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ESD in a developing nation
Kartikeya V. Sarabhai, The Centre for Environment Education, India
T
he United Nations Environment Programme campaign
slogan for World Environment Day 2008 was ‘CO
2
:
Kick the Habit!’ The Centre for Environment Education
(CEE) was asked by the Ministry of Environment and Forests,
Government of India to publicize the campaign in India. At CEE,
we asked ourselves the question: “What would such a slogan
mean to a person in a village in India who perhaps has never
had an electricity connection, and has no running water and no
toilet?” Which CO
2
-intensive activity was a poor rural Indian
family meant to ‘kick’? Or take those who live in a city in India.
40 per cent of urban dwellers in India live in slums with no real
access to energy-intensive amenities. How are they going to kick
a habit that they could never afford to have in the first place? It
was obvious that a new slogan was required in India. We then
decided to replace the word ‘kick’ with ‘pick’ and transformed
the campaign slogan into ‘CO
2
: Pick Right’, which urges people
to consider the need to make developmental choices that are
sustainable.
Earlier in 1992, CEE was asked to prepare India’s report to the UN
Conference on Environment and Development in Rio, Brazil. In that
report we emphasized the fact that the real challenge for a country
like India was not ‘how to get there’ but ‘how not to’. By this we
meant that while the dominant development paradigm was pulling
all developing nations towards achieving living standards that
emulated the largely unsustainable lifestyles of the Western devel-
oped nations, the challenge for these nations really was to break
away from a development approach that was merely imitative of
the West and to embark on an alternative development pathway by
making choices that were indeed different, appropriate and sustain-
able – to ‘pick right’.
Thus while education for sustainable development (ESD) in devel-
oped nations may indeed be designed to retool society and lifestyles
by kicking several bad habits, in a developing country, ESD needs
to focus more on empowering people by making them aware and
giving them the ability, knowledge and self confidence to make
sustainable choices. Indeed, empowerment through education and
awareness has been at the core of CEE’s strategy for ESD in India.
CEE’s efforts towards education for sustainable development
CEE was set up as a centre of excellence in environment and sustain-
ability education in 1984 as a partnership between the Ministry of
Environment and Forests, Government of India and the Nehru
Foundation for Development, a non-governmental organization
(NGO). Started initially with a focus on the formal educational
system, CEE has evolved ESD strategies in several key programme
areas, which highlight how ESD in a developing country must
encompass a wide variety of educational situations and opportu-
nities, as well as partnerships with a wide variety of
groups. The following reports describe the evolution of
these programmes, as well as the slow but steady main-
streaming of ESD as a priority in the country.
1. ESD and the school system
The Indian Constitution states that it is the responsi-
bility of every citizen to protect the environment. In
response to public interest litigation, the Supreme
Court of India has said that if citizens are to fulfil their
duty, they must learn about the environment. As a
result, in 2003, a Supreme Court judgment made teach-
ing of environmental studies mandatory for all levels
of formal education. The school curriculum therefore
needed to be reviewed in this context. Between 1999
and 2000, CEE participated in a massive exercise that
analysed all school textbooks in over 15 languages in
India to identify the topics through which environmen-
tal and sustainability concepts could be introduced or
strengthened. Over the next five years (2000 to 2005)
all textbooks in the country were revised to include
environmental education. The next step was to train
teachers in environmental education. CEE played a
critical role in training master teachers in all states.
Wildlife and eco-clubs have a long history in India and
the National Green Corps programme of the Ministry of
Environment and Forests supports eco-clubs in schools.
Today there are nearly 100,000 schools enrolled in this
programme.
CEE and the Ministry of Environment and Forests have
launched a nationwide programme called Paryavaran
Mitra, or friends of the environment. Through this,
we reach out to nearly 200,000 schools with an ESD
programme that focuses on energy, waste management,
biodiversity and greening, water, culture and heritage.
This programme has resulted in an alliance with the state
education departments and industry (ArcelorMittal) and
connects schools with grassroots level NGOs.
2. ESD in higher education
Colleges and universities can play a very significant part
not only in creating a better understanding of sustain-
ability among their students and making their own
campuses sustainable, but also in reaching out to those
outside college. CEE has involved students in monitor-
ing the environment. This work leads to the ground
truthing of environmental data and is a very instructive
scientific activity.