If you read the official UNESCO account of the opening of the ESDFest in Aichi-Nagoya, you cannot but help be struck by how much the environment features. Here's the Crown Prince of Japan:
"On our earth today, along with economic growth and increasing populations, we are also witnessing the advancing change of climate, loss of biodiversity, depletion of natural resources, increases in poverty and other problems. For our children and theirs, we have three important tasks: protecting the Earth's environment, which is the wellspring for ensuring lives abundant with blessings, treasuring the Earth's limited resources, and achieving sustainable development."
"increases in poverty and other problems", seems an oddly dismissive way to describe the outrages and needless miseries faced by so many people across the world today.
And here is Princess Lalla Hasnaa of Morocco:
"To think and act for the sake of the environment - in the broadest sense of the term - means to be fully aware that the planet is not only a precious legacy, but that it also implies a tremendous responsibility for us in terms of preserving the interests of future generations."
Doesn't, "act for the sake of the environment" seems rather uni-dimentional. What about people?
Traditional environmental educators, everywhere, will no doubt be cheered, but is this really UNESCO's message after 10 years of promoting ESD?
Or were these good folk just seriously off-message?
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