Tomorrow Today

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Change for a better world:

assessing the contribution of the DESD

Professor Daniella Tilbury, Chair of the UNESCO DESD Monitoring and

Evaluation Expert Group and Director of Sustainability at the University of Gloucestershire, UK

he scope of the United Nations Decade of Eductaion for

Sustainable Development (DESD) is broad and its poten-

tial effects are far-reaching. If it is successful, the DESD

could transform not only education but also the quality of life

for many people across the globe.

Acknowledging the poten-

tial impact of the DESD, UNESCO established a Monitoring and

Evaluation Expert Group (MEEG) in 2007 to advise on appro-

priate monitoring mechanisms to assess global progress, and

UNESCO’s contribution to the implementation of the DESD.

After its first meeting in 2007, the MEEG recommended that

UNESCO publish three DESD implementation reports during the

life of the Decade:

• 2009: Focusing on the context and structure of work for ESD

• 2011: Focusing on processes and learning related to ESD

• 2015: Focusing on impacts and outcomes of the DESD.

The DESD International Implementation Scheme (UNESCO 2005)

sets out the main trajectory of ESD as well as global milestones for

the ten-year period, to provide the basis for reporting. The Scheme

identifies monitoring and evaluation as part of the implementa-

tion strategy and recommends the development of indicators at

all levels.

The 2009 DESD Monitoring and Evaluation Report

informed

dialogue and reflections at Bonn as well as the UNESCO strategy for

the second half of the DESD (UNESCO 2010). To prepare the 2011

report, and in keeping with previous experience of the

implementation process of Phase I of the DESD monitor-

ing and evaluation process, UNESCO commissioned a

Phase II framework.

Several components underpin the Phase II frame-

work in its attempt to capture the diversity of policy

and practice and to assess their contribution to the

attainment of sustainable development. The cluster of

data sources proposed includes an authoritative review

of literature in ESD to clarify the types of learning

processes that are most clearly aligned with ESD,

well as the contributions of ESD learning activities to

sustainable development.

Assessing the contribution of education and learn-

ing to sustainable development

Two key premises are embedded within the core ESD

literature. The first is that at this time, no country in

the world is living sustainably. As Prescott Allen notes

in his book,

Wellbeing of Nations

, there is no roadmap

or recipe for success and therefore we have to learn our

way towards more sustainable futures.

This notion also

underpins the UNESCO literature, which recognizes

the international consensus that achieving sustainable

development is essentially a process of learning.

The second premise is that sustainable development

requires a shift in the mental models that frame our

thinking and inform our decisions and actions.

This

is reflected in national and international policies from

around the globe as well as the goals of specific national

and regional programmes.

This combined understanding of sustainable devel-

opment provides the foundation for ESD efforts and

informs the intended contributions of ESD activities to

sustainable development. The ESD literature has only

recently begun to feature evaluative studies that map

the outcomes of ESD projects and programmes. For

this reason, several case studies were written to inform

Phase II of the DESD evaluation.

These studies provide

important opportunities to assess these types of contri-

butions in greater detail than is possible from studying

the experiences documented in the existing literature.

An analysis of the case studies reveals that changes are

being nurtured at several levels: social, economic, envi-

ronmental and educational. Although the effects and

Sustainable livelihoods: a solution to help populations to reduce poverty