Monday, May 12, 2008

CSD is Education

Gleanings from Week One

As we undergo parallel reviews of the decisions on water and sanitation and the Mauritius Strategy of Implementation, Andrew Simms (New Economics Foundation) at last Friday’s ECOSOC event on climate change echoed calls for a new development model and better measures of progress that protect ecosystems to support livelihoods. What role can education play? Gleanings from last week have application this week:

By: Esther Castain and Joan Anderson, Soka Gakkai International

• The possibilities for development change abound, as Selene Biffi (Youth Action for Change) shares that less than 1 per cent of world weapons expenditures would put every child in school.

• Capacity building at all levels and on all sides is key, suggests this comment from the Indigenous Peoples caucus: “I’m beginning to realize that CSD is education - educating governments as well as civil society.”

• Jim Taylor (SADC-REEP) suggests that the biggest obstacle to social change is the concept of deficit development; in other words, judging people for what they lack. Instead, we must look wisely, to what people have and already know. Heard throughout the first week, the adage “African solutions to African problems by African people” applies everywhere.

• Through learning exchanges between schools, students took the solution of rainwater-harvesting in Ahmedabad, India and adapted it to the needs of New South Wales, Australia. We should look at societies as problem-solving organisations, models of good development come from every society.

• Kartikeya Sarabhai (Centre of Environmental Education-India) suggests we look to local communities and local lifestyles to get “from practice to policy”. We see this throughout many contexts of stakeholder inclusiveness - the MESA program for universities, Regional Centres of Expertise, emerging African NGO and local governance networks - which demonstrate effective involvement of local communities, the public and private sectors and government as communities of practice. Sakeena Bonsu (ECOG) describes how adults were at a loss how to prevent young saplings being eaten by livestock. The children knew the answer - spread manure on the leaves! Santosh Khatri (UNESCO) comments that “DESD success depends on the grass-roots.”

• During a cholera epidemic in South Africa: government messages not to drink the water had no effect. Distributing water-testing kits where the cholera bacteria turned clear water swampy after a few hours in people’s pockets finally got the message across. People learn through engagement in processes.

• Sustainable living occurs amidst the self-organizing principles of real life, which means supporting education that is relevant to people’s lives. Patience Mayaki (Tilburg University) commented that we need science and research to be translated into entrepreneurship – or, as Bill Godfrey (Environics) quipped, instead of “ppm”, how many days can we see the mountains? Yacine Diagne (ENDA Tiers Monde) suggests that institutional practices of education are reformed by placing the learner at the center.

• The examples clearly show education as an essential driver of integrative, participatory and culturally sensitive, socially appropriate policy approaches. They suggest that we must ask youth who are already facilitating networking at and among the levels of local community, action projects, and advocacy. They suggest we need to integrate education practices into policy mechanisms, which means raising education practices at RIMs and other intersessional consultations to prepare for CSD-17.