part of the approach is exploring what surrounds us and discovering it — which is, in fact, meaningful education.

Source: The Cloud Institute for Sustainability Education – https://cloudinstitute.org

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The second dimension, the Social one, is essential. You might expect this to be the most important, because we are the ones who, through our behavior, cause these problems in the first place. It took us time to become aware of our own behavior and of the causal relationship between the environment and ourselves. In 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment was held in Sweden. On one hand, by referring to the Human Environment, it connected the ecological perspective to its implications for the human race. They could have chosen to speak about ecological problems on their own terms, without connecting them to human beings and their behavior. Instead, they addressed ecological management alongside poverty alleviation.

Through its social dimension, ESD aspires to change our behavior toward one another, regardless of race, religion, culture, ability or disability, grounded in an essential idea of unity. Mutual respect and our diversity are fundamental to living on this planet in harmony. Alongside that, stepping outside the walls of our educational institutions is essential — living together and bringing the community into the whole process. Remember, students and educators should not be alienated from what happens beyond the walls of the educational institution, just as the wider community should stay connected to what happens within them.

Short exercise: Ask your colleagues who they consider part of your educational community, and compare the different lists.

Chances are you'll have forgotten your institution's neighbors, the cleaning staff, the security guard (if you have one). The list goes on, but the point is that everyone should be part of the educational journey you want to take your students on. Make education real and inclusive.

The third dimension is the Economic one. The key issues here are consumption versus consumerism, alternative economies, the story behind the objects we use, and a paradigm shift in understanding that development shouldn't always mean wanting more, but rather seeking balance.

The charts we use to represent our understanding of the economy are not consistent with the planet we actually live on.

Despite today's economic axioms, our planet doesn't function like a curve chasing ever-higher returns — it functions like a cycle. Everything in nature lives and operates in terms of endless cycles, and that is the way we should be shaping our economy.

ESD faces a tough fight here. The way the economy is organized and conceived has an impact on how we live. Capitalism, which governs most (if not all) of the world, has become part of our cultural DNA as human beings. Remarkably, it's easier for us to picture humanity starting over from scratch after a nuclear war (there are plenty of films about that) than to picture our world without capitalism.

Remember, the way our economy is organized rests on social agreements, which means what these agreements will look like in the future depends on each one of us. The challenge, as educators, is to show that we can shape our economy based on human values, and that it shouldn't work the other way around. We need to think alongside our students, and encourage them to look at the economy differently.

That said, I spoke of 3 + 1. The “1” is our specific cultural and political context, which will shape our perception of the other three dimensions. This is also why it's so important not to look for external definitions, but instead to build our own, contextual understanding of the world around us — always looking at the global level while acting and focusing locally. We call this GloCal, and it is a key to implementing ESD.

In my view, to apply this approach you need to make it your own, and the only way to do that, as with any educational process, is to look at it through your own “glasses,” and understand and adapt it according to your context.