O P IN ION ESSAY

Copyright © 2014
SAGE Publications
(Los Angeles, London, New Delhi,
Singapore and Washington DC)
www.sagepublications.com
Vol 8(2): 133–141
10.1177/0973408214548369

Shaping the GAP: Ideas for the

UNESCO Post-2014 ESD Agenda*
JIM TAYLOR

Abstract
This paper explores how ESD activities may be viewed on a continuum
from ‘causal’ approaches, seeking to cause change in others, to ‘enabling’
orientations where efforts are made to enable people to implement the
principles of ESD and respond to the environmental challenges they face
from their own context. An enabling orientation seeks to both ‘mobilise’
participant’s perspectives and engage with them in a systems-wide or
holistic space. They tend to make more meaning for learners by making
useful connections between theory and context-relevant practice, thus
enabling application to new contexts.
The paper develops the notion of capabilities and the importance of
reflexivity through which one learns to respond in different ways in dif-
ferent circumstances. Finally the paper explores some outcomes of the
DESD and develops pointers for enabling education processes in the next
decade and forthcoming Global Action Programme (GAP).

Keywords: Education for sustainable development, social change, global

action programme and sustainable development goals

Education for sustainable development is a life-wide and life-long learning endeavour

which challenges individuals, institutions and societies to view tomorrow as a day that
belongs to all of us, or it will not belong to anyone. (UNESCO 2004)

* This article was first prepared for the United Nations University Institute for the Advanced
Study of Sustainability (IAS). It explores how Regional Centres of Expertise can strengthen their
work in the forthcoming decade. It is shared here to widen the debate and hopefully receive
feedback as to how we may improve our approaches to ESD in the post-DESD and MDG eras.

Jim Taylor is Director, Wildlife and Environment Society of South Africa (WESSA), Howick, South
Africa. E-mail: [email protected]
134 Jim Taylor

ENVIRONMENTAL CHALLENGES: CAUSAL AND ENABLING

ORIENTATIONS TO SOCIAL CHANGE

Unwittingly, society continues to contribute to the environmental risks that it

must face. These include human-induced climate change, the rapid depletion of
natural resources, increased frequency of natural disasters, loss of biodiversity,
increased poverty and economic systems that depend on the continuous growth of
consumerism.1 Risks that are exacerbated by the way people live on Earth require a
response that is people-centred in orientation. In other words, human-created prob-
lems require human-centred solutions, often with ways of thinking different to those
that created the problems, and different models of training and educational objec-
tives (Orr, 1994). Education for sustainable development (ESD) is emerging as a
strategic vehicle to address such issues and reorient learning for a more sustainable
world.
UNESCO is committed to a post United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable
Development (UNDESD). The DESD commenced in 2005 and will culminate in 2014.
The new programme, post DESD, is known as the Global Action Programme (GAP)
on ESD and it seeks to generate and scale up ESD action (UNESCO, 2013; Wals, 2009).
The GAP is planned at all levels and areas of education and learning, so as to accelerate
progress towards sustainable development. Essentially the GAP has two objectives;
to reorient education and learning so that people have an opportunity to acquire
the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes that empower them to contribute to
sustainable development. It also aims to strengthen education and learning in all
agendas, programmes and activities that promote sustainable development.
Such issues are helping inform a global debate that engages with a new development
agenda to follow the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) after 2015. The post-
2015 development agenda is likely to be more strongly influenced by sustainability
issues and will be defined by the UN member states. At the Rio+20 World Summit
in 2012, the UN agreed to clarify and define sustainable development goals (SDGs).
It was decided to establish an ‘inclusive and transparent intergovernmental process
open to all stakeholders, with a view to developing global sustainable development
goals to be agreed on by the General Assembly’.
The SDGs will consider all dimensions of sustainable development—social,
economic, ecological—and aim at replacing the MDGs as a new, worldwide agenda,
that will be implemented after the MDGs.
The key question in these debates is how to enable society to move in a sustainable
development direction? This article explores how ESD activities may be viewed on a
continuum from ‘causal’ approaches,2 seeking to cause change in others or ‘enabling’
orientations where efforts are made to enable people to implement the principles of
ESD and respond to the environmental challenges they face from their own context.
Causal and enabling approaches are essentially part of a range of options that may
be applied according to the context and content of planned learning. In seeking
to cause change in others, for example, by seeking to change attitudes and values,
there is a risk of perpetuating an ‘us to them’ and excessively top-down orientation.
An enabling orientation, on the other hand, seeks to work from the perspectives

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 Ideas for the UNESCO Post-2014 ESD Agenda 135

that participants bring into the learning contexts. It seeks to both ‘mobilize’ these
perspectives and engage with them in a systems-wide or holistic space as partici-
pants develop understanding towards more sustainable practices. Causal approaches
have their place in ESD most notably when information and facts need to be com-
municated and shared. Unfortunately, such approaches are limited when the goal
of ESD is transformation and meaningful social change. An enabling orientation to
change, for example, through which people are supported to make lifestyle choices
towards sustainability, rather than simply be the recipients of information and facts,
is much more likely to achieve meaningful change than simply making them aware
of issues. Enabling orientations are thus able to support more sustainable pathways
in one’s daily living (Share-Net, 2013; Taylor and Westerman, 2013). They tend to
make more meaning for learners by making useful connections between theory and
context-relevant practice, thus enabling application to new contexts.
Causal approaches to change sometimes make the assumption that fear and
concern is a viable and even desirable state to encourage. Unfortunately, such
‘causal and fear-based’ approaches also run the risk of creating ‘action paralysis’
where anxiety overwhelms the ability to make wise decisions and may even cloud
reasonable decision making. Although it is healthy to explore the ‘footprint’ or impact
one’s actions have on the Earth’s limited resource base, the negative implications are
often over-emphasized. Working with colleagues in India, Rob O’Donoghue (2009),
collected and recorded ‘hand-print’ stories which portray the positive things one
can do to off-set the destructive impact of one’s ‘footprint’. Stories of change include
reusing shower and bath water for food gardening, growing tree mother seedlings
and worming waste. The ‘hand-print’ initiatives are examples of an enabling orienta-
tion to learning in that the participant in the learning is central to the decisions and
actions that are close and meaningful to them. Participants are not simply carrying
out the instructions or communicated messages, which experts are seeking to cause
them to implement.
Instead of dwelling on the negative effects of our actions (our ‘carbon footprints’),
we are finding that positive actions, or ‘handprints’ for sustainability, are far more
satisfying and effective in transforming our work and lifestyle choices for a more
sustainable world. This article explores some outcomes of the DESD and develops
pointers for enabling education processes in the next decade and the forthcoming
GAP.
The GAP will focus on five priority action areas:

1. Advancing policy;
2. Integrating sustainability practices into education and training environments
(whole-institution approaches);
3. Increasing the capacity of educators and trainers;
4. Empowering and mobilizing youth; and
5. The GAP will also encourage local communities and municipal authorities to
develop community-based ESD programmes.

The GAP will be launched at the World Conference on ESD in November 2014 in
Aichi-Nagoya, Japan.

Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 8:2 (2014): 133–141

136 Jim Taylor

DESD AND REGIONAL CENTRES OF EXPERTISE (RCEs)

RCEs are one response that has been implemented by the United Nations University:
Institute for the Advanced Study of Sustainability (UNU-IAS), in support of the
DESD objectives. An RCE is a network of existing formal, non-formal and informal
education organizations, mobilized to deliver ESD to local and regional communities.
A network of RCEs, worldwide, constitutes the global learning space for sustainable
development. RCEs aspire to achieve the goals of the UNDESD by translating its
global objectives into the context of the local communities in which they operate.
RCEs have been initiated with the support of the Ubuntu Commission of the UN
to operate as an open framework for collaboration on ESD activities in support of
learning and change.
In recent years, the KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) RCE, to whom Wildlife and Environment
Society of South Africa (WESSA) is affiliated, has been an active instigator in encourag-
ing the development of other RCEs in southern Africa. There are now 11 RCEs in the
South African Development Community (SADC) region and 127 acknowledged RCEs
worldwide (http://www.ias.unu.edu).

A ‘SUSTAINABILITY COMMONS’

RCEs have the opportunity of experimenting in sustainable living. To this end, the
KZN and Makana RCEs, in South Africa, have implemented a ‘Sustainability Commons’
which is a further opportunity for collaboration and exploring sustainable living.
A ‘Sustainability Commons’ may be described as a rich and diverse pool of sustainability-
focused learning, technologies and tools; whose resources are deployed locally for
the benefit of the community and the environment. At a ‘sustainability commons’,
people are able to try out the low-carbon technologies which are used to achieve
more sustainable practices. The Share-Net printing room, for example, uses sunlight
energy from photo-voltaic cells while the lighting is provided through roof-mounted
refractive skylights. Rob O’Donoghue from the Makana RCE at Rhodes University,
describes a ‘Sustainability Commons’ as more than a physical space. He describes it
as a culmination of historical trends and practices within the field of climate change
adaptation; an experiment in social learning and an argument for and against science
and technology. It is a meaning-making exercise in facing environmental risks and a
movement towards socio-ecological justice through sustainability practices.

The Southern African Context—Policies Supporting ESD

There is much synergy between the objectives of the DESD, the SADC Regional
Indicative Strategic Development Plan (RISDP) and the Action Plan of the Environ-
mental Initiative of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) as these
development plans all emphasize the importance of education in improving the
quality of life and sustainable development in African societies. The SADC RISDP and
NEPAD Environmental Action Plan emphasize environmental sustainability, health
education, gender equity and food security as key issues that need to be addressed

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 Ideas for the UNESCO Post-2014 ESD Agenda 137

through education and other development initiatives. Education is also recognized

as a key priority in the MDGs, where health, gender and ecological sustainability are
key areas of action contributing to poverty alleviation. In recent years, the MDGs
have been criticized for neglecting sustainable lifestyle practices and these should
therefore be prioritized in future global strategies such as the SDGs.
ESD has aimed to foster synergy across the key development priority areas.
Although this has allowed for a re-conceptualizing of educational practice in a
southern African and African context, progress has not been as good as was hoped
for (Lotz-Sisitka, 2006). The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and
UNESCO are working towards the establishment of a regional ESD strategy for Africa,
which will incorporate the experience and priorities of the southern African region.

GUIDELINES FOR SOUTHERN AFRICAN ESD POLICY AND PRACTICE

Southern Africa has a wealth of experience in addressing sustainable development

issues through education. There are many projects, programmes and networks active
in this area (e.g., the SADC Regional Environmental Education (EE) Programme; the
Environmental Education Association of southern Africa, Eco-Schools, etc.). The
UNDESD provided a unique opportunity to strengthen, extend and ‘mainstream’ this
experience through coordinated support and orientation. The hoped for reorienting
of education towards southern Africa’s sustainable development priorities did not
achieve the significance it promised at the outset of the decade, however. This poor
achievement of the DESD vision parallels the poor performance of environmental
conventions over the past two decades since the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.
Notable exceptions included Lesotho who launched the Lesotho ESD Action Plan
in 2009 in Maseru. This plan helped different ministries of environment, education
and health as well as associated NGOs and civil society organizations to cooperate
more systematically in achieving SDGs.

Key Orientations in Support of the GAP (2015–2020)

If the achievements of the DESD are to be strengthened and to become more effective
in the next decade, the following ‘enabling’ orientations to ESD need to be considered.
These include ‘capability’, ‘transformative learning’, ‘reflexivity and critical thinking’
and ‘multi- and interdisciplinary’ approaches. Each of these concepts will now be
considered in turn.

CAPABILITY AND FREEDOM

Amartya Sen (1999) develops the notion of capabilities through which one can
develop and respond to the challenges one might face, although such challenges are
often unpredictable. One also needs to be reflexive and respond in different ways
in different circumstances. ‘Responsibility’, here, is a term derived from the notion
of an ‘ability to respond’. Capabilities seek to acknowledge the entirety of what

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138 Jim Taylor

a person is capable of being and doing and the nature of the options available to them.
Consequently, the capability is not merely concerned with achievements; rather, the
freedom of choice, in and of itself, is of direct importance to a person’s quality of
life. The idea of developing and emerging freedoms, from within, is central to the
developing capabilities of a person.
Key projects of our KZN RCE are seeking to orientate their work around the
building of freedoms.
Our Sustain-Ed project, for example, which offers accredited training, aims to-
wards ‘training that achieves a sense of pride and purpose’ while much of the training
emphasizes ‘practices’ or practical activities and solutions within the range of risks
southern Africa is facing. Risks include water and sanitation, abject poverty, informal
settlements to mention a few.
Eco-Schools, another partner in the KZN RCE, provide well-equipped and enthusi-
astic facilitators or ‘warm bodies’ across South Africa. These facilitators work towards
supporting meaningful learning at schools and in neighbouring communities. An as-
sessment framework that emphasizes how the school has changed to become more
environmentally effective, rather than focusing on a hierarchical or ‘absolute criteria’,
is followed. This approach to monitoring and evaluation further strengthens the so-
cial change dimensions of transformation within ‘school in community’ contexts.
Share-Net is a further partner of our KZN RCE. Through Share-Net, a range of inex-
pensive resource materials are developed and disseminated across southern Africa. In
just the last six months, over 20,000 resources were purchased from Share-Net. Such
materials are available copyright free and can readily be adapted and redeveloped to
suit individual and local contexts. Materials are thus used in an adaptive and respon-
sive manner and therefore support an enabling orientation to ESD processes.
The principle of work being ‘close and local’ also enables the development of free-
doms where local engagements with issues and risks become important. The work
thus seeks to address and build from local practice and experience rather than hy-
pothetical theory. From Sen’s perspective, the end of development is the expansion
of human freedom rather than economic growth at the societal level and income
growth at the level of the private individual. The primary aim of educational institu-
tions is thus the establishing of the conditions that expand people’s freedoms to do
the things they have reason to value and because they feel they are the ‘right thing to
do’. This differs from an instrumental or causal perspective of education which aims,
for example, to develop specific skills for the labour market. The enabling of capabili-
ties is thus a movement towards social, ecological justice and human freedom rather
than simply economic development at the expense of the planet’s natural resource
base.

Transformative Learning
Transformative learning refers to learning processes that are oriented towards
change. In the field of ESD, a number of pedagogical approaches have been
developed to strengthen and support transformative learning including action
research and community problem solving. Active learning and practice-centred
approaches further support transformative approaches to learning. Most recently,

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 Ideas for the UNESCO Post-2014 ESD Agenda 139

theories of social learning are being proposed which consider the significance of
discontinuities in contexts of learning as valuable opportunities for learning and
change. Such discontinuities often support those ‘aha’ moments when unexpected
outcomes become apparent through a learning process that reveals a different
way of understanding an environmental issue. Using citizen science tools such as a
clarity tube or biomonitoring with a Stream Assessment Scoring System (miniSASS),
for example, may reveal unexpected outcomes related to water quality. Through
deliberation processes of dialogue and debate, supported by the developing scientific
knowledge, transformative learning and understanding can grow and develop.
Action competence and other methodologies that foreground democratic learning
processes are also important dimensions of transformative learning. Such processes
and methodologies engage the participants in decision-making processes, rather
than assuming that they should simply implement externally derived solutions. Such
pedagogical models are therefore potentially powerful ways of enhancing agency, the
ability of people to develop their capacities.

Reflexivity and Critical Thinking

Reflexivity (the ability to reflect on actions and change the same actions as a result of
reflection) and critical thinking are also seen as important aspects of transformative
learning. All people have a capacity for reflexivity (thinking about how we deliberate
on what to do and what we choose to do or not as well as how we learn from
mistakes). Critical thinking involves asking questions about the ‘taken for granted’ or
the hidden aspects of society (asking why things are the way they are). Reflexivity and
critical thinking, therefore, are also important processes in enabling agency through a
capabilities-centred approach to ESD.

Multi- and Interdisciplinary Approaches

To address the complexity and the full scope of environmental issues (e.g., climate
change risks, air and water quality), it is often necessary to work across disciplines
or with the knowledge and orientation provided by a range of different disciplines.
Multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches to learning are therefore important
dimensions for enabling transformative learning and the development of human
capabilities.
Rob O’Donoghue refers to this way of working as an ‘open process framework’,
because it has an ‘open way’ of doing things. It does not really matter in which
order you work, but it is important that the different processes of the ‘start up
story’, ‘talking about’, ‘finding out’, ‘trying out’ and ‘deliberating’ (weighing up alter-
natives) are used as one seeks more sustainable practices. For a graphic overview of
an ‘enabling approach’ to fieldwork and change, see Figure 1, which was developed
by O’Donoghue (2001).
Working from within an open-process framework, participants can be invited to
choose practices that are of particular interest to them and reflect on these. Those
that wish to take their interest areas further are then offered a range of choices which
they can apply in order to achieve more sustainable lifestyle practices.

Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 8:2 (2014): 133–141

140 Jim Taylor

Figure 1 An open process framework

SOME CONCLUSIONS AND THE ROAD AHEAD

As pressure mounts on the natural resource base that supports life on Earth, many
people and organizations are seeking educational solutions to the challenges that
must be faced. The DESD was a major global initiative with this goal in mind. For
many, the DESD has not achieved its goals although it was certainly a directional step
of major significance. Innovations and educational orientations that have been high-
lighted above have played a significant role in the DESD. These include: ‘capability’,
‘transformative learning’, ‘reflexivity and critical thinking’ and ‘multi- and interdisci-
plinary’ approaches. The ‘open-process framework’ developed by Rob O’Donoghue
and colleagues in southern Africa is a further example of engaging learning that
enables more sustainable practices. Initiatives that are seeking to achieve quality
education in the forthcoming decade would do well to consider these enabling
orientations as plans are made to achieve the reorientation that society so urgently
needs. RCEs provide a good opportunity for catalyzing these enabling orientations
due to their flexibility, accessibility and inclusiveness.

Notes
1. Many international reports document these challenges including world development reports
(www.theworldbank.org), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report (www.
ipcc.ch), the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Reports (www.milleniumassessment.org)

Journal of Education for Sustainable Development 8:2 (2014): 133–141

 Ideas for the UNESCO Post-2014 ESD Agenda 141

and UNEP’s Fourth Global Environment Outlook: environment for development report
www.unep.org/geo/geo4
2. Causal approaches may be described as approaches that have a strong linear and positivist
orientation.

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