{"id":2799,"date":"2012-11-28T09:35:51","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T09:35:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/?p=2799"},"modified":"2012-11-28T09:35:51","modified_gmt":"2012-11-28T09:35:51","slug":"do-we-really-understand-the-future-we-want","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/2012\/11\/28\/do-we-really-understand-the-future-we-want\/","title":{"rendered":"Do we really understand The Future we Want?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently, \"<em>November 2012 saw the launch of a UK dialogue process to explore the future of education for sustainability in the UK<\/em>\", or so EAUC <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eauc.org.uk\/post_rio20-_what_is_the_future_of_education_for?utm_source=EAUC&amp;utm_campaign=b93013118f-eNews_27_November&amp;utm_medium=email\">reports<\/a>. \u00a0\u00a0\"<em>At the invitation of the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.eauc.org.uk\/home\">EAUC<\/a>) in collaboration with the Education Dialogue Group (EDG), 25 organisations and agencies met at the University of Westminster to explore the commitments of Rio+20 and how to put them into action<\/em>.\"<\/p>\n<p>The report on the meeting continues ...<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>With participants ranging across schools, university-level education, NGOs, faith-based organisations and bodies such as the NUS and UCU, each was invited to articulate a response to a collaborative discussion paper identifying our responsibilities within the Rio+20 outcome document <strong>\u201cThe Future we Want\u201d<\/strong> and to share ideas about individual and collective next steps. \u00a0The meeting opened with a short address from the Rt. Hon David Heath MP, recently-appointed Minister of State in DEFRA, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He opened by referring to the Millennium Development Goals, posing the question:<\/p>\n<p>\u201c<em>Our ambitions on the environment have not been met. \u00a0How do we grow our economy and lift people out of poverty without depleting resources, while thinking of people below voting age and those yet to be born? \u00a0While Rio was the start of a process and the Sustainable Development Goals a significant outcome, there is more work to be done<\/em>.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>How I wish I'd been there! \u00a0 Although the report went on, I gave up at this point, brought to my metaphorical knees by the text which followed the minister's words of wisdom:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/sustainabledevelopment.un.org\/index.php?menu=1300\">The SDGs aim to balance sustainability and development objectives<\/a><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is tosh, and thankfully the UN website says no such thing. \u00a0Although it's not really clear whether this is what the hapless Heath actually said, or whether it's just what his EAUC interlocutors are saying, I rather hope it's the former, and that Defra's briefing can be blamed for such crassness. \u00a0The alternative is even less comforting.<\/p>\n<p>Let me just ask: how can \"sustainability\" and \"development\" be <em>balanced<\/em> when the latter is an integral part of the former?<\/p>\n<p>The balance in question (for sustainable development) is between human economic and social development, on the one hand, and the quality and integrity of the biosphere and its services, on the other. \u00a0Of course, the very idea of <em>balance<\/em> is not particularly helpful, with its images of static scales and acrobatic poses. \u00a0What we're taking about here is a dynamic, edgy and inherently unstable business \u2013 more like riding a unicycle.<\/p>\n<p>All this is SD 101. \u00a0Why doesn't everyone know it?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Apparently, \"November 2012 saw the launch of a UK dialogue process to explore the future of education for sustainability in the UK\", or so EAUC reports. \u00a0\u00a0\"At the invitation of the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) in collaboration...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2799\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}