The UN takes a dim view

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has initiated a number of processes to help devise the sustainable development goals (SDGs) that will maxise benefit for humanity during the years 2015-2030.  One of these, the sustainable development solutions network (SDSN) has identified ten priority challenges of sustainable development in a recent report:

1. End extreme poverty including hunger
2. Achieve development within planetary boundaries
3. Ensure Effective Learning for All Children and Youth for Life and Livelihood
4. Achieve Gender Equality, Social Inclusion, and Human Rights for All
5. Achieve Health and Wellbeing at All Ages
6. Improve Agriculture Systems and Raise Rural Prosperity
7. Empower Inclusive, Productive, and Resilient Cities
8. Curb Human‐Induced Climate Change and Ensure Clean Energy for All
9. Secure Ecosystem Services and Biodiversity, Ensure Good Management of Water and Other Natural Resources
10. Transform Governance for Sustainable Development ..

… which, it says, could form the basis for the SDGs that would apply to all countries up to 2030.

This report has nothing to say about ESD, although there is a reference to “education in sustainable development” (see below).  There are, however, numerous references to learning, including the idea that children everywhere should actually learn the SDGs to help them understand the challenges that they will confront as adults.

Section 3, where reference to ESD might have been anticipated, is really an updating of the UN’s Education for All goals.  But if you want to see how little the UN understands about sustainable development, then turn to Annex 2 which sets out educational statements, disaggregated across the “four dimensions of sustainable development” [sic].  These include …

GOAL 3 – Ensure Effective Learning for All Children and Youth for Life and Livelihood

Economic Development and Eradication of Poverty

Effective learning is critical for creating job opportunities and livelihoods for people at all ages, which in turn drives economic development

Social Inclusion

Effective learning is critical for creating job opportunities and livelihoods  for people at all ages, which in turn promotes social inclusion

Environmental Sustainability

Improved education and awareness, including education in sustainable development, will generate innovation and leadership for environmental sustainability

Governance including Peace and Security

Educated and informed citizens will contribute to and uphold good governance and lower the risk of conflict and insecurity

It’s hard to know what to make of such an unsophisticated confection, save that the UN takes no notice of UNESCO, or the Decade, and has an astoundingly naïve view of sustainable development.  All this is hugely disappointing, but instructive for those activists who promote ESD in that it's not ESD that important to the UN; rather it's sustainable development and what it terms 'effective learning'.  It follows that promoting an interest in learning our way into the future in the post-Decade decade will be better done if the focus is on what students, academics and teachers are themselves interested in, and not what ESD orthodoxies tell them they really ought to be focused on.  Then there might be more young, and not so young, people whose learning engages with key existential issues – such as the future of life on the planet.  Without this, there is the risk that we shall all continue to be ignored by those whose job it is to run mainstream education institutions and systems.  They have, after all, had considerable practice at doing just this.  Happily, however, there is emerging evidence that young people do take seriously the dilemmas and threats that we face.