EL4SD

The Club of Reykjavik Initiative

2011-11-20T14:14:00.000Z

Starting Nov 2011 this blog is superseded by The Club of Reykjavik that can be accessed via the ENIRDELM wiki space tab on the website http://www.enirdelm.org/ There the home page on the clubofrejkjavikel4sd wikis space sets out the aims and events of the new on-line forum and its complementary face-to-face events that relate to developing an integrated understanding of, and acting to ensure, a sustainable global future. CoRk's particular emphasis is on the role of education and educational leadership's contribution to these aims.

Earth System Sustainability Initiative

2011-09-30T13:06:00.001+01:00

A newly established international research initiative will respond to the most compelling challenges facing our societies in this era of global environmental change. The International Council for Science (ICSU), within a global alliance of partners, has established a major 10-year initiative which aims to effectively deliver solution-oriented research on global environmental change for sustainability. This new international collaboration effort, the Earth System Sustainability Initiative, will provide global coordination for science to respond to the most pressing societal and environmental challenges.

The growing sense of urgency is emphasized by Prof. Johan Rockström, Executive Director of the Stockholm Environment Institute and Stockholm Resilience Centre, and co-Chair of the team that is overseeing design and early implementation of the initiative: “The current pace and magnitude of human-induced global change is unprecedented, and is manifest in increasingly dangerous threats to societies and well-being. Climate change and biodiversity loss are only two examples of processes occurring at unsustainable rates.” Rockström adds: “Effective responses to all these threats to world development require a new way of doing research.”

With its integrated approach based on the active involvement of a broad range of stakeholders, the initiative will provide support for actions towards sustainability. Its launch will be next June, at the United Nations “Rio+20” conference, when policy- and decision-makers from across the world will explore new pathways to sustainable development.

Growing collaboration with other international organizations with similar processes and mandates has strengthened the basis of the initiative. It is now jointly managed by ICSU, the International Social Science Council (ISSC), the Belmont Forum of funding agencies, UNEP, UNESCO and UNU.

“For the first time on a global scale we can talk about effectively co-designed research on global environmental change, with researchers, donors and users working hand-in-hand to define goals and priorities upfront”, says Prof. Yuan T Lee, winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry and incoming ICSU President.

For more information on the Earth System Sustainability Initiative, see: http://tinyurl.com/ESSI-ICSU

For

Planetary Boundaries research gains further momentum

2011-09-30T12:58:00.001+01:00

Ban-ki Moon statement

The research on identifying critical planetary boundaries and how we can create a "safe operating space for humanity" has gained increasing momentum since its launch in September 2009. Policy makers and the world's leading scientists on global sustainability are now jointly working to take the message to the highest decision-making level.

Further evidence of this is the recent statements by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who, during a speech to the Leaders' Dialogue on Climate Change, urged global society to stand behind science on planetary boundaries. "Help us defend the science that shows we are destabilizing our climate and stretching planetary boundaries to a perilous degree," said the Secretary-General. He told the leaders that he was counting on their commitment to agreement at the upcoming COP17 in Durban, South Africa, later this year, and at the Rio+20 Conference on Sustainable Development in Brazil next year. Read the entire speech here.

Nobel Laureate Symposium

The UN Secretary-General's plea was also followed up by Tarja Halonen, President of Finland. In a speech at the 66th Session of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on 21 September, Halonen stated the commitment by the newly-appointed UN High-level Panel on Global Sustainability "to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality, make growth inclusive, and production and consumption more sustainable, while combating climate change and respecting the range of other planetary boundaries". Read the entire speech here.

Halonen's statement is also a direct reflection of the recommendations made during the 3rd Nobel Laureate Symposium which in May 2011 gathered more than twenty Nobel Laureates, a number of leading policy makers and some of the world's most renowned thinkers and experts on global sustainability.

2011-05-12T09:07:00.000+01:00

I would just like to inform you about a conference in Uppsala. There you have a opportunity to collaborate.

Information about GRESD activities 16-20 May - please click 'Conference' , the top-bar above

Öppna föreläsningar - se under 'Conference' ovan och därefter under programs (vänster sido-meny)

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Welcome to the Swedish national Graduate school in Education and Sustainable Development

Print out a sheet with information about GRESD

In early May, 2009 the Graduate school in Education and Sustainable Development (GRESD) started its research activities. Here are more than 15 PhD students from different disciplines given the opportunity to create multidisciplinary research concerning issues relating to education and sustainable development.

This is a new and unique form of research school that has been developed in close coordination and collaboration with eight universities in the research area of education and sustainable development, (ESD). Thank to this, GRESD will in the near future be one of the largest ESD research environments in the world.

The research school organizes cross-disciplinary courses dealing with these factors and the courses are organized by professors with different institutional affiliations. The first compulsory course started in May 2009 and it is offered to all interested doctoral students and master students.

The research school aims at, in consert with the PhD students, creating a creative environment for research, which future multidisciplinary research projects could be develop through co-operation with international universities. International guest professors are also linked to the research school through an international committee.

If you are interested in education and sustainable development, do not hesitate to contact us for further information and cooperation!

Per Sund

Acting scientific leader and coordinator

per.sund@edu.uu.se

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Here is some more information about GRESD

Here is information about the three mandatory doctoral courses within GRESD

2011-04-13T22:26:00.000+01:00

The Center for Ecoliteracy presents a downloadable guide to Daniel Goleman's Ecological Intelligence: The Hidden Impacts of What We Buy (Random House, paperback edition 2010).

http://www.ecoliteracy.org/downloads/ecological-intelligence-teachers-guide

Download the Ecological Intelligence Teacher's Guide (378k pdf)

"Ecological intelligence allows us to comprehend systems in all their complexity, as well as the interplay between the natural and man-made worlds. But that understanding demands a vast store of knowledge, one so huge that no single brain can store it all. Each one of us needs the help of others to navigate the complexities of ecological intelligence. We need to collaborate." — Daniel Goleman

It is more important than ever to recognize and understand the countless ways that human and natural systems interact, and the effects of that interaction on people and the environment.

In Ecological Intelligence, internationally known psychologist and author Daniel Goleman argues that modern technologies, a globalized economy, and complex webs of relationships present new challenges that require new skills. Goleman describes how what we don't know can hurt us and discusses the difficulty of discovering the impacts of the products we use and the decisions we make. He explores emerging techniques and approaches for improving our collective knowledge and becoming more mindful and effective consumers and citizens.

The Center for Ecoliteracy's teacher's guide, for high school or undergraduate programs, includes synopses of each chapter, key terms, and questions to deepen discussion or to serve as prompts for writing. The guide offers a wealth of ideas for expanding learning using a variety of strategies for classroom activities, projects, research topics, and course assignments.

5 minutes to get the big picture

2011-04-13T22:19:00.000+01:00

http://www.ecoliteracy.org/blog/300-years-fossil-fuels-300-seconds

This animated talk from the Post-Carbon Institute outlines the evolution of our dependence on fossil fuels and the four essential challenges of moving to a post-carbon age. It is from the website of the Ecoliteracy Center headed in California by Fritjof Capra.

UK Sustainable Development Commission closes down

2011-03-31T11:16:00.000+01:00

The Sustainable Development Commission is the UK Government's independent watchdog
on sustainable development. The Commission reports to the Prime Minister and the First Ministers
of Scotland and Wales. Sadly, it is closing down today. This is its final message:

The SDC says goodbye – What next for sustainable Development?

The Sustainable Development Commission will close its doors on 31 March 2010. But the great challenge of making our lives in the UK and around the world fairer and more sustainable goes on.

"Embedding sustainable development into the architecture of Government is essential if we are to tackle the biggest and most pressing issues of the day."

» Read our closing statement from Will Day and Andrew Lee http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/news.php/412/main/what-next-for-sustainable-development

We would like to thank you for your interest in the work of the SDC. The work you do to promote sustainability in your area – be it in government, business, the public sector, academia, NGOs or civil society – is helping to take us towards a better future. Sharing our work with you has been a privilege, and we wish you every success in your work in the future.

Although our work is coming to an end, there are a number of opportunities you can sign up to for information or to share knowledge or participate in future change:

Defra has committed to taking on the SDC’s stakeholder engagement function, and would like to continue to work with you, but you’ll need to sign up here to be involved in the future http://sd.defra.gov.uk/news/register/

Wales - The new arrangements for supporting sustainable development in Wales will be led by a Commissioner for Sustainable Futures. To stay informed of opportunities to be involved with the new arrangements, e-mail admin@cynnalcymru.com.

The People’s Green Watchdog will be a highly collaborative network of influencers, experts and interested parties that will monitor all government activity relating to sustainable development, as well as acting as a lobbying platform. Follow @GreenwatchdogUK on Twitter or email: info@greenwatchdog.co.uk

The St Andrews Sustainability Institute at the University of St Andrews is aiming to develop a cross UK knowledge network to link up universities with an active research, teaching and/or knowledge exchange capacity in sustainable development. If you would like to be involved in this work or hear about progress on this task, please e-mail: sasi@st-andrews.ac.uk http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/sasi/home/

» Read more about these and other opportunities on our website http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/pages/links.html

Guide: Education for Sustainable Development at Secondary Level http://www.worldwatch.org/nourishingtheplanet

2011-03-11T06:14:00.000Z

Clive Hamilton (2010) Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change

2011-03-03T10:57:00.000Z

Amazon Description

This book does not set out once more to raise the alarm to encourage us to take radical measures to head off climate chaos. There have been any number of books and reports in recent years explaining just how dire the future looks and how little time we have left to act. This book is about why we have ignored those warnings, and why it is now too late. It is a book about the frailties of the human species as expressed in both the institutions we built and the psychological dispositions that have led us on the path of self-destruction. It is about our strange obsessions, our hubris, and our penchant for avoiding the facts. It is the story of a battle within us between the forces that should have caused us to protect the Earth - our capacity to reason and our connection to nature - and those that, in the end, have won out - our greed, materialism and alienation from nature. And it is about the 21st century consequences of these failures. Clive Hamilton is author of the bestselling "Affluenza", "Growth Fetish", "Of Scorcher", and most recently "Freedom Paradox".

Selected reviews

'Requiem offers an insightful and informative look at why the human species can't come to terms with a changing climate. And Hamilton's conclusion--To despair, accept, then act--is an important call for us to respond to climate change immediately and decisively or spend the rest of our lives reacting to a warming world and an unravelling civilization.' Jonathon Porritt, Founder, Forum for the Future, and author of Capitalism As if the World Matters

'Clive Hamilton investigates - in real time - our society's choice not to act to protect ourselves from devastating climate change. We know the science, but "scientific facts are fighting against more powerful forces" - power, money, bureaucratic inertia and our innate desire to ignore what we don't want to believe. "It's too late," he says. "Humanity failed." That past tense is devastating.' Erik Assadourian, Director: State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability and Senior Researcher, Worldwatch Institute

'When future generations look out on a planet ravaged by climate change, they will ask of our generation "When you knew what was happening--surely the greatest debacle since we came out of our caves--why didn't you stop it?" It all makes for a riveting read because (alas) it is all too true--just like Greek tragedy.' Robert M May OM AC FRS

A new geological age - The Anthropocene (NYT 21 Feb 2011)

2011-03-02T19:39:00.000Z

The edges of historical eras tend to be fuzzy. It would be nice to think that someone awoke in Florence, Italy, one day in the late 1300s — perhaps as spring started— and said, “Today the Renaissance begins!” We can be sure no one did, if only because historians discern such eras only in retrospect. The same is true of geological epochs. Humans existed when the Pleistocene ended and the Holocene began, 11,500 years ago. The geologic time scale, which defines geological periods, began to take its modern form only in the 19th century.

Among scientists, there is now serious talk that the Holocene has ended and a new era has begun, called the Anthropocene, a term first used in 2000 by Paul Crutzen, who shared a Nobel Prize for his work on the chemical mechanisms that affect the ozone layer.

The Royal Society has devoted a recent issue of its Philosophical Transactions to the Anthropocene. According to one of the papers, the name is “a vivid expression of the degree of environmental change on planet Earth.” It means that human activity has left a “stratigraphic signal” detectable thousands of years from now in ice cores and sedimentary rocks.

Those of us alive today may well be able to say we were present when the Anthropocene epoch was formally adopted. But we will not be able to say we were present at the start of the Anthropocene. There is a strong case that the Anthropocene begins with the Industrial Revolution, around 1800, when we began to exert our most profound impact on the world, especially by altering the carbon content of the atmosphere.

Other species are embedded in the fossil record of the epochs they belong to. Some species, like ammonites and brachiopods, even serve as guides — or index fossils — to the age of the rocks they’re embedded in. But we are the only species to have defined a geological period by our activity — something usually performed by major glaciations, mass extinction and the colossal impact of objects from outer space, like the one that defines the upper boundary of the Cretaceous.

Humans were inevitably going to be part of the fossil record. But the true meaning of the Anthropocene is that we have affected nearly every aspect of our environment — from a warming atmosphere to the bottom of an acidifying ocean.

Guide: Education for Sustainable Development at Secondary Level - Justifications, Competences, Learning Opportunities

2011-02-13T19:24:00.000Z

http://www.ensi.org/media-global/downloads/Publications/304/Guide_competences_engl_online.pdf -

A Transfer -21 product developed in Germany at the Free University of Berlin in 2007. The aim of this concept is to instil the ability to engage in a thoughtful manner with sustainable development processes, personally and in cooperation with others, and to systematically analyse and assess unsustainable development processes. This guide is part of a package of materials on the topic of ‘Competence and Quality Indicators for Education for Sustainable Development’. Besides the present guide to Competencies and Learning Opportunities, the package also contains a set of indicators that enables schools to conduct a self-assessment of their profile in the area of education for sustainable development. The indicators do not only cover use of resources and the extent to which education for sustainable development is taught, but also aspects of sustainable school management and also, for example, external cooperation relationships. The package also contains a model School Programme with a focus on education for sustainable development.

In order to build up competencies which are appropriate to the complexity of the problems, education must take place in a manner that spans or connects different school subjects across many different points. For this reason, ESD is not to be understood as a subject, but as an area of action which must bring together knowledge from different subjects. Thus, ESD cannot replace the subjects, but in many ways builds on pre-acquired knowledge, enriching it, expanding it and setting it in new contexts. Of course, the problem issues that ESD tackles also provide a point of entry for acquiring in-depth knowledge of individual subject areas (such as geography, science, politics, economics and ethics).

‘Shaping competence’ (gestaltungskompetenz) can be broken down into ten part-competencies:

1. To create knowledge in a spirit of openness to the world, integrating new perspectives;

2. To think and act in a forward-looking manner;

3. To acquire knowledge and act in an interdisciplinary manner;

4. To be able to plan and act in cooperation with others;

5. To be able to participate in decision-making processes;

6. To be able to motivate others to become active;

7. To be able to reflect upon one’s own principles and those of others;

8. To be able to plan and act autonomously;

9. To be able to show empathy for and solidarity with the disadvantaged;

10. To be able to motivate oneself to become active.

The acquisition of experience and Gestaltungkompetenz is a task for the school as a whole: Gestaltungskompetenz and school quality in the sense of ESD thus complement one another.

OECD THREE CATEGORIES OF KEY COMPETENCIES:

I. the ‘interactive use of tools’ (such as knowledge, media, and resources);

II. ‘acting autonomously’;

III. ‘interacting in socially heterogeneous groups’.

3.1 Gestaltungskompetenz in the context of the competence category ‘Using tools interactively’ (T)

T.1 Gather knowledge with an openness to the world and integrating new perspectives

Pupils...

T.1.1 can name the approaches and concepts of sustainable development in government policy and civil society;

T.1.2 can take on board different perspectives and forms of knowledge (for example, scientific, received and everyday knowledge) to describe global and local (non-) sustainable development phenomena;

T.1.3 can take on board information from different perspectives to evaluate different (non-) sustainable requirements for action and patterns of behaviour;

T.1.4 can describe and evaluate cultural and ecological diversity.

T.2 Think and act in a forward-looking manner

Pupils...

T.2.1 are aware – in a manner appropriate to their lived experience – of methods of research into the future (for example, scenario technique, planning games, future workshops), in order to analyse problems of non-sustainable development and anticipate possible opportunities for sustainable development;

T.2.2 evaluate and apply the findings of future research in the drafting of sustainable development processes with regard to ecological systems, social justice, economic developments and political action.

T.3 Acquire knowledge and act in an interdisciplinary manner

Pupils...

T.3.1 can describe and explain the composition, functioning and development of the biosphere;

T.3.2 can describe and explain relations of interdependence for the characterisation of non-sustainable global development (e.g. by using the syndrome concept);

T.3.3 can describe overarching concepts of sustainability (e.g. strong and weak sustainability) and can analyse the consequences of these concepts for future development;

T.3.4 can describe concepts of sustainability in the areas of technology, economics, trade, mobility, land use, construction and housing, consumerism and leisure by using specific examples;

T.3.5 can describe and explain test criteria for sustainable development (e.g. indicators and auditing procedures);

T.3.6 can describe and evaluate aspects of globalisation and the perspectives of countries at different stages of development;

T.3.7 can describe and evaluate the differences between renewable and non-renewable resources and their use (e.g. renewable raw materials, fossil fuels);

T.3.8 can describe and evaluate concepts and visions of social justice;

T.3.9 can describe the fundamental human rights and conventions under international law, and are in a position to judge their individual and global significance;

T.3.10 can analyse and evaluate interdependencies between environment, economics, conflicts, poverty and violence, taking account of historical causes and their consequences in the present.

3.2 Gestaltungskompetenz in the context of the competence category ‘Interacting in socially heterogeneous groups’ (G)

G.1 Ability to plan and act together with others

Pupils...

G.1.1 can name and analyse different standpoints on sustainability in groups, looking into their underlying justifications, and can resolve controversies democratically in this context;

G.1.2 can describe prejudices, negative stereotypes and forms of discrimination, and can cite means of common intervention to combat them;

G.1.3 can name social, economic and political causes of human rights abuses, can work together to formulate possibilities for protecting human rights, and are in a position to present forms of action for
human rights in manner which is appropriate for the addressees and situations in question;

G.1.4 can plan forms of solidarity action to protect the future, taking account of global contexts, and implement these in specific cases.

G.2 Ability to participate in decision-making processes

Pupils…

G.2.1 describe solidarity and concern for the future of humans and nature as common and societal tasks;

G.2.2 can demonstrate how cooperative problem-solving can take place in the development of strategies for action in the field of sustainable development;

G.2.3 can describe and demonstrate negotiation processes on aims and processes of sustainable development in the event of practical and political differences (e.g. in the form of planning games and mediation);

G.2.4 can constructively overcome differences of opinion and conflicts with regard to issues of (non-) sustainable development.

G.3 Ability to motivate others to get active

Pupils…

G.3.1 can describe their own and joint successful learning processes in the context of sustainability and demonstrate how these can be used for further learning;

G.3.2 can describe their own and common motivations for participation in democratic decision-making processes and in action for sustainability;

G.3.3 can describe and evaluate forms of common involvement in solidarity activities (e.g. against poverty, discrimination, environmental risks).

3.3 Gestaltungskompetenz in the context of the competence category ‘Acting autonomously’ (E)

E.1 Ability to reflect upon one’s own principles and those of others

Pupils...

E.1.1 can describe lifestyles which secure and foster sustainable consumption patterns, environmentally and socially acceptable mobility and leisure, and health;

E.1.2 know and can justify production and purchasing criteria for products on the basis of environmental, economic and social considerations;

E.1.3 can discover and evaluate the underlying justifications, forms and effects of their own lifestyles and those of other people and societies on the living and working conditions of other people and on the biosphere.
E.2 Ability to plan and act autonomously

Pupils...

E.2.1 know and can justify their personal rights, needs and interests, describing their limitations against the background of the aim of achieving sustainable development processes and the rights of others, citing possibilities of standing up for the rights of future generations;

E.2.2 can demonstrate their own experience of autonomous planning and autonomous action through the realisation of a project on sustainability;

E.2.3 can create their own life plans from the perspective of sustainability, and can describe personal projects and how these can take shape.

E.3 Ability to show empathy and solidarity with the disadvantaged

Pupils…

E.3.1 can describe and evaluate ways of taking on individual, social, economic and political responsibility for (non-) sustainable development processes;

E.3.2 can describe possibilities for showing empathy and solidarity with poor, disadvantaged and oppressed people and communities at both local and global levels;

E.3.3 can describe possibilities of getting empathy for nature across to addressees, and evaluate the various approaches for their own actions.

E.4 Ability to motivate oneself to get active

Pupils…

E.4.1 can describe and evaluate their personal responses to dilemmas, uncertainties and open situations;

E.4.2 can describe their motivations for participating in democratic decision-making processes and in sustainable activities;

E.4.3 apply self-motivation processes to get involved in sustainable forms of living and management.

Given the broad spectrum of 39 part-competences described, represents a multifaceted teaching task, taking in all areas of the school: teaching in all subjects, learning through project work and opportunities for action on the part of pupils, both inside and outside the school.

The original document contains charts that elaborate topics (’learning opportunities) relating to each of the 39 competences

At last an economist focuses on population growth: the case of Egypt

2011-02-11T13:29:00.000Z

The Blight Of Population Growth from http://www.prudentbear.com/index.php/thebearslairview?art_id=10501

• by Martin Hutchinson

• February 07, 2011

Both the rioters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square and the Western commentators on those riots have missed a vitally important component of Egypt’s miseries: its excessive and rapidly rising population. With such population growth even the wisest Egyptian ruler, the great Ptah-hotep, could not have achieved a rapid rise in the living standards of Egypt’s people. We should not mock; if this problem is not attacked seriously and rapidly on a global scale, the world of the 22nd Century may bear all too great a resemblance to today’s downtown Cairo.

Egypt’s economic record under President Hosni Mubarak’s rule since 1981 is at first sight quite good, with a growth rate of 5% or so for most of the time. However that does not take account of population growth during the last 30 years – from 44 million at Mubarak’s accession to 80 million now, a rate of increase of fully 2% per annum. That reduces the annual per capita growth under Mubarak to well under 3%.

Indeed when Egypt’s Gross Domestic Product per capita is examined it ranks surprisingly low, at $6,200 only 136th in the world. It becomes clear when the data is examined closely that Egypt is one of very few countries that is on a per capita basis poorer than it was a century ago. Other likely members of that dismal club are Argentina (among the world’s half dozen richest nations in 1911) and Haiti, which appears to have the dubious decision of being the only country in the world that is poorer now per capita than in 1804, the date of Haitian independence (Egypt and Argentina both had very good 19th centuries!).

When you realize that the population of Egypt in 1911 was only 11.8 million, that country’s economic trajectory becomes very clear. Only 3% of the land is irrigated, so instead of the 1 million square kilometers of Egypt’s nominal area, almost all of its 80 million people are forced to exist on 30,000 square kilometers, an area slightly smaller than the state of Maryland. In 1911 this was not a problem; after a quarter century of British rule under Evelyn Baring, Lord Cromer (being a Baring, he was economically just about the best of all the British Imperial rulers), the country was well modernized, with a highly efficient textile industry and an agriculture that was efficient, connected to global markets and far beyond self-sufficency.

Population growth however prevented Egypt from keeping up with its peers among the middling-rich countries of the early twentieth century. The export surplus from agriculture was ever declining, while immense public spending was required to provide schools, transportation and housing for the rapidly growing population. While administration remained efficient, roughly until the advent of King Farouk in 1936, living standards were approximately maintained, but Farouk was an idle, corrupt playboy, so that even before his departure in 1952 living standards were slipping badly. Under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s socialism matters were very much worse; resources were allocated indiscriminately to heavy industry and the military, while agriculture was neglected. Thus Egyptian living standards collapsed, with GDP per capita perhaps halving during the 14 years of Nasser’s rule. Anwar Sadat began the process of economic reform in the 1970s but when Mubarak arrived in office in 1981 Egypt’s living standards were still far below those of 1911, and the country was no longer anywhere near agricultural self-sufficiency. (One of the worst recent problems has been food price inflation, as Egypt is the world’s largest importer of wheat.)

Mubarak has done a fairly capable job. He has developed the tourist industry, realizing that a “cheap and cheerful” mass tourism on the Red Sea was far more lucrative to the economy and less disruptive to local mores than the intrusive elite tourism surrounding the centers of ancient Egyptian civilization. He has engaged in a considerable measure of land reform. However Hernando de Soto, writing in the Wall Street Journal, laments that the required stabilization of property rights has never been fully carried through – another casualty not so much of Egypt’s corrupt and unresponsive bureaucracy as of its inexorable population growth, causing the creation of endless new shantytowns, the eruption into the cities of a rootless starving proletariat and the microscopic subdivision of existing land holdings.

Mubarak can thus regret not his overall term in office, which has been capable if imperfect, but the lack of one single major reform early in his term – the institution by some means of a population control policy, whether of simple exhortation, of financial incentives to family size reduction, of extension of old age pensions to provide financial security to those without large families or in the extreme of a “one child policy” similar to that followed by China.

Had such a policy been successfully instituted in the early 1980s, restraining today’s population to 50 million or so, Egypt would today be much richer and its post-Mubarak transition correspondingly less perilous. Instead, Egypt’s population is far in excess of the country’s ability to feed it and it is difficult to see how, even with a government better than Mubarak’s (let alone with the Islamist or leftist one that is likely to succeed), Egypt’s people can be enriched sufficiently to become contented members of the middle-income world. Truly Egypt’s history in the last century is a tragedy – all the more tragic because its unhappy economic trajectory was avoidable.

Egypt has two lessons for us. The first is to us as portfolio or direct investors: avoid putting money in countries with high population growth rates, above about 1.5%. Kenya (2.6% population growth rate), Iraq (2.5%) and Jordan (2.2%) are growing too fast to achieve success, even if as in the case of Jordan they are generally well managed and market-oriented. Lower down the scale Nigeria (2.0%), Philippines (1.9%), Ghana (1.9%) and even Malaysia (1.6%) all have population growth rates that are a serious danger to their people’s welfare and to outside investors’ wealth. Even Turkey (1.3%), Peru (1.2%) and Colombia (1.2%) have population growth rates high enough to be worrying.

With such population growth rates, countries must devote huge resources to infrastructure spending, whether of roads, housing or schools, simply to keep up with the inexorable growth of mouths to feed. Any economic growth such countries manage to achieve is sapped by the sheer arithmetic of excess population, so that per capita increases in living standards are very hard to come by. Finally, as in the case of Egypt, the country’s resources can become exhausted by the pressures of population growth. For example countries that are amply self-sufficient in agriculture can over time become huge importers of food, draining away the foreign exchange that is needed for economic development. The same applies to mineral wealth; population growth has rendered even mineral-abundant South Africa an impoverished polity with a foreign exchange problem, rather than the wealthy resource-rich country it could have been.

The strictures against excessive population growth apply with even more force to the global economy. As Egypt has shown in the last 30 years, the problems of growth multiply as the population level runs up against the limitations of available resources. While Egypt’s population growth rate has been more or less constant (1.95% per annum over the last century) it was far less constricting in the early years of that century, when overall population was less than 20 million and agricultural land was ample. Similarly on a global scale, the same population growth rate may be far more damaging today with a global population of 7 billion than it was a century ago with a global population of 2 billion. At some point, we run up against the limits of resources and population growth leads only to impoverishment, however clever the new technologies we may apply to the problem.

On a global scale, we may be approaching that point. If, as seems likely, the global warming effect is real but modest, it may be greatly exacerbated by the carbon emissions of increasing population, particularly if a higher proportion of that population is living a Western lifestyle, complete with automobiles and kitchen appliances. In this context the 2008 revision of the U.N population projections was very depressing. Instead of showing a leveling off of population in 2047 it showed a global population continuing to increase to 9.2 billion and beyond, rising still in 2050.

Without a visible peak in future world population we have no assurance of our ultimate survival. If the global population is increasing by 154 million every five years, as in 2045-50, then it is drawing inexorably closer to the point at which either resources become inadequate or environmental damage becomes uncontrollable. The Club of Rome, which predicted in 1971 that within 30-40 years economic or environmental collapse would overwhelm the world, was laughably wrong. The collapse has not happened, and on their forecasts should be imminent. Indeed their economic model relied on primitive extrapolation of exponential trends and contained a mechanical flaw – whatever assumptions you inserted, the error term would overwhelm the genuine output within four decades. It would thus be ironic indeed if unlike the great economist William Stanley Jevons, who in 1865 predicted the collapse of the world economy due to exhaustion of its coal supplies, the Club of Rome charlatans proved to be not wrong but merely about 50-60 years early.

Global overpopulation and collapse is not inevitable, just as Egypt’s miserable current state was not inevitable. Our descendents in 2111 do not have to live on a planet that has globally come to resemble downtown Cairo – overcrowded, polluted, impoverished and full of rioters. Technologically, we have today the means to restrict population growth, identifying the countries in Africa and elsewhere where such restriction is most urgent, and implementing by the least intrusive means possible a program of birth discouragement in those countries. Their inhabitants will bless us within as few as 20 years, as they find their prosperity increased and prospects immeasurably improved – and for the globe as a whole we shall definitively prove the Club of Rome doomsayers to have been the charlatans they were.

[Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is a broad measure of the economy that measures the retail value of goods and services produced in a country.]

Access all Darwin's writing free to celebrate his birthday on 12 February!

2011-02-01T06:08:00.000Z

February 12 is the anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth, this is a month when many people gather to celebrate science and, in particular, Darwin’s contributions to our understanding of life. You might want to partake of some of his writings directly. At Darwin-online.org.uk, you can reach and view free all of his publications, thousands of private papers, the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue and hundreds of supplementary works: specimens, biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and much more.

Re-focusing the EL4SD Initiative

2010-12-19T13:47:00.000Z

1. Nigel Wright who has provided the support for analysing EL4SD data will retire in Sept 2011 and no further data processing of the international data will now be possible. The researchers obviously can use the data analysis already sent to them by Nigel. So far, Tibor Barath, Dorota Ekiert and Mualla Aksu have produced articles and presentations based on the data for their respective countries: Hungary; Poland and Turkey.

2. A series of articles by Prof. Mike Bottery relating to EL4SD will shortly be placed on the EL4SD resources tab on the ENIRDELM web-site.

3. The initiative will now re-focus on what can be termed 'deep knowledge for sustainable development' and educational leadership that promotes it.

4. Mike's research strand involves a new draft questionnaire about school leaders' 'deep knowledge' which he is looking to trial before Sept 2011.

5. David and Mike are looking to invite interested colleagues to assist in a conceptual mapping exercise on the new focus as the first step on the EL4SD Action strand towards developing an EL4SD leadership programme and publication.

6. It is likely that, following the next EL4SD workshop in Iceland in September, a bid for funding will be made to support multi-country R & D on this new focus.

EL4SD Project update

2010-11-26T15:20:00.000Z

Educational Leadership for Sustainable Development (EL4SD)

EL4SD now has two complementary strands: EL4SD Research (led by Mike Bottery) and EL4SD Action (led by David Oldroyd) both relating to leadership for ‘deep education for sustainable development’. The adjective ‘deep’ signals the desirability of promoting a holistic, global worldview that encompasses environmental, social, economic and personal sustainable development. Both initiatives currently are unfunded and voluntary, but may eventually lead to bids for external funding.

EL4SD Research

At his presentation in Szeged, Mike Bottery outlined a strategy for further research.

(i) The need for a full environmental analysis of our current data (well on the way)

(ii) A realisation that we asked relatively ‘shallow’ sustainability questions and that we need to deepen that analysis.

(iii) The need for a questionnaire on deeper ESD issues incorporating economic and social issues, not simply items relating to environmental awareness.

Mike presented an initial draft of ‘deep ESD’ items that might be included in a new questionnaire and invited participants to join him in the next phase of the multi-national study.

EL4SD Action

David is looking at ways of broadening the focus to strengthen the networking for leading education for sustainable development. He has started to research potential links and is looking for ENIRDELM colleagues interested in the following possibilities that he outlined in Szeged:

1. To survey existing ESD and EL4SD networks. e.g. ENSI; DEA; SEEd; Hungarian Eco-schools; etc. with a view to making collaborative links relating to ‘deep ESD’ and contributing ENIRDELM leadership expertise;

2. Draft and share a Conceptual Framework relating to for Educational Leadership for Deep Sustainable Development - a hierarchy of concepts leading from Global threats via Sustainable Development, then Education for SD to Educational Leadership for SD;

3. Discover, record and share Profiles of good practice in leading for “Deep ESD” (4Ps – Policy-makers; Providers; Practitioners; Pupils)

4. Enhance the EL4SD section of the ENIRDELM web-site, with the help of Thomas Soderberg – “Bottery papers”; Hyperlinks to virtual world of SD-ESD-EL4SD; Bookmarked data-base; Blogs.

5. In the longer term, develop an EL4SD Program “Leading Education towards a Sustainable Future” – a set of tools and learning activities with which to educate educational leaders targeting school leaders and/or policy-makers.

6. Offer an update at the 20th ENIRDELM Conference

This initiative will draw on and complement the EL4SD Research that wants to promote the notion of ‘deep ESD’ and its implications for educational leaders. Several ENIRDELM colleagues have expressed their interest and David will circulate emerging information to anyone else who wants to participate or simply be kept informed.

UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-14

2010-09-28T10:05:00.000+01:00

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/decade/uncomESD_FS.htm

Running from 2005 to 2014, the aim of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development is promote and improve the integration of Education for Sustainable Development into the educational strategies and action plans at all levels and sectors of education in all countries.

Visit the official site for the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development to learn more about projects and events in your region.

Some key web-sites for SD & ESD

2010-09-28T09:44:00.000+01:00

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/TLSF/decade/uncomESD_FS.htm - a huge storehouse of educational approaches and materials put together for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development 2005-14

http://www.unece.org/env/esd/ - United Nations Economic Commission for Europe is a rich source of ESD ideas and materials. On http://www.unece.org/env/esd/GoodPractices/index.html is a collection of “Good Practices in Education for Sustainable Development", a toolbox reflecting the experiences of various governments, international organizations, research institutions, NGOs and other stakeholders.

These are concrete examples of successful implementation of ESD in different areas, from the political arena to the school setting and from formal to non-formal and informal learning.
New! UNECE and UNESCO are pleased to invite you to participate in the new collection of Good practices in addressing sustainable consumption and production (SCP), including sustainable transportation (ST), through ESD in the context of climate change

http://www.sustdev.org/index.php - Sustainable Development International - daily news updates

http://www.ulb.ac.be/ceese/meta/sustvl.html - Worldwide Web Library on Sustainable Development – lists and links to 152 organsisations; 90 project activities; 40 electronic journals and lots more.

http://www.eea.europa.eu/events - European Environmental Agency (EEA) an agency of the European Union
The European Environment Agency since 1994 is a major information source for those involved in developing, adopting, implementing and evaluating environmental policy, and also the general public. Currently, the EEA has 32 member countries. EEA's mandate is:
• To help the Community and member countries make informed decisions about improving the environment, integrating environmental considerations into economic policies and moving towards sustainability
• To coordinate the European environment information and observation network (Eionet)
Main clients are the European Union institutions — the European Commission, the European Parliament, the Council — and other EU institutions such as the Economic and Social Committee and the Committee of the Regions. The business community, academia, non-governmental organisations and other parts of civil society are also important users.

ENSI - a network to network with?

2010-09-23T19:58:00.000+01:00

ENSI Website Extract

Since 1995, Environment and School Initiatives (ENSI) has been a decentralised network under the umbrella of the OECD CERI, with a decentralised international secretariat presently hosted by Germany, at the Hessian Institute for Pedagogy in Giessen. The Secretariat was transferred to the
Swiss Ministry in Solothurn, in October 2004.

ENSI brings together school initiatives, school authorities, teacher training and educational research
institutions and other stakeholders in countries primarily across the OECD area (Europe, Asia-Pacific
and North America).

ENSI has supported educational developments that promote environmental understanding, active approaches to teaching and learning, and citizenship education. It has done this mainly through research and the exchange of experiences internationally since 1986. It adopts a participatory approach involving schools, students, teachers, teacher trainers and administrators, with their main focus directed towards action research and development.

ENSI’s main strengths are:

• it is an institution-based network, representing national education authorities at senior government level

• it is a research oriented network, involving research institutions sharing an active and participative vision of educational research in environmental education
• it is an action-oriented network, fostering school initiatives and projects aiming to develop the quality of schooling in the community and ensuring it is consistent with the ideas of sustainable development.

ENSI’s main area of work, in the field of environmental school initiatives, include:

• initiating, coordinating and supporting research and school development activities
• promoting international exchange, understanding and cooperation, including cooperating with other international organizations and programs
• making policy recommendations and or statements as appropriate.

In the last 15 years the ENSI network has contributed to fostering a dialogue among countries and between different stakeholders in each country. Both of these may concern the impact and meaning of Environmental Education (EE) and Education for Sustainability (EfS) in each country.

ENSI has also provided a platform for the systematic exchange of ideas, experiences and innovations in the member countries, which in turn, run their own ENSI national networks. In the past five years, the focus of ENSI research was on the extensive use of action research as a tool for teacher training and for school development or on the development of schools as learning organizations with an emphasis on sustainability values. ENSI believes schools should use the contents and initiatives they deal with to be an active partner in the local social system and thus contribute to improving the quality of education in general and to reactivate societal values.

ENSI is strongly committed to supporting all international efforts considering education as a key issue for the whole international movement for sustainable development, and, therefore offers its experience and programs to all countries interested.

The main ENSI projects – Teacher Education, Learnscapes, Quality Criteria for Ecoschools - and the

SEED (School Development through Environmental Education) European network - which was approved in 2002 by the European Commission as a COMENIUS 3 Network, are the major successes of the group.

ENIRDELM Conference in Szeged boosts EL4SD interest

2010-09-23T19:34:00.000+01:00

Tibor Barath and his team at HUNSEM provided a magnificent conference for almost 100 participants on Sept 16-18 in Szeged, Hungary on the theme "Does leadership Matter?". Leadership for Sustainable Development emerged as a sub-theme when Jaroslav Kalous offered a challenging response as 'critical friend' to the keynote resentation of Prof Peter Sleegers entitled "School Improvement over Time: Changing teaching practices: what matters?". Jaroslav noted that there was no reference in the talk to addresing the global challenges that will really matter to the current generation. These challenges arguably constitute the most urgent focus for school improvement and changing teaching practices of any sort!

Mike Bottery then ran a workshop for about 12 participants updating them on the EL4SD research that he has led in which the values of school leaders in 14 countries are being compared using a large and rich sample of data voluntarily gathered by ENIRDELM friends in their own countries. He presented a comparison of the data from England, Finland and Poland and got feedback from the participants about moving to the next phase of the research. It was agreed that funding would be essential to justify continuing efforts. In a separate paper presentation Mualla Aksu presented her results from the application of the Bottery questionnaire to over 100 school leaders in the Antalya region of Turkey.

David Oldroyd ran a sequel to Mike's workshop for around the same number of participants focusing on how to add an EL4SD developmental initiative to the research work. A series of ideas that could lead to action was discussed. Further advice from committed participants, some of whom were attending other simultaneous workshops, will be sought, including the possibility of compiling profiles of good practice in leading sustainable development policy and practice in education systems and their schools around Europe. Gabor Halasz, the second Keynote speaker at the conference, has suggested a link to the work of ENSI http://www.ensi.org/ in which Attila Varga, a researcher in OKI, the National Institute of Public Education in Budapest, plays a leading role. ENSI (Environment and School Inititiatives) is an international network for promoting ESD (Education for Sustainable Development) supported by OECD-CERI for several years after 1995 and now supported by the European Commission. Tibor Barath's analysis of the Hungarian data gathered using the Bottery questionnaire was presented at and ENSI event. His powerpoint presentation can be obtained from d.oldroyd@wp.pl
.

Center for Eco-literacy (CEL)

2010-03-12T15:55:00.000Z

Founded by Fritjof Capra, this organisation is a force for ESD in California and this week it sent provides a link to video presentations of members of it staff, including Capra himself. This is an invaluable introduction to the integrated approach to education (Head + Hand + Heart + Spirit) that is being promoted there and which ou future generations greatly need in the face of so many threats to global systems.

CENTER LAUNCHES YOUTUBE CHANNEL
See videos of CEL speakers, related content
The Center for Ecoliteracy announces its own YouTube channel. The channel features presentations by board and staff, excerpts from CEL-sponsored seminars, videos about schools profiled in our publications, and topics related to schooling for sustainability.
Visit the Center YouTube channel >
http://www.youtube.com/centerforecoliteracy

Greening Human Capital - conference invitation

2010-03-12T15:30:00.000Z

A two-day International Conference on Developing Human Capital for Sustainable Economies will be held from May 27th to 28th, 2010 in the "green" city of Karlsruhe, Germany. This event will bring together academia, sustainable development organisations, policy makers, economists, senior business and hr executives, corporate advisors, business analysts, environmental management experts, representatives of international development agencies and other relevant stakeholders to discuss key emerging issues including: global warming and the emergence of the green economy; how is the transformation from high to low carbon and sustainable economy impacting human capital management; and effective initiatives needed to develop and manage human capital for the next economy – the green economy.

Further to the knowledge sharing on greening human capital; the upcoming event also provides an excellent networking opportunity with members of international agencies, governmental and non-governmental institutions, academia, economists, senior corporate and hr executives, sustainable development practitioners, business management experts and other relevant stakeholders in Europe and beyond.

You are cordially invited to attend this international event and/ or nominate the member(s) of your institution.

For further information, please see the event details:

http://www.etechgermany.com/HCConference.pdf

Sincerely,
Organizing Committee
-------------------------------------
International Sustainability Events

------------------------------------------------
Etech Germany
Dürkheimer Str. 24
D - 76187 Karlsruhe
------------------------------------------------
Tel.: 0049-721- 476 89 16
Fax.: 0049-721- 476 89 53
Email: mail@etechgermany.com
------------------------------------------------

Web: www.etechgermany.com
------------------------------------------------

Growing scepticism about gobal warming data and 'green jobs' claims

2010-03-07T14:11:00.000Z

I have been following two blogs that offer much evidence and raise a number of fundamental questions about the 'science' and press coverage of climate change issues, in particular the question of anthropogenic influences on gloabal climate change and the claim that a shift to a 'green economy' will boost employment prospects.

Roger Pielke Jr is a professor of environmental studies at the Center for Science and Technology Policy Research at the University of Colorado at Boulder and has an appointment as a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Consortium for Science, Policy and Outcomes at Arizona State University. He is a Senior Fellow of The Breakthrough Institute, a progressive think tank.
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/03/japan-is-struggling-on-emissions-policy.html

Stephen Murgatroyd is an educator, journalist and social entrepreneur based in Alberta, Canada and a former lecturer at the Open University in the UK.
http://themurgatroydblog.blogspot.com/2010/03/green-job-myth-or-is-it.html

Both these blogs offer readers an intelligent and sceptical look at the undoubtedly alarming publicity that has led to the questioning of the integrity of the UN IPCC and its leaders. They are well worth accessing as a counter-balance to conventional wisdom on global climate issues. The blogs are not exclusively about 'climate realism' but cover many other topics of general interest.

UK Government web-site worth checking

2010-02-23T18:49:00.000Z

http://www.defra.gov.uk/sustainable/government/documents/change-behaviour-model.pdf
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is a Government Department in the UK.

The overarching challenge for Defra is to secure a healthy environment in which we and future generations can prosper.

This is the official UK Government website for sustainable development.

Sustainability is the future. Sustainable development can guide our choices to get us there and create a place we want to live in.

•From here to sustainability - Understanding sustainable development as our path from where we are now to a sustainable future.

•What is the government doing? - The UK government programme for sustainable development and our current activities.

•Advice and support - Guidance for local and regional authorities, communities and those working in education.

•What is the government doing internationally? - We know we can’t achieve the changes we need without working together with other countries.

•How do we know if we are getting there? - Indicators to measure our progress.

You may also be interested in:

•Directgov for greener living tips and opportunities to volunteer and be involved in your community

•Business Link for advice on changing your organisation to prosper in a sustainable future

Updated: 10 February 2010

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity -- TEEB

2010-01-28T14:02:00.000Z

http://ec.europa.eu/environment/nature/biodiversity/economics/pdf/d1_summary.pdf

This pdf summarises an important report from a UNDP & EU initiative - TEEB - to inform policy makers about the economic implications of using 'natural capital' and ecosystem services without taking proper account of how they underpin our economic systems. It is a significant top-level supra-national initiative doing for biodiversity and ecosystem services wht the IPCC did for the climate change issue. Potentially it could have a similar global impact. Educational leaders would do well to ask to what extent the perspectives offered in this report are likely to be incorporated in their institutions' learning programmes. In 2010 further reports and a web-site made specially for the general public will be made available by the TEED initiative.

"A central theme is that of placing an economic value on ecosystem services. Some promising policies are already being tried out in some countries and they have the potential to be spread to other regions. Examples include payments for Ecosystem Services (Costa Rica), habitat banking (USA) and revenue sharing for protected areas (Uganda). Phase II of the work will examine in greater detail how we can improve our economic models and policies to secure the flow of ecosystem services (nature's benefits), particularly food and water in a transparent and fair way. This will not only protect biodiversity, but will also improve the well-being of our present generation and the generations to come."

[From a press release: http://www.innovations-report.com/html/reports/environment_sciences/report-111154.html]

RADICAL COLLABORATION - "sourcesharing', strategic alliances and networks for SD

2010-01-19T16:23:00.000Z

There are more than 55,000 environmental nonprofit organizations registered in the U.S. today, and many more green businesses, all competing for the support of responsible consumers. At a recent event in San Francisco, a trio of green business owners suggested that this type of traditional competition may not be the most effective way to make large-scale change. They instead proposed a new model: radical collaboration.

The phrase ‘radical collaboration’ has been used to describe a variety of phenomena, from participation in Wikipedia and similar ventures to cross-disciplinary cooperation in academics. In business, it means creating alliances between a group of former competitors to solve problems together. The concept has been used by corporations: for example, when IBM was losing money on semiconductor chips in 2003, it made the decision to open its research to a network of competitors, and began a new, successful method of innovation that has now been expanded to other departments. Now some argue that the same type of innovation should be applied to the sustainability movement.

Two of the presenters in San Francisco, GenGreen and 3rdWhale are in the business of mobile green business directories. "They were our biggest competitor," 3rdWhale CEO Boyd Cohen says of GenGreen. 3rdWhale was an expert in mobile technology, while GenGreen had a large, successful database -- and both were scrambling to build iPhone apps and more. Ultimately, after meeting at a LOHAS conference earlier this year, the two rivals decided to work together and leverage their complementary strengths. They have also since partnered with Creative Citizen, an online community listing solutions for sustainable living. The three partners were so pleased with the results, they are now recommending similar collaborations for other business owners.

"Every single one of us has been working as hard as we can," says Creative Citizen CEO Scott Badenoch of the green movement. But he points out that the problem is more urgent than ever, and argues that the movement needs to work smarter, rather than harder. For him, the answer is radical collaboration and something he calls "sharesourcing"-- sharing the core competencies of one business with another, so that each ends up with more resources.

There are many more examples of radical collaboration as a trend. In May, we wrote about a collaborative project called Green Xchange, which allows companies like Nike and Best Buy to share sustainability research to speed innovation. Another innovative business, The Hub promotes collaboration by offering a space for people working on the world's challenges to come together and share ideas, resources, experience, and connections. The Hub has about twenty locations around the world, including a new U.S. space in Berkeley's Brower Center.

Sustainable development expert Hunter Lovins lists Walmart's new sustainability policies -- and the effect they'll have across manufacturing, as another example of radical collaboration. She argues that collaboration is necessary.

"If we don't act, and act immediately," Lovins says, "we will lose the opportunity to avoid runaway climate change. Whatever individual successes we might have... we are not getting the job done. If you look at historic transitions, they take too long, given the amount of time we have."

In traditional economic theory, competition is an important driver of innovation. But it can also cause duplication of efforts -- 3rdWhale was spending serious resources trying to re-create GenGreen's database, for example, before they decided to partner. And it's possible that reinventing the wheel will take more time than we have.

Adele Peters holds a Master's in Strategic Leadership towards Sustainability from Blekinge Institute of Technology in Karlskrona, Sweden.

TEN WAYS THAT THE EARTH COULD END QUICKLY (notes on short presentation from www.ted.com)

2010-01-19T16:21:00.001Z

If you think that climate destabilisation, overpopulation, energy depletion, maldistribution of wealth and environmental damage are not enough to worry about, consider the alarming list below.

1. We lose the will to survive
20% of humans are clinically depressed according to the WHO – most over 65; median longevity now 81
Give insurance for mental illness; Develop better advanced psychoactive drugs

2. Alien invasion confronting a more intelligent civilisation
80 planets now found (2002) – billions and billions of planets are out there. The probability of more advanced intelligences and civilisations out there are enormous.
Become an outward –looking, space-faring civilisation. Make a plan to negotiate.

3. Ecosystem collapse
Oceans now near collapse. Massive species loss is happening.
Spend more on modelling ecosystems; Create huge biodiversity reserves.

4. Particle accelerator mishap
Current experiments to create black holes are underway; more accelerators under construction
Independent board of scientists to monitor the bigger and bigger accelerators

5. Biotech mishaps
Regulate and apply the same strict security to biotech development as with the nuclear industry

6. Reversal of magnetic fields
Replenish the ozone layer

7. Giant solar flares
The atmosphere and magnetic field protect earth but super-flares have been observed in similar stars at similar stages of development as the earth
Make an atmosphere on Mars (i.e. terraform – it takes 300 years to make Mars habitable)!

8. New global epidemic
Aids, ebola, resistant cholera, anthrax, staph mutation
Outlaw the use of anti-biotics in farms on land and sea

9. Meet a rogue black hole
There are 10 million dead stars in the Milky Way Galaxy alone that are gobbling up everything around them
Search for another earth-like planet to which humans might migrate

10. A big asteroid collides with earth
Research them systematically to predict collision potential
Work out how to divert them to change their trajectory

THE WORST THING WE CAN DO IS TO STOP WORRYING ABOUT SUCH POTENTIAL THREATS!! SEE WHAT HAPPENED ON 9.11.01!!!

Nuclear Fusion Power by 2030? A 9 minute video from TED

2010-01-12T13:23:00.000Z

Re-start on the EL4SD data analysis

2010-01-08T18:24:00.000Z

In January Chris Botton at Hull University will re-start the delayed data analysis of questionnaire results submitted from 15 countries relating to the values of school leaders. Mike Bottery will use the data for the ENIRDELM EL4SD comparative study and individual national researchers will be sent Chris's SPSS results for use in their own national research. Mike is planning to present the comparative study at the ENIRDELM Conference in Szeged, Hungary in September 2010. More detailed information of future prosepects for the EL4SD initiative is available in the November 2009 ENIRDELM Newsletter at http://www.enirdelm.org/

Copenhagen Summit: Compromise or debacle?

2009-12-21T17:00:00.003Z

The Copenhagen Climate Summit has come and gone, not surprisingly with the failure of 192 nations to reach consensus. The New York Times today points out that this framework for trying to reach an agreement is no longer viable after 15 such assemblies and that the big nations who are the greatest contributors of CO2 will probably have to form their own binding agreement.

“The process has become unworkable, many said, because it has proved virtually impossible to forge consensus among the disparate blocs of countries fighting over environmental guilt, future costs and who should referee the results.“The climate treaty process isn’t going to die, but the real work of coordinating international efforts to reduce emissions will primarily occur elsewhere,” said Michael Levi, who has been tracking the diplomatic effort for the Council on Foreign Relations. That elsewhere will likely be a much smaller group of nations, roughly 30 countries responsible for 90 percent of global warming emissions. It was these nations that Mr. Obama rallied in a series of dramatic encounters on Friday to finally ink a deal that starts a flow of financing for poor countries to adapt to climate change and sets up a system for major economies to monitor and report their greenhouse gas emissions.

This smaller group of nations will meet periodically to tackle a narrower agenda of issues, like technology sharing or the merging of carbon trading markets, without the chaos and posturing of the United Nations process. A version of this already exists in the 17-nation Major Economies Forum, which has been a model of decorum and progress compared with what the world saw unfold at the climate talks.
The deal worked out in Copenhagen is a political agreement forged by major emitters to curb greenhouse gases, to help developing nations build clean-energy economies and to send money flowing to cushion the effects of climate change on vulnerable states. But even if countries live up to their commitments on emissions, a stark gap remains — measured in tens of billions of tons of projected flows of carbon dioxide — between nations’ combined pledges and what would be required to reliably avert the risks of disruptive changes in rainfall and drought, ecosystems and polar ice cover from global warming, scientists say”.

I have been following the excellent blog of a fellow Yorkshireman Stephen Murgatroyd now based in Alberta, Canada whom I met in Turin recently. http://themurgatroydblog.blogspot.com Stephen encouraged me to read Christopher Booker’s sceptical treatment of the issues and his daily blog has offered a more balanced perspective than most mainstream journalist. He offers a perspective similar to that referred to in the NYT extract quoted above:

“So what now? As far as the UN is concerned, it is busy organizing the next summit for Mexico in December 2010. They will try again to secure an agreement on CO2 emission reductions, funds for developing nations, technology transfer and intellectual property and the verification and governance mechanisms required to enforce what they hope will be a legally binding agreement. Talks have failed, so let us have more talks is the mantra.Others, like Bjorn Lomberg, the skeptial environmentalist, are suggesting that its is time to change the fundamental focus for negotiations. Rather than focus on a global, legally binding agreement on CO2 emissions, he suggests that the focus should be on technology and mitigation efforts. Rather than live out the fantasy of “stopping climate change”, we should instead focus at the international level on dealing with the effects of climate change, while at the same time reducing emissions through national and bilateral agreements. He is not saying “don’t cut emissions”, but rather he is promoting the idea that climate change is something that has to be managed through investments in innovative technology and adaptation.This is an unpopular view, since many have bought the fantasy that action now can stop climate change. The religious belief in CO2 reduction as mankind’s only choice is now invested in so heavily, in more ways than one, that shifting the basis for the conversation is politically and economically difficult. Nonetheless, it is what it needs to happen if the world is to make progress”.

Global consensus, let alone governance, seems doomed to remain a pipedream of idealistic liberals.

Educational Leadership for Sustainable Development (EL4SD) an initiative to support educational leaders & institutions in addressing future global challenges

2009-11-30T21:14:00.001Z

The volume of education continues to increase, yet so do pollution, exhaustion of resources, and the dangers of ecological catastrophe. If still more education is to save us, it would have to be education of a different kind: an education that takes us into the depth of things. E.F. Schumacher
Aims and Actions of the EL4SD Network within ENIRDELM

Following the approach of ENIRDELM since its foundation on 1991, the EL4SD initiative will create an group of international networkers who themselves will determine how to promote education for sustainable development (“an education that takes us into the depth of things”) at all levels from local to global in their respective areas of professional work. Already a core group of highly qualified and well-networked educators (see below) has been identified. David Oldroyd will act as initial coordinator to facilitate the energy of the group using mainly on-line communication in the first instance. A bid for funding may be framed and submitted to support future activities. In broad terms such activities would promote the transformation of our collective research in 15 countries to a more action-based 'things for educators and schools to do' approach. This might involve, for example:

bidding for EU funding to expand the research group focus from research to development activities;
setting up an on-line catalogue/clearing house (on del.ici.ous) of links to already active web-sites, organizations and publications (e.g. http://www.ted.com/; Worldchanging.com; 350.org; wiserearth.org) that offer schools tangible action events and resources;
arranging exchange of materials;
facilitating visits to exchange good practice;
developing the EL4SD web-site, and web log on the ENIRDELM web-site http://www.enirdelm.org/ ;
building an on-line resource bank on EL4SD and on SD substantive issues

Developing an EL4SD Network within ENIRDELM
The delayed EL4SD research data-processing will now start in January and will generate papers for the 2010 Szeged Conference. In addition to the international research, David is assembling an international group of people (see below) interested in researching and developing EL4SD. John Simpson joined Mike and David in Hull on 14 Nov. 09 to explore how such a network might proceed. John is the former director of two education local authorities in England and founding director of Tribal, the largest private educational consultancy in England joined the meeting. He has extensive experience in educational leadership and its development and specialises in coaching educational leaders. He is keen to engage with the EL4SD work as a contribution to ESD and the movement to address interrelated global systemic problems. John will draft a short strategic memorandum on possible ways forward for EL4SD in the light of the 14 November meeting summarised below.

If you are interested in joining this Group of EL4SD Networkers please contact d.oldroyd@wp.pl to receive e-mailed updates.

The EL4SD blog and the bookmarked articles on delicious are now available through hyperlinks on the ENIRDELM website http://www.enirdelm.org/ via the Activities tab.

Networkers

David Oldroyd – Founding member of the ENIRDELM Board, and formerly at the National Development Centre for Educational Management and Policy, University of Bristol, UK; Independent International Educational Consultant, Poland
Mike Bottery – Professor of Education, Hull University, UK; Leader of ENIRDELM Research Team on School Leaders’ Values and member of the Council o the British Education Leadership & Management Association who is
Bogdan Ogrodnik - Director of the Silesia Academy of Education for Sustainable Development, that is developing a multi-disciplinary , experiential learning program based at the Botanical Gardens in Mikolow, Poland
Pasi Sahlberg - Formerly World Bank and European Training Foundation Educational Specialist; Director of National Agency for International Cooperation and Mobility, Finland
Jaroslav Kalous - Formerly Assistant Deputy Director of D-G for Education & Culture, Council of Europe and Director of Charles University Educational Management Centre; Freelance International Educational Consultant, Czech Republic
John Francis Simpson - Formerly Director of Education Brent & N. Somerset Local Education Authorities and Director of Education 'Tribal' Educational Consultancy; Independent Educational Consultant, UK
SM Tsui – Former Deputy Director of Education, Hong Kong Department of Education; Independent Educational Consultant, Hong Kong, China
Tibor Barath – Institute of Education, Szeged University, Director of the Hungarian-Netherlands School of Educational Management and 2010 ENIRDELM Chairperson, Hungary
Dean Bowles – Emeritus Professor of Education, University of Wisconsin, Educational Consultant and ENIRDELM North American Correspondent, USA
Justina Erculj – Former Chairperson of ENIRDELM, National School for Leadership in Education, Slovenia

EL4SD update after Antwerp Workshops

2009-10-03T15:52:00.004+01:00

Almost 20 people attended the two EL4SD workshops at the ENIRDELM Conference in Antwerp in Sept. 2009 at which Mike Bottery presented his initial analysis of the data from Nigel Wright's SPSS processing and the researchers made brief presentations about their experience of collecting and compiling the data. It will probably take about six months for all the national data from the 14 countries to be fully analysed and made available for the national and comparative studies. After that time the next phase of the research and possible bids for grant support would be initiated.

New post

2009-03-02T07:19:00.000Z

When you would like to start a new post you have to log in. Then you could comment that blogpost and make a discussion or likewise.
/Thomas

Best sources on the coming global crises

2009-02-27T10:41:00.000Z

The EL4SD Initiative is offering ENIRDELM members access to the growing mountain of evidence about the coming crises that will result, and are resulting, from the impact on the entire planet of human acivity. As usual, education is lagging well behind the research on these problems of disturbance to interacting global systems. Possibly the best short introduction is an on-line video presentation (30 mins) at an inter-disciplinary conference in Stockholm. It is more comprehensive than the much more famous Al Gore presentation 'An Inconvenient Truth'. See http://resilience.qbrick.com/view.aspx?id=39 The slides from this presentation can be downloaded and printed from a pdf file on http://www.pik-potsdam.de/infodesk/education/alter-net/2008/03-09.2008/steffen/presentation-steffen.pdf
The lecturer is Prof. Will Steffen of the Australian National University who is a member of the Resilience Alliance and the Stockholm University Resilience Centre. He talks historically about three stages of the Anthropocene starting from:

1. The Industrial Revolution;
2. The Great Acceleration 1950 to 2010/2020;
3. The Sustainability vs. Collapse Stage that we now face.

Resilience is the quality of systems both human and ecological to cope with disturbances or crises and The Resilience Alliance is an international organisation of inter-disciplinary researchers who are working on these (ultimate?) scenarios by trying to model and predict the total interactions between complex human and ecological systems.

These are the biggest issues of our times and to have access via the internet to feed our understanding, hopes and fears is a wonderful thing unless you believe that ignorance is bliss! The education systems to which we belong have a pivotal challenge to disseminate these issues at every level as they will affect the whole planet and species in potentially disastrous ways, maybe as soon as 2040.

World Economic Forum global perspectives

2008-11-12T14:03:00.000Z

The WEF will meet in Davos in January 2009 to discuss the theme "Shaping the Post-crisis World". By way of preparation a gigantic 'brainstorm' involving 700 leading figures from academic, business and CSOs (civil society) organisations was conducted at a meeting in Dubai and a summary of its conclusions published in October 2008 is available at http://www.weforum.org/pdf/GAC/Highlights.pdf
The more detailed reports of the ten global agenda SD sub-themes can be seen at
http://www.weforum.org/globalagenda/reports

The WEF has also reviewed the progress of EU nations towards the Lisbon Agenda to make the EU the world's most competitive economic region by 2010. http://www.weforum.org/pdf/gcr/lisbonreview/TheLisbonReview2008.pdf
One of the eight indicators of progress towards this goal is 'sustainable development'. This is what the report says about SD:

8. Enhancing Sustainable Development
Ensuring sustainable growth and development is a long-term Lisbon goal, which was added to the Lisbon Agenda at the Stockholm European Council in March 2001.This takes account of the extent to which countries ensure that improvements in the quality of life for the present
generation proceed steadily and do not come at the expense of future generations. The goals were elaborated in the Council conclusions of June 2001, singling out four priority areas for attention: climate change, transport, public health and natural resources. The Council invited the business community “to take part in the development and wider use of new environmentally friendly technologies in sectors such as energy and transport. ”The
effort was to be both at the country level and the centralized EU level. Member governments were asked to elaborate their own sustainable development plans, while at the global level, the EU would “seek to make sustainable development an objective in bilateral development cooperation and in all international organizations and specialized agencies.”

EL4SD Questionnaire development

2008-11-05T13:11:00.000Z

This is a day to celebrate! Obama won the US Pesidential election. In the UK it is Guy Fawkes Bonfire Night that celebrates the uncovering of the plot to blow up the parliament. In cyberspace the ENIRDELM Educational Leadership for Sustainable Development (EL4SD) Blog is born, a child conceived at the Bergen Conference in September! Congratulations to Thomas Soderberg for initiating it.

Already Prof. Mike Bottery and his colleague at Hull University, Nigel Wright have designed the EL4SD research questionnaire to be used in the 15 or so countries that have chosen to participate in order to discover how much samples of school leaders are engaging with the urgent issue of environmental sustainablility among other values on which educational leadership is based. The questionnaire is being trialled in the UK before it is circulated to participants to be translated and issued. Results are expected to be returned by Easter 2009 (April 11).

We are also looking forward to blog contributions from ENIRDELM friends and anyone else who is interested in the role of education and educational leadership in supporting efforts to learn about and act on global issues that relate to a sustainable and just future for humankind and the planet.

This is the start

2008-11-05T12:27:00.000Z

of our blog concerning EL4SD
An invitation to particpating countries has been sent. If you want to participate and hasn´t received any inviation please send an email to Thomas Söderberg at enirdelm@enirdelm.org

Looking forward to meet the network at this blog
/Thomas