May 2014

  • To E SD or to ESD? This seems to be a question

    Should ESD be about sustainable development at all? An odd question to ask, perhaps, and many will think the response a no-brainer, as we watch coasts crumble and sea levels rise, the skies grow darker yet, and poverty and injustice...

  • Watch your language

    The Guardian reports that university researchers recommend saying global warming rather than climate change if you want to influence Americans.  The two terms are often used interchangeably but they generate very different responses, according to researchers from Yale and George Mason Universities....

  • Remembering Peter Martin discomforting an audience

    In an FT [1] review of Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism, by David Harvey, and Utopia or Bust: a guide to the present crisis, by Benjamin Kunkel, Martin Sandbu raises a point about the viewing of difficult and...

  • What's 'fair' about Fairtrade? Discuss

    The Guardian reports that a study sponsored by the UK government has cast doubt on the effectiveness of Fairtrade in East Africa.  Generally, the study found, wages were higher on farms that were larger, commercial and not Fairtrade-certified.  Even comparing...

  • If you had £93.50 to spare ...

    ... would you spend it on WL (F)'s new book?  Me neither, even though it has been digitally water-marked.   The book, according to the normally reliable SDRN, is "... published as part of the award-winning ‘Climate Change Management Series’, led by...

  • No time for PISA

    There was a headline in the Guardian recently which ran: Global school tests under attack as OECD accused of killing 'joy of learning' It began:  Leading academics have accused the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) of acting as...

  • Selibra cineris coacta cani – the last indignity of death

    I'm no great fan of Druids, particularly the Wiltshire set who always seem to be claiming far too much for themselves in terms of their presence in, and influence on,  antiquity, and even pre-history.  Time spent in the museum in...

  • #NewDealforWork – #butisitthinkingaboutsustainability?

    To coincide with celebrations for International Workers’ Day, NUS recently launched a Commission on the Future of Work which is a call for evidence from students and stakeholders from across the private, public and not for profit sectors on the...

  • Madeline by name – but mandoline by nature?

    Rumours abound that the new(ish) HEFCE CEO, Madeleine Atkins, has been slicing and dicing the funding council's commitments to sustainability.  She wants, it's said, more of a hard-edged focus on the environment and less attention given to fluffier social justice stuff...

  • There are orderly queues forming in Manchester

    The outline programme of WSSD-U-2014 to be held in Manchester this September is now availableAs the conference maître d, Walter Leal (Filho) has not managed to find anyone good enough to provide the inaugural lecture, he's going to give it...