<<Biblioteca Digital del Portal<<INTERAMER<<Serie Educativa<<Education for a Sustainable Future in the Americas
Colección: INTERAMER
Número: 67
Año: 1999
Autor: Eloísa Trellez Solís and Gustavo Wilches Chaux
Título: Education for a Sustainable Future in the Americas
Commitments to Sustainable Development: 1970 - 1980
Although concern regarding the unsustainable management of the Earth predates
1972, in that year the Human Environment Declaration was signed at the Stockholm
Meeting, and governments assumed specific commitments regarding sustainable
development. This declaration and its subsequent impact mark a turning point
in understanding the urgent need for change in development processes.
The declaration stated that “…Man has the fundamental right to
liberty, equality and to an adequate standard of living, in an environment of
a quality that allows him to live with dignity, and well-being. He also has
the solemn obligation to protect the environment for present and future generations.”
As a result, the United Nations established the UN Environment Program (UNEP)
and, in 1975, entrusted UNESCO with the task of formulating the Environmental
Education Interdisciplinary Program (EEIP). Both initiatives would make a significant
contribution to a process designed to change the vision of development and education.
Throughout the 1970s, an awareness of the need to design compatible development
and educational processes increased as a consequence of the Stockholm Declaration.
More specifically, environmental education and training were to take on an integral
and holistic perspective.
Thus, in 1975, at the Belgrade Meeting on Environmental Education, UNEP and
UNESCO promoted an international effort to understand and practice this new
type of education more effectively. They outlined the initiative in more detail
at the Intergovernmental Meeting on Environmental Education, held in Tbilisi,
in October 1977.
Between the Belgrade and Tbilisi meetings, regional preparatory meetings
were held, at which far-reaching discussions widened the scope of education
for the future. At these meetings, delegates made vital contributions such as
the following:
Environmental education should encourage the establishment of a value system in harmony with the traditional cultural environment…Aggression, as well as conflict and war have a disastrous impact on mankind and the environment. Hence, education must promote peace and justice amongst nations. (Brazzaville, 1976)1
Environmental education should emphasize and strengthen axiological sensitivity, contribute to the collective well-being, and concern itself with the survival of mankind. (Helsinki, 1977)2
This global vision, in relation to moral values, peace, justice, and collective
well being, inaugurated an extraordinary conceptual discussion that the final
Declaration of the Tbilisi Meeting deepened and broadened:
Environmental education is, in fact, education as it should be understood and practiced in our time. In addition to being community oriented, environmental education should involve the individual in an active process intended to solve problems arising from specific realities, encouraging initiative, responsibility and the sense of a better tomorrow. (Tbilisi, 1977)3
This concept of environmental education activated national imaginations and
creativity, as each country sought to understand it and apply it to the traditional
educational process. Unquestionably, the countries of Latin America and the
Caribbean accepted this commitment with great enthusiasm and commendable effort.
Ministries of Education introduced changes in school curricula, implemented
and assessed pilot projects and proposed a variety of actions. In the end, however,
many initiatives were uncompleted for predictable reasons: lack of continuity
of governments, different levels of political interest; dispersion of efforts,
low priority assigned to educational matters, tendency to separate disciplines,
and lack of funding.
By the same token, in response to Tblisi, a number of professional initiatives
dealing with specific aspects of sustainability were undertaken in the United
States. National and state organizations dealing with environmental education.,
international education, and education for citizenship were developed and often
implemented as discrete responses to particular recommendations. Multidimensional
and integral approaches, however, providing environmental education for sustainable
development remained uncommon.
Moreover, during these years, discussions took place regarding the very essence
of environmental education, in which two opposing positions emerged: on the
one hand, a conservationist approach developed, oriented toward the study of
natural, “ecological” phenomena and, on the other, an approach took
shape emphasizing integration and development, in keeping with conclusions reached
at Tbilisi.
The governments of North America, with their strong commitment to quantitative
economic growth and their desire to avoid redistributive questions, adopted
the former orientation. Thus, their policies tended to isolate “environmental”
from social issues, and as a result, environmental education in the North became
increasingly focused on “nature,” excluding questions of social inequity
from its field of study. Rather than effectively addressing spreading ecological
disruption, however, this approach obscured the relationship between the social
and natural worlds and delivered the issue of ecological disturbance to technical
experts. In the North, then, ecological disorder became a strictly technical
rather than a broad-based political problem.
A series of difficulties emerged from discussions concerning these different
orientations, which hindered implementation of purposeful environmental education
in the Americas. Nevertheless, the Tbilisi initiative continued to gain support
and what is known today as “Latin American environmental thought”
began to spread throughout the region. The growing importance of environmental
thought was due partly to the Centro Internacional de Formación en Ciencias
Ambientales (CIFCA – Environmental Sciences International Training Center),
established by UNEP and the Government of Spain to encourage environmental training
in Spanish-speaking countries.
The 1970s therefore developed the outlines for an integrated approach to
environmental education in Latin America and the Caribbean. Although these initiatives
were not officially adopted in North America, they provided a basis for thought
and action, and still serve as a guide, as demonstrated at the Ibero-American
Education Congresses held in Mexico in 1992 and 1996.
Commitment
- To re-analyze, interpret and adapt the basic principles agreed upon at the Intergovernmental Meeting on Environmental Education, held in Tbilisi, in 1977, together with regional versions of these agreements, with a view to implementation.