Education for Sustainable Development (ESD)

• What is Education for Sustainable Development?
• Why Teach Sustainability?
• UK Centre for Bioscience ESD activities

What is Education for Sustainable Development?

ESD is often a contested term, with various different definitions, the Centre uses the term ESD to mean education that aims to give students the knowledge and skills to live and work sustainably.

The most frequently used definition of sustainable development is from the Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development: Our Common Future, commonly known as the Brundtland report, sustainable development is development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”.

Graduates will be faced by very different conditions than those of a generation ago, and will need the capabilities necessary to cope with uncertainty, complexity and rapid change, as well as to contribute positively to a more sustainable, safe and secure future. Meanwhile, there is evidence more employers are seeking graduates who are sustainability literate, are aware of sustainability issues and have competencies to address them in their professional work. There is also evidence growing numbers of students are seeking both universities and employers who incorporate and reflect good sustainability practices. Furthermore, sustainability is a developing area in research terms, with both private and public sector investing more in sustainability and environmental-based research.

Why teach sustainability?

Although the concept of sustainability is not new there is increasing realisation of the current impact humans have on the environment and that this may be placing an unsustainable burden on the planet, There are a wide range of concerns, however many fall into five inter-related areas:

• Population growth and human health: The world population is ~7 Bn and growing by ~ 75M people per year. This has serious implications for the planet. At the same time many people live in poverty, are mal-nourished and die from (often curable) diseases.
• Natural resource use: As the world population grows and countries develop economically the world's resources are used at greater rates. The rates of use of fossil fuels, forests, water and land for agriculture to name a few are all of concern.
• Climate change: International recognition of the impacts of greenhouses gases has lead to the Convention on Climate Change. The main predicted impacts are rises in temperature, rises in sea-level and changes in the amounts and distribution of rainfall.
• Biodiversity impacts: Increase in population growth, inappropriate use of natural resources and climate change are all impacting on Biodiversity. Biodiversity in itself is seen as important but healthy functioning ecosystems underpin human life on earth.
• Pollution: Is a bi-product of human life, whether it be effluent, excess nitrate runoff or bi-products of nuclear energy generation. Many of the processes we regard as essential to normal life cause pollution.

As well as enabling students to develop knowledge of sustainability concepts, ESD can also develop a range of skills in students including critical thinking, the ability to evaluate and assess material and problem solving skills.

• So how could I include ESD?
• Do we need sustainability literate graduates?
• Leading by example – making teaching and institutions more sustainable
• ESD resources

UK Centre for Bioscience ESD activities

Publications

Bioscience Education

Goulder, R. (2008) Primary Datasets for Case Studies of River-Water Quality. Bioscience Education Vol. 12

Speldewinde, P. (2010) Reinventing the wheel: teaching restoration ecology without the ecology. Bioscience Education Vol. 15

Bioscience Bulletin

The Spring 2010 issue of the Bioscience Bulletin was a themed edition focusing on ESD, articles include:

• The Precautionary Principle
• Articulating Values in Environmental Ethics
• Environmental Ethics: A Scenario-Based Approach
• Carbon Footprints and Fieldwork
• Teaching Bioscientists to be Green
• The Challenge of Embedding Sustainability in the HE Curriculum
• Sustainable Development and Employability
• Science and Sustainability
• Re-Thinking Bioscience and ESD
• The Academy's Role in ESD

Case Studies

Latham H. and Jervis. L (2008) Student (and staff) Research in Environmental Biochemistry

Dussart, G. (2007) Aspects of pollution in Europe: An e-learning package

Tierney, A., Brown, A. and Dominy, P. (2006) Using online databases and predictive modeling to develop student understanding of human population growth and global food demand.

Surveys

In 2005 the Centre undertook a study of ESD activity in the Bioscience community and the perceived importance of ESD to Bioscience graduate employers. The responses to these questionnaires formed the basis of the Centre's 2005 ESD report (pdf), a summary of which was published in Bioscience Bulletin 16 (pdf).

In 2010 the survey was repeated with bioscience teaching staff, and a full report of the 2010 survey is available.

Resources

How to make your teaching more sustainable - a series of "How to" sheets with hints, tips and ideas on making aspects of teaching in the biosciences more sustainable. Six sheets are available:

• Making your tutorials, fieldtrips, office, practicals and lectures more sustainable
• Including sustainable development in your teaching

Our Ethics audit tool, incorporating sustainability (pdf) is designed to facilitate ethics and ESD provision within a course

Our Environmental ethics and sustainability resource list and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) resource list bring together a variety of resources and references focusing on ESD in the biosciences.

Some of the topics highlighted in the Bioethics Briefings (for example crop plant genetic modification) may also be relevant to sustainability and ESD. We also have a variety of resources focused on ethics and bioethics.

Funded projects

Aquatic Ecosystem Simulator
Peter Randerson, Cardiff University

Distant access to an ecological field experiment
Alan Fielding, Manchester Metropolitan University

Towards sustainable teaching of bioscience
Dylan Gwynn-Jones, University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Event

Teaching Ethics to Bioscience Students: Sustainability and the Environment
09/12/2009 - Biomedical Building, Cardiff University

Also of possible interest

Information about the Higher Education Academy ESD project

Greening STEM - Sustainability in the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics Curriculum - a report (Word document)