Tomorrow Today

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From Tbilisi to Bonn: an important

journey in the historical context of ESD

Charles Hopkins, UNESCO and United Nations University Chairs in ESD, York University, Toronto, Canada

t is no easy feat to do justice to the many and complex sources

that have contributed to the formation and nurturing of

education for sustainable development (ESD).

Any civilization that has survived the test of time has somehow

mastered a systemic way to embed ecological understanding into

its cultural and economic DNA. The world’s ‘successful’ cultures

from a longevity perspective (largely its indigenous and traditional

cultures) have sustained themselves for thousands of years by

remaining within their ecological limits. Those cultures that have

ignored the importance of preparing their next generation with this

wisdom have become ghostly indicators of cultural ineptitude. Their

only remaining purpose is to be a warning for those future genera-

tions that are wise enough to understand these indicators and to

heed them. Hence, the need to engage the world’s education, public

awareness and training systems has been unanimously recognized

by those leaders who want informed change and overall lasting

development.

The historical context of the journey from Tbilisi to Bonn should

not ignore the parallel processes within the worlds of formal and non-

formal education and training. The emergence of corporate social

responsibility in the private sector as well as the ability of popular

culture to address sustainability issues in engaging fashion are of

equally tremendous importance. The emergence of thousands of new

NGOs and the ongoing contribution of the stalwart pillars of society

such as religion, justice, healthcare etc. also are intertwined with the

world of ESD and deserve their own recognition.

The growth of ESD

The emergence of education for sustainable development is largely

attributable to the Agenda 21 work programme of the United

Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED)

in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This programme called for action on 40

different fronts, grouped into four distinct groupings:

• Economic and social issues

• Environmental issues

• Major groups to be targeted for engagement

• Means of implementation.

This last grouping was addressed in Chapter 36, which specifically

spoke of the need for engaging education systems and public aware-

ness opportunities and identified the need for sustainability-oriented

training in all sectors. The need for ESD was also mentioned in

Agenda 21’s other chapters and in the work programmes of all the

major UN conferences of the 1990s. ESD was unanimously accepted

as a crucial element of the sustainability agenda and it seemed logical

that the world’s education systems would take this on

as a key piece of the global implementation plan. This

was not to be the easy task that the leaders anticipated.

Those who drafted the ESD chapter between 1987

and 1992 were heavily influenced by their own back-

grounds and by other events during this period. One of

these was the emergence of environmental education

(EE) roughly ten years earlier, as described in the Tbilisi

Declaration in 1977. The majority of the drafters were

aware of EE and many were actually involved in the

Tbilisi process.

However, they were also very aware of the Jomtien

Declaration of 1990, which recognized that approxi-

mately 120 million children had no opportunity for

education of any kind, let alone environmental educa-

tion. This was more than all the school age children

in Europe and the USA combined. Without educa-

tion there would be no development at all, let alone

sustainable development. Jomtien called for a concerted

programme known today as Education for All (EFA).

Hence the first thrust of ESD called for access to quality

basic education. This was the most prominent distin-

guishing feature of ESD and has eventually led to its

wider acceptance in the formal education community.

There was also an awareness of the limited influence

within formal education of additional topics or ‘adjec-

tival’

educations as John Smyth, one of the drafters,

called them. The final draft of Agenda 21 pointed out

that we should learn from EE and that nations should

engage education in its entirety, implying that the addi-

tion of another adjectival was unnecessary. The drafters

were also aware of the many existing adjectivals that

would be able to contribute and refrained from simply

implying that the solution would be an enhanced EE

programme.

The forty chapters of Agenda 21 were distributed

amongst the various UN agencies for leadership and

monitoring. UNESCO was the UN agency that was

given the responsibility for moving Chapter 36 forward

but not a single nation volunteered additional funding

to assist. Staff and budgets had to be found within the

existing UNESCO funding, which was already stretched

due to the withdrawal of the UK and USA. To make

matters worse, in many countries, sustainability was

largely administered by environment ministries. For

the most part, ministries of education did not view