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Environmental education: a field intension or in transition?Edgar J. González‐Gaudiano a

a National Autonomous University of Mexico, MexicoVersion of record first published: 21 Nov 2006.

To cite this article: Edgar J. González‐Gaudiano (2006): Environmental education: a field in tensionor in transition?, Environmental Education Research, 12:3-4, 291-300

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Environmental Education Research,Vol. 12, Nos. 3–4, July–September 2006, pp. 291–300

ISSN 1350-4622 (print)/ISSN 1469-5871 (online)/06/03/40291–10© 2006 Taylor & FrancisDOI: 10.1080/13504620600799042

Environmental education: a field in tension or in transition?Edgar J. González-Gaudiano*National Autonomous University of Mexico, MexicoTaylor and Francis LtdCEER_A_179849.sgm10.1080/13504620600799042Environmental Education Research1350-4622 (print)/1469-5871 (online)Original Article2006Taylor & Francis123-40000002006EdgarGonzález-Gaudianoedgarg@sep.gob.mx

Introduction

Since its acceptance as a pedagogic field, environmental education has experienceddivergence and antagonism in its theoretical and methodological approaches andstandpoints. Over the last decade, it has drawn on numerous discourses rangingacross the teaching of ecology (as a branch of the natural sciences); conservationeducation; approaches heavily loaded with civic content; and citizen education(González-Gaudiano & De Alba, 1996; Mrazek, 1996); moral and ethics education;political considerations (Robottom, 1987) arising from, for example, a critical analy-sis of globalization, social inequity, and north–south relations and the rural dimension(Toledo & Castillo, 1999; Altieri, 2004); approaches linked to scientific knowledge(Castillo, 2000; Castillo et al., 2002; Jenkins, 2003); aspects of Oriental philosophy(Guha & Martínez-Alier, 1997; Guha, 2000); and the broad map of eco-spirituality(Berry, 1988; Hallman, 1994; Scharper, 1998).

The last decade has also witnessed the emergence of education for sustainabledevelopment (ESD). Unsurprisingly, this has also been controversial as it has beentaken up for a variety of reasons, including those who assume it to be a superiorversion of environmental education that will make potent contributions to the solu-tion of today’s problems (see Smyth, 1995), and by those who see it as offering astructure that will be able to transcend the ‘limited’ scope of environmental education(Fien, 1993; Tilbury, 1995) elevating educational processes to a level at whichideologies deep inside environmental education may be surpassed (Huckle, 1983).

Sterling (1996, p. 19) asks if ESD could be ‘a convergence of all those “adjectivaleducations” oriented towards social change, citizenship, peace and health, as well aspolitical, human rights, multicultural, environmental and development education’.There are also those who perceive ESD to be something quite different, though indis-tinct, and even in harmony with the dictates of neo-liberalism (Sauvé, 1997). Sachs(1993), for example, warns of the risk of sustainable development becoming ‘mere

*Felipe Angeles 2-27, 10820 México, DF., Mexico. Email: edgarg@sep.gob.mx; egonzalezgaudi-ano@gmail.com

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rhetoric to mask the continued enclosure and commodification of nature and a newkind of eco-technocracy which works in the interests of the rich’ (quoted in Huckle &Sterling, 1996, p. 13 ).

Many now wonder whether the enrichment of the environmental curriculum inschools and universities, the updating of teaching techniques in environmentalculture, and the training of decision-makers and community development processes,can all be considered a success. If so, might we now focus our attention on ESD,where the environment is but one of a wide set of problematic issues, and whoseinterconnectivity we remain unsure about? Such proposals become even more diffusewhen applied to decisions about educational polices and objectives, teaching–learning processes or knowledge, or when considering their relationship with widersociety. Although it has to be admitted that ESD has brought about a repositioningof educational processes in the context of national and international policies, there isalso a chill in the air as environmental matters steadily lose their own vitality and rele-vance within these discourses. It is at times such as these then, with such divergencein perspectives and positions, that a discussion of the conflictive relationship betweenenvironmental education and ESD during the last 10 years needs to take place.

Environmental education and education for sustainable development

Nowadays, it is clear enough that many of the discourses we find in environmentaleducation are powerfully associated with a way of viewing reality that seeks universaltruth, and that along this road there is belief in plenty and progress, the project ofhumanity, the inviolability of the human subject, and a social and historic worldconcept ordered by absolute fundamentals. Put another way, there are essentialiststreams of discourse within environmental education that foreground metaphysicalsubjectivity, where the individual subject is assumed to constitute the source and basisof meaning (see De Peretti, 1989; Barnes, 1996).

In raising this discussion, it is important to note that the notion of discourseinvolves not just a particular gathering of words, but meaningful linguistic and non-linguistic constructions of society whose signified and signifiers are constituted inrelations (of difference, equivalence, antagonism, etc) that are sustained with otherdiscourses. Here, discourse is understood as a meaningful ‘totality’, never completeor sutured, but always exposed to dislocation owing to the action of other discourses(Buenfil-Burgos, 2000, p. 9; see also González-Gaudiano, 2001, p. 154). In otherwords, an enormous variety of discourses, which simultaneously both add to anddetract from a favourable social perception of the field, have been defended in thename of environmental education. I invoke ‘field’ here after Bourdieu (1990, p. 136),to signal environmental education as a regulated social space in which positions anddispositions (habitus) face off in respect of what participants recognize as theirsymbolic capital. A field implies agreements and disagreements, unifying concepts,tensions, expectations, and perceptions. Contradiction is often found in emergingfields in which multiple, diverse attributions come together (see also Reid, 2003).Thus, as is the case of other recently constituted symbolic fields, environmental

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education has become a meeting place for specialists and practitioners not only fromthe social and human sciences and the natural sciences, but also from the mostdissimilar activities and beliefs.

However, throughout the short but complex history of environmental educationthere have been attempts to hegemonize the field in favour of those approachesfocusing on the green environment, and on schooling and instrumental rationality,displacing critical and subaltern approaches to the complex socio-environmentalproblems of our times (Hart, 1993, p. 110). A prominent example is the InternationalEnvironmental Education Programme (UNESCO–UNEP, 1975–1995) which onlyvalued, and therefore gave voice to, the experiences and perspectives of representa-tives of developed countries. Although this centre-periphery relationship has clearlybrought tensions to environmental education, it needs to be recognized too asrevealing the imprint of a discursive system that has been simultaneously dynamic,plural, precarious, complex and contradictory.

On the other hand, we also find the concept of sustainable development beingsubject to a variety of interpretations and suffering from substantive internal contra-dictions (see Bonnett, 2002). This situation demands conscientious exploration andcareful use of ideas, but it also asks for more than this, because the idea of sustainabledevelopment is evolving and will continue to do so. This is also at a time when wemust recognize it currently receives popular support among developed Governmentsand business, and amongst those in developing countries who believe it to havepotential for the creation of a more equitable world in terms of trade and thedistribution of wealth. Yet, while it may not come as a surprise that it is under the flagof sustainable development that the world’s great corporations work with large ‘non-profit’ conservation organizations that benefit from their contributions, what remainssurprising is the naïve hope of people who think that a solidary, equitable world canpossibly be built through the idea of sustainable development.

In 1992, UNDP published its third report on human development. That yearthe report was illustrated with a graph known by its shape as ‘the champagneglass’. This depicted enormous global inequality in the consumption of natural,financial, energy and other resources: 82.7% of these resources were consumed by20% of the richest population, while the poorest fifth accounted for only 1.4%(PNUD, 1992). Nine years later, according to UNDP (PNUD, 2001), there werefour billion people in the world who got by on two US dollars or less a day. Thisrepresents the true proportional relationship between development and underdevel-opment. Indeed, we might note that in the three-year period after Johannesburg—and many other summit meetings, on inter alia, habitat, women, population,education and poverty—the world has seen a widening of the gap between develop-ment and underdevelopment; the poor are poorer, the rich richer, especially thelarge international corporations and the owners of financial capital. Moreover,during those years evidence suggests that environmental degradation has acceler-ated and intensified. But economies and consumerism have grown to previouslyunheard of levels in response to new trends in western ways of living, based onmodels of individual acquisition that have spread all over the world offering an

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illusory emancipation of the self (Peters, 2005). Here it becomes apparent that ofthe three overlapping sets—economy, society and environment—that are usuallychosen to represent generically the idea of sustainable development, the one whichultimately prevails, and overpoweringly so, is the economic (see Stevenson, 2002,p. 191). So, how are we to carry out education for sustainable development, givenits internal contradictions? (Bonnett, 2002, p. 9). The biggest contribution toeducational processes might be to reveal the interests embedded in sustainabilitydiscourses and expose the public discourses that, while entire continents are beingbled and plundered of resources, herald glad tidings and the arrival of the ‘newemperor’. The presumptuous possibility of a transition to a new civilized age mustbe deconstructed in the knowledge that poverty, hunger and ecological degradationare found everywhere. In this vein, Plant (1995, p. 261) calls for educators toaddress ‘the contentious nature of sustainable development’, and the need to foster‘approaches to environmental education that critically assess and respond toeconomic and political realities’.

That is why Smyth (1995, p. 18) sees environmental education in a world of excep-tionally fast change and unstable conditions, under growing stress that makes itvulnerable, especially to attacks from ‘opportunists with very different agendas’. Thisis a strongly political posture. It questions naïve, deliberate schemes that tend to rele-gate the environment to insignificant roles such as a dumping ground for materials tosustain development processes—which is precisely why is must be protected since itprovides the resources for such processes. In fact, this conception has been the leitmo-tiv of the confrontation between developers and environmentalists. Citing Pezzey(1989), Smyth (1995, p. 11) accepts that sustainable development’s conceptual ‘fuzz-iness is useful in forging a consensus to promote sustainable development but alsoobscures the political, philosophical and technical issues that still remain unresolved’(see also Sauvé, 1999). Smyth further states (1995, p. 11) that such terms are‘becoming the property of a priesthood of the environmentally enlightened, presentedas symbols of goodness to be enshrined, not explained, and taken up without questionby many who, for political or commercial reasons, just want to look good’, and hetherefore warns that:

… educators should be sure in their own minds that they know what they are saying,and that others do as well. There are people around who welcome a lack of clarityabout the implications of a globally sustainable life-style, and who should not beencouraged.

In one of his better known and most articulate paragraphs, Smyth echoes the wordsof Winston Churchill, to state:

If environmental education means education largely confined to the green environ-ment, then it may indeed be at the beginning of the end. But if it takes a genu-inely holistic view of environment, as originally intended, and develops for peoplethe prospect of a better life in a richer, less threatened, more dependable world[sic], then it may simply be at the end of the beginning and equipped for thefuture with a clearer vision which will sustain it and carry it forward. (Smyth,1998, p. 15; my emphasis)

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On the other hand, in an unusual discourse for the environmental education–ESDdebate, Bonnett claims that the essence of sustainability ‘is intrinsic to authentichuman consciousness’ and therefore when used:

… as a frame of mind is not simply the issue of our attitude towards the environment, butrepresents a perspective on that set of the most fundamental ethical, epistemological andmetaphysical considerations which describe human beings; a perspective which is boththeoretical and practical in that it is essentially concerned with human practices and theconceptions and values that are embedded in them. (Bonnett, 2002, p. 14)

This is a philosophical standpoint regarding a notion of sustainability contrary to theutilitarian, economic bias noted above. To Bonnett sustainable development is apolicy, a frame, not a specific proposal. I concur with his proposition that sustainabil-ity as a frame of mind could make important contributions to the educationalprocess. It could do this by trying to recover the cultural, affective relationship withnature lost during the dominant civilizing process, especially as, having overesti-mated the cognitive dimension to teaching methodologies, schooling processes haveabandoned the affective component with its underlying potential for values andexperiential education: ‘our relationship with nature, whatever its kind, is an impor-tant aspect of our own identity’ (p. 14). I also concur with the need for a radicalinterpretation that recovers non-instrumental concepts from that discredited notionknown as development.

However I disagree with Bonnett in his search for the essences of humankind andtruth, because these are two of the intellectual engines that have guided modernthought since the Enlightenment. I make this point because my uncertainty as to themeaning of ‘authentic human consciousness’ means that I am unable to form an opin-ion regarding whether or not sustainability is intrinsic to human consciousness. If‘Consciousness is the space where things stand forth and the precise quality ofconscious space at any moment is conditioned by these things in their standing forth(with all their cultural significances)’ (Bonnett, 2002, p. 18), then I truly appreciateBonnett’s effort to articulate culture with sustainability, because culture is preciselyone of the main deficiencies of the majority of sustainability approaches. Neverthe-less, can we really talk about an authentic human consciousness when there exists amyriad of cultural expressions? Without going as far as to support the idea of culturalrelativism, where everything is apparently equally valid, it seems certain that we mustat least recognize multiple interpretations of the world.

During recent decades, a radical decentring has come about, at least in academiccircles, that denies epistemic or historical privilege to either the traditional Cartesiannotion of a ‘centred’, transparent, authentic, individual subjectivity, or to the human-ist ideal of a rational, autonomous and responsible self (see Peters & Lankshear, 1995,p. 19). Personally convinced of this as I am, I am inclined to agree with Luke (2003,p. 246) that ‘To cultivate an ecological sensibility, one must revitalize the rich tradi-tions of critical social theory’. Environmental education as a field has a relationalcharacter since it is the result of relations with other fields in the wider educationalterrain. It is not a reflection of an essence (e.g., nature, conservation, science, or

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reason) but the fusion of features and elements also belonging to other fields. All suchidentities are the consequence of hegemonic relations, and so has been the constitu-tion of environmental education. In this process political frontiers, antagonistic rela-tions and articulatory practices have been involved in the installation of theinclusionary and exclusionary regime of environmental education, and to understandthis, critical social theory is an appropriate source of inspiration.

Tension or transition?

Even in the mid 1990s, there was abundant literature on sustainable development,together with evaluations of virtually all of its discourses, proclamations and institu-tional programmes (Plant, 1995, pp. 254–255). At that time, Tilbury remarked:

… although this literature has dealt with education for ‘sustainability’, it has failed tooutline the essence of this new focus and has avoided questions about how it differs fromprevious environmental education approaches. (Tilbury, 1995, p. 198)

She went on to say that environmental education for sustainability differs from envi-ronmental education in that it focuses more insistently ‘on developing closer linksbetween environmental quality, ecology and socio-economics and the political threadswhich underlie it’. However, we might note that this was just one of the recommen-dations of Tbilisi (UNESCO, 1978) that was not implemented owing to its havingbeen interpreted as emphasizing the green environment and an instrumental rational-ity in such a way that it castrated all possibility of environmental education being ableto contribute to the radical questioning of the state of existing things. This emphasishas been a strong push to turn environmental education into a ‘light’ form of educa-tion. In keeping with the status quo, this has led to pre-packaged initiatives that aredisjointed, quick, immediately applicable, individualist, operable from differentspheres of public and private life and which, additionally, give the illusion of partici-pating in the creation of solutions without necessarily doing so (see Sterling, 2005).But not all of environmental education is ‘light’; and fortunately, the field is notuniform. Of course, ‘light’ environmental education should be replaced, but shouldthis be only with education of a different type that has shown itself resistant to beingswallowed up by the status quo, that is, where the opposite of being light (green, say)might imply both dark (green) as well as deep (green)? Henderson and Tilbury (2004,p. 8) call for a new approach that ‘focuses sharply on more complex social issues, suchas the links between environmental quality, human quality, human rights and peaceand underpinning politics’. I do agree with that, because it was the core of Tbilisiresolutions in 1977, but the broader point is that in terms of environmentalism inenvironmental education, the continuum should not be seen solely in terms of variousshades of green, or how eco-centric or anthropocentric the discourse is (see Goughet al., 2000).

With this in mind, it is important to ask on the one hand, whether this movementtoward sustainable development is representative of a ‘paradigm shift’ as Fien (1995)says, while on the other, clarify whether sustainable development is an oxymoron

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(Meira-Cartea, 2005), a fetish (Bifani, 1992), a smokescreen (Turner, 1997) or apolicy slogan (Stables, 1996; Jickling & Spork, 1998)? Contributing to this diversityof adjectives, and without disagreeing with them, I am inclined to follow Lyotard andthink that sustainable development is a case of an empty signifier which operates likea huge myth with pretensions of being a salvation grand narrative. Indeed, as Fienobserves, certain:

… approaches of environmental education which ignore the issues of justice and ecologicalsustainability are guided by the technocratic rationality and behaviouristic goals of reduc-tionist western science and western approaches to development. (Fien, 1995, p. 27)

But I wonder if we are talking about the same environmental education as a homog-enous corpus? I also wonder if ESD is not precisely more susceptible to technocraticrationality, to behaviour change goals, free market approaches and neo-liberalism.And related to this, does not ESD contribute even more to the fragmentation anddisconnection of different pedagogic approaches where the environment has beenreduced to its minimum form of expression? At least in Mexico, if not Latin Americamore generally, this field of environmental education, has experienced progressive yetdiscontinuous growth—diverse and unequal, but productive—and it reflects, at thismoment of weakness and enfeeblement of environmental policies, what appears to bea tendency towards a displacement of environmental issues in the set of worldpriorities.

Looking ahead

In my judgement, in order to countermand the maximalism associated with ESD, thepolitical priority of environmental education has to be reinforced by intensifying thedevelopment of skills, and stimulating interaction on key environmental issuesbetween environmental educators and educators in related fields that complementour work. Sustainable development is far from receiving functional, accepted institu-tional recognition, backed with credible, solid arguments. However, while waiting forthis to come about, we should endeavour to rework educational processes which, forbetter or worse, have helped us on our way to a different perception not only of themagnitude and complexity of the issues, but also of our responsibility for what ishappening. If this reworking originates from the fickleness of international organiza-tions, it might turn out to be very dangerous in the face of the severe backlog left overfrom development priorities and a heightening and depressing of social expectationsabout the improvement of quality of life. To sum up, environmental education cannotitself be blamed for the poor results of environmental, social and economic policies,thereby justifying the imposition of obscure neologisms in an attempt to postpone theinevitable confrontation between the risks and threats of the present, and thosewaiting around the next corner.

Nevertheless, I am convinced that the UN’s ESD Decade truly is an opportunityto conduct a critical evaluation of the task we have set ourselves, to shore up ourweaknesses and face the challenges on the horizon. We must return to our starting

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points, to the declarations that gave origin to the field, review them to bring them upto date with an aggiornamento to bring them into line with current times. I also believethat the contributions that have been made since the idea of ESD developed thatmake real sense can be used to best advantage. For example, Tilbury (1995, p. 200)insists that emphasis should no longer be placed on education as a curricular process,but more as a social process with a holistic approach. I concur that this should bedone so as not to remain trapped in stereotypical rituals of schooling, yet while thishas already been pointed out on innumerable occasions, a kind of centripetal forceseems to exist that focuses on the curriculum time and again. To combat this, we alsoneed other ways of thinking about the curriculum.

The environmental crisis is more social than ecological in nature, but that shouldnot lead us thoughtlessly to subsume the environmental within social issues asUNESCO’s original proposals for the implementation of ESD during the Decadeseemed to do (UNESCO, 2004). Because of this, an atmosphere of permanenttension is likely to prevail, not only during the Decade, but also until the limitationsof ESD become apparent, and it is displaced by another concept that can sustain thediscourse; perhaps with a new, improved, true ‘paradoxical compound policy slogan’(Stables, 1996, p. 159) that lays claim to the field of environmental education.However, this will not happen before sustainable development has received a largenumber of new definitions and recycled meanings through ESD that will need to beanalyzed, interpreted and debated in the light of their iterability. Thus, the field willbe tensioned but it will also be in transition, because, at the end of the day, everydiscursive tension is constitutive of the identity of any field.

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