World Wise: Can Universities be models for ethical and sustainable communities?
Dr Rolf Jucker
WORLD WISE: CAN UNIVERSITIES BE MODELS FOR ETHICAL AND
SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES?
Dr Rolf Jucker
University of Wales Swansea
Abstract
There is much evidence to suggest that the unsustainability of the current situation worldwide is growing, despite 30
years of Environmental Education and Education for Sustainability. This raises awkward questions regarding the
education sector, in particular higher education: why are the earth-literate leaders who can manage the transition to a
sustainable society not emerging? This paper argues that we have to step back and assess again where we go wrong,
why we go wrong and where we ought to go. In doing so, it maps out values and parameters of sustainable societies
which it then reapplies to the university sector. It ends with some radical suggestions for change and a checklist of
questions to assess progress towards sustainable universities (or, indeed, other institutions).
1. Educating future leaders: a sorry state of affairs
How come successful careers, political leadership and business success are all intimately connected with social
status, wealth and a life in material luxury, when we know that none of these things will help us achieve a
sustainable society?
If our role models and the political and economic leaders who guide our societies are so clearly and utterly out of
sync with living within the limits of our life-support system planet Earth there is something seriously wrong with
our education system, and particularly with our universities.
Saying this also means that we have to admit to a long history of failures. Since the Stockholm Conference on the
Human Environment (1972) an almost endless string of international declarations and agreements (Agenda 21, Rio
Summit 1992; World Summit on Sustainable Development Implementation Plan, 2002, to name but the most
prominent ones) declared that education is the key to a sustainable society. But many argue that far from reorientating education and lifestyles, the last thirty years have seen an acceleration of unsustainable activity,
spreading it to ever more remote corners of the globe, leading to a 20 per cent overexploitation of the Earth's
carrying capacity.
Before we can contemplate what sustainable university education might look like, we therefore have to take a step
back and become clear what really is at stake when we talk about sustainability. We need to know what is wrong
and we need to know where we ought to go, in order to develop any meaningful educational strategies. I really do
believe that it is important to fill the concept of sustainability with content and substance; otherwise it just becomes
another buzzword for greenwash, open to any abuse imaginable.
2. Sustainability: the wider view
I’m sorry to bore you, but it already starts with definitions. You will all be familiar with the three-legged stool
definition of sustainability, highlighting the ecological, economic and social dimensions.
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Figure 1: Source: Procter&Gamble,
http://www.scienceinthebox.com/en_UK/sustainability/sustainabledevelopment_en.html
To me, this is a very reductionist and non-systemic definition which most often is used to justify business-as-usual
(as in the case of Procter&Gamble). In contrast to this, we need to emphasise the holistic and interconnected nature
of sustainability and the fact that all other dimensions are nested sub-systems of the life-support system Earth:
Earth
Economy
Equipment
Empowerment
Equity
Figure 2: adapted from Jucker, 2002, 33.
Viewed as an interdependent system, we can see that we have an unsustainability problem on all five levels:
1.
The Earth is ‘thermodynamically closed and non-materially-growing’ (Costanza et al. 1996, 2). This aspect is
best encapsulated in the following illustration by Phil Testemale:
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Dr Rolf Jucker
Figure 3: taken from Wackernagel/Rees, 1996, 34.
With respect to matter our life-support system is a closed system and to live sustainably, we can only use the
interest (i.e. the energy coming in from the sun), but should not eat into the capital base (i.e. diminish nonrenewable resources). This makes the idea of unlimited material growth a physical impossibility.
Yet, current calculations estimate that globally, we are already appropriating at least 120% of the Earth’s
reproductive capacity, thereby diminishing what is available to future generations at an alarming rate
(Wackernagel, 2002).
2.
A sustainable Economy is not difficult to describe:
A system whose structure respects the limits, the carrying capacity, of natural systems. A sustainable economy
is one powered by renewable energy sources. It is also a reuse/recycle economy. In its structure, it emulates
nature, where one organism’s waste is another’s sustenance. [...] Over the long term, carbon emissions cannot
exceed carbon dioxide (CO2) fixation; soil erosion cannot exceed new soil formed through natural processes;
the harvest of forest products cannot exceed the sustainable yield of forests; [...]; water pumping cannot
exceed the sustainable yield of aquifers; the fish catch cannot exceed the sustainable yield of fisheries.
(Brown/Mitchell, 1996, 169-170)
Yet the world economy is excessively dependent on non-renewable resources, particularly fossil fuels, 1 47-50
per cent of the world’s marine fisheries stocks are fully exploited, 15-18 per cent are overexploited and 9-10
per cent are depleted (FAO, 2000),2 half of the forest cover once on Earth has now gone and each year 16
million hectares disappear [= 7.9x size of Wales] (State of the World 1998, 21-23), about one-third of the
world’s population lives in countries suffering from moderate-to-high water stress and some 80 countries,
constituting 40% of the world’s population, were suffering from serious water shortages by the mid-1990s
(UNEP, 2002, 150) and about two-thirds of agricultural land has been degraded in the past 50 years by erosion,
salinisation, compaction, nutrient depletion, biological degradation, or pollution (A Guide to World Resources
2000-2001, 10; see UNCCD).
What’s more, the World Economy has tripled in size since 1980, and is predicted to quintuple in the next 50
years (A Guide to World Resources 2000-2001, 6). Yet the measure still used to gauge progress (GDP) is
utterly misleading when it comes to measuring real advances in human well-being. There is a clear link
between growth in GDP and growth in CO2 emissions and environmental impact (IPCC, 2001a), but there is no
correlation between GDP growth and increase in human welfare. There is also no link between GDP growth,
1
Global primary energy consumption in 2000: Oil, Gas, Coal and Nuclear together: 84.3%; Biomass, Hydro and
new renewables: 15.7% (Source: Elliott, 2003, 13; World Energy Council [www.worldenergy.org])
2
Fisheries are a very good example of the unsustainability of many high-tech tools. Modern fishing boats are such
potent catchers that they literally destroy the fisheries they are designed to depend on (see Bowers, 2000, 50-51).
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material wealth and equitable societies (EarthTrends, 2003). In fact, all more complex measurements of human
welfare such as the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI [Cobb/ Venetoulis, 2004]) or Index of Sustainable
Economic Welfare (ISEW [Taking Nature into Account, 1995, 149-151; Factor Four, 1997, 272]) point to a
fall in overall well-being in all industrialised countries, despite GDP growth. Indeed, there is evidence that
Euro-American societies, whilst almost drowning in consumer goods and certainly in their waste, experienced
a decline in happiness and conviviality in the last fifty years, and a host of new social, health and behavioural
problems associated with so-called ‘civilisation’ emerged.3 A sustainable economy, on the other hand, would
be one where the economy serves the people, rather than, as at present, that people serve the economy.
3.
Empowerment: Living sustainably within the above limits needs to happen within a democratic framework
which guarantees economic, political and ideological self-determination of all peoples. In other words, people
need to (re)gain control over their lives in the face of local, national or global pressures, be it by individuals,
governments or corporations. Yet, under neoliberal globalisation the trend goes into exactly the opposite
direction. Individuals and local communities increasingly loose control over their seeds, their local resources,
their cultures, languages and traditions. This disempowerment happens on various levels.
Economically, the US, the World Bank, IMF and WTO dictate economic policy around the globe, while
multinational corporations control more and more what products we can chose from, what lifestyles we ought
to live. From the hundred biggest economic entities in the world 51 are now corporations, only 49 countries
(Karliner, 1997, 5). Roughly 200 corporations share a third of world trade between them (Bello et al., 2003,
133) and a handful of agribusiness multinationals control around one thousand patents on the world’s staple
food grains (wheat, maize, rice and soya) (Bello et al., 2003, 166).
Politically, party-dominated representative democracies can hardly be described as democracies in the real
sense of the world: power to the people. An unholy alliance of economic power, wealth and propaganda
generally ensures that local people have little chance in executing their right to self-determination (see Jucker,
2002, 165-176).
Technologically, we grow more dependent on machines and gadgets by the day, destroying our ability to
survive on our own (as every power cut highlights), whilst millions of subsistence farmers, so despised by the
world's middle classes as primitive and backward, still master the art of sustainable self-sufficiency
(Bennholdt-Thomsen/Mies, 1999).
But it goes much further than that. Disempowerment is most potent when the dominant unsustainable
ideologies colonise our imagination. Corporate media and advertising are crucial in this war: ‘the media serve
the interests of state and corporate power, which are closely interlinked, framing their reporting and analysis in
a manner supportive of established privilege and limiting debate and discussion accordingly’ (Chomsky, 1989,
10). With considerable financial backing – worldwide advertising spend stood at 435 billion US-dollars in
1998 (Human Development Report 1998, 63) and Coca Cola is spending more than 1 million US-dollars a day
on advertising in the US alone (Werkheiser, 2004, 40) – this gigantic propaganda machine perpetuates the
deep-seated ideologies of consumerism, individualism, growth, development and progress (see Jucker, 2002,
215-227). Sachs has named the devastating consequences for cultural diversity, social and political
imagination, all of which are crucial for developing sustainable futures: ‘The mental space in which people
dream and act is largely occupied today be Western imagery’ (Sachs, 1992, 4).
4.
Equity: If we start from the assumption (which after all is enshrined in the United Nations Declaration of
Human Rights) that we are all borne equal, we need solutions which bring justice to all people on Earth, not
just the richest 20%. There can be no long-term sustainability without trade-, social- and eco-justice. One way
to assess equity is to measure human impact on Earth, for example with the ecological footprint. Currently, if
equitably shared, every person can make use of an average ecological footprint (total ecological productive
‘Research confirms the age-old truism that money does not buy happiness. Describing the US over the past four
decades, psychologist David Myers says: “We’ve got twice as many cars per person, we eat out two-and-a-half
times as often, we enjoy all the technology that fills our lives. Yet we’re slightly less likely to say we’re very happy,
we’re more often diagnosed with depression ... the divorce rate has doubled, the teen suicide rate has tripled, the
juvenile violence rate has quadrupled.”’ (Ellwood, 2000, 12)
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area on Earth divided by number of inhabitants) of roughly 1.8 hectares. 4 Quite apart from the fact that this
figure is steadily shrinking due to the loss of productive areas and the increase in population, this means that
20% of the world’s population, mostly white people in the global North, but also the elites in the South, occupy
around 70% of the global footprint and appropriate roughly 80% of the world’s resources. Since the average
American has a footprint of 9.6 hectares, we would need an additional four planet Earths to provide the
resources, should, as current ideology has it, the entire global population want to lead a similar lifestyle.
But it goes further than that:
 ‘The level of inequality worldwide is grotesque. [...] The world’s richest 1% of people receive as much
income as the poorest 57%’ (UNDP, 2002, 19). This has stark implications in terms of social justice. In a
world where education, access to information, power and jobs is dependent on wealth, such extreme
discrepancies in income cement and deepen social, political and economic inequalities.
 The FairTrade and TradeJustice movements have highlighted the fact that the world trade system is heavily
tilted in favour of the already rich, leading to crippling debts in Southern countries and a flow of profits,
resources and human capital from South to North: ‘It is perverse and scandalous that poor Africa should
subsidize the opulence of the advanced capitalist countries.’ (Onimode, 1992, 129; see also George, 1998;
Taking Nature into Account 1995, 132-136)
In order words: the prosperity and wealth of the rich nations depends and is built on the exploitation of people
and nature in poor countries around the globe. A concrete example: Germany, an agriculturally fertile country,
imports 30% more food than it produces and exports. This means that the well-nourished and often overweight Germans are eating food which the producing countries would often need to feed their populations. As
Francisca Rodriquez of the independent Chilenian farmers movement Via Campesina put it: ‘Summer in Chile
serves as an orchard for winter in the North.’ (Bello et al., 2003, 116)
5.
By Equipment I mean science and technology. It is a dimension which is usually absent from sustainability
discussions, yet I feel it is an absolutely central aspect. It is precisely our scientific world view and the changes
it brought into the world since the Industrial Revolution, which has created our current unsustainable situation.
Euro-American science, far from being a value-free benefactor for humankind, is the driving force behind the
last three hundred years of exploitation of people and natural resources the world over. It was scientific
‘progress’ and its technological use which enabled the – in retrospect – fatal switch from a humankind living
on ‘current sunlight’ to one living off the ‘savings’ by burning ‘300-million-year-old stored sunlight’ (read:
coal, gas and oil) (see Hartmann, 2001, 15). There is no known indigenous society which has ever wrecked so
much damage on such a scale in such a short period of time onto the ecosphere as we have. Mathis
Wackernagel, who has developed the concept of ecological footprints, has aptly indicated what our problem is:
technology has handed us ever bigger spoons to dip into the ‘planetary chocolate cake’ (Wackernagel, 1997)
[see the tap in figure 2 above] (see Jucker, 2003 for more on this).
Many current technologies have created more problems than they solved, such as nuclear energy, private cars,
the water closet, mobile phones, large dams, genetically modified crops, high-tech fishing, etc. Science and
technology will only become sustainable when they incorporate the precautionary principle and turn into lowimpact tools for everybody’s long-term benefit rather than servicing our obsession with gadgets and
technological fixes (see Jucker, 2002, 73-78, 176-212).
The upshot of the above assessment is that we are in a mess and that it is getting worse. Indeed, on almost every
level the ideologies which created the problem in the first place are propagated as the solutions. High GDP growth is
hailed as the solution to all problems, yet indiscriminate economic growth is the single most destructive recipe for
increased unsustainability. Euro-American lifestyles and individualistic consumerism have done more than anything
else to destroy cultural diversity and moral values of indigenous peoples around the world which still know how to
live sustainably, yet Euro-American ‘civilisation’ is still equated with ‘progress’, ‘liberation’ and ‘emancipation’.
For an introduction to the concept of ecological footprints see Wackernagel/Rees, 1996 and Sharing Nature’s
Interest, 2000.
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‘Development’ out of poverty towards the American way of life is still presented as the ultimate in human
development, yet there is no development in one part of the world without underdevelopment as its Siamese twin in
another part. The ‘development’ as much as the ‘progress’ myth are unattainable illusions, because they both depend
on unsustainable, not to mention unethical, exploitation of human beings and nature. So the problem lies squarely at
the door of the beast:
Both the crisis of justice and the crisis of nature necessitate looking for forms of prosperity that would not
require permanent growth, for the problem of poverty lies not in poverty but in wealth. And equally, the
problem of nature lies not in nature but in overdevelopment. (Sachs, 1999, 89)
Jack D. Forbes puts the spotlight on this when he notes that ironically ‘those peoples and human beings tend to be
categorized as “underdeveloped” and “uninteresting” who do not subjugate others and who do not accumulate vast
amounts of stolen goods’ (Forbes, 1992, 15). This requires that we in Euro-American countries adopt what Sachs
called the ‘home perspective’ (Sachs, 1999, 86-89), i.e. rather than shifting the blame onto ‘the others’ we should
finally face up to the fact that our lifestyle is not and cannot be sustainable and therefore cannot under any
circumstances be a model for the rest of the world. On the contrary, we have to reduce the impact of our lifestyle by
a factor two to five to become sustainable.
This is the uncomfortable conclusion for the saturated upper-middle classes and the rich of the world. Yet for the
rest it implies clearly that the ‘development model’ doesn’t work, without even taking into account the devastation
wrecked by ‘development’ programmes in the South (see The Post-Development Reader 1998, 207-273, or, for a
recent account, Thiessen 2002). And that is the tricky bit: the industrialized countries, if they are honest, have to tell
the ‘underdeveloped countries’: ‘don’t attempt what we have done, it doesn’t work!’ This message will only be
convincing, though, once we can show that we in the rich countries have kicked the drug habit of overconsumption
and overdevelopment. Yet not saying it for fear of being accused of moralizing would be equally wrong, because we
have ample evidence that the message is true.
3. How do we get out of here? Principles for sustainable communities
As Germaine Greer has recently said with a view to your country: ‘It is already too late perhaps for us to learn how
to reverse the devastation inflicted by whitefellas in the short space of 200 years, but some attempt at damage
limitation must be made.’ (Greer, 2004, 23).
I don’t think we will get very far with this if we count on the fact that somebody else, the government or the next
generation – the big cop-out underlying EfS and EE – will do it for us. It is either us, now, or it won’t be done.
So, let’s get personal: Just ask yourself some questions, such as:
 How much overshoot does my eco-footprint produce over and above the global earth share of 2 hectares? (to
find out, go to one or more of the footprint calculators on the Conference website
(http://users.chariot.net.au/~aaee/2004/links/) … and do something about it!)
 Do I really need this four-wheel drive or am I prepared to give up my private car, probably the single most
destructive unsustainable item most of us possess?
 Would I want to swap lives with that young sweatshop worker who sewed together my trainers, my jeans and
my shirt in a 13-hour working day for a lot less money than the brand name company reaped in profits and
invested into marketing?
 How much am I really in control of my life? To what extent do corporations, government policies, academic
research priorities and unsustainable notions of ‘success’ force products, lifestyles and career patterns onto me
which are incompatible with my inner values, with my aspirations to lead a life with a purpose without causing
harm to anybody?
 Am I prepared to boycott or take other forms of non-violent direct action against supermarkets, multinationals
and politicians, responsible for much of the drain on and destruction of local economies and sustainable
livelihoods?
 Am I prepared to proactively get involved with the building of sustainable communities now?
If we are serious about sustainable change now, we have to accept responsibility for it in all areas of our lives: at
home in our families, in our jobs and workplaces, in public as citizens and in the shops as consumers (see Jucker,
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2002a). Yet underlying and informing these actions, I believe, we need to unlearn much of the current ideologies of
consumerism, individualism, progress and development and to un-do much of our commodified lifestyles. Instead,
we must tap into the rich reservoir of human knowledge, often from indigenous peoples, about ways of life that tread
lightly on earth. Kothari has spelt it out clearly: if the aim is truly ‘self-rule of the people’ we will have to learn to
‘draw upon time-tested traditions and knowledge systems’ and ‘community lifestyles and ecologies that had
survived for centuries’ (Kothari, 1993, 86).
Most of us in Euro-American countries have lost this heritage, so that we need to re-learn a set of sustainability
values and principles which should inform all of our actions:

Planning for the future / stewardship: the ‘arrogance of 20th century technology’ – as the Swiss writer Peter
Bichsel has called it – assumed that the Earth, other species and indeed other human beings are just there to be
exploited for the instant gratification and pleasure of the elites of the world. Yet the concept of stewardship
recognises that we have no property or other rights on our planet, but a duty of care which means respecting the
past as well as the future:
Stewards recognize that a trust has been given to them and that they are responsible to care for something
that is not theirs – whether it be elements of the natural world or of human culture – which they will pass
on to the next generation. (Nebel/Wright, 2000, 11)

Acceptance of limits: Our Euro-American growth and development discourses are in denial about the material
limits of our life-support system Earth. Yet accepting that there are limits to consumption will break our
addiction to the modern hybris of more, faster, newer. It focuses our minds on the essentials and needn’t be
negative, as Norberg-Hodge says:
In the West, frugality conjures up images of old aunts and padlocked pantries. But the frugality you find in
Ladakh [India], which is fundamental to the people’s prosperity, is something quite different. Using limited
resources in a careful way has nothing to do with miserliness; this is frugality in its original meaning of
‘fruitfulness’: getting more out of little. (Norberg-Hodge, 2000, 25)

Slow is beautiful: the cycles of innovation are getting shorter and shorter, the pace of work is increasing, the
‘planned obsolescence’ of consumer society (Stoll, 2000, 165-169) creates more and more artificial needs
which, so we are told, need to be met today rather than tomorrow. Yet in terms of sensible answers to the
central question – how to lead a good life – indigenous societies, wise people from all ages and human beings
unaffected by the industrialisation and commodification of life had as good as stab at it as anything the so-called
highly industrialised countries have managed. Also, real learning, understanding and wisdom take time, and no
amount of information overload will change that. In fact, all good things in life – a nutritious, home-cooked
meal, a meaningful friendship, love and peace – take time and cannot be rushed. This is why the German
physicist Hans-Peter Dürr calls for a general ‘deceleration’ of society. 5 Sustainable solutions, too, taking into
account all five spheres, their interconnectedness and long-term effects, cannot be hastily invented.

Small is beautiful: It is well known that the effects of our actions adhere to the following formula: ‘Impact (on
the earth) = Consumption x Technology x Population [I = C x T x P]’ (Lugano Report, 1999, 32). This is why
E.F. Schumacher’s Small is beautiful (originally published in 1973) is still so astonishingly up-to-date:
Schumacher very clearly saw that as soon as you start to take the complexities of life and the limits of the
biosphere into account, only small, transparent, controllable set-ups prove to be sustainable. This is true for the
economic as well as political and social sphere. Native Americans like the Hopi found that in communities over
3000 people meaningful participatory democracy and self-determination is not possible anymore. Anything
5
‘Learning processes, if anything really new is learnt by them, need adequate time. The natural sciences tell us that,
due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, generation and differentiation cannot run at any speed, as opposed to
degeneration, destruction, reproduction and copying. Increased speed therefore leads relatively quickly to a
weakening, eventually stalling of creativity and intelligence. This is why we and our society need ‘deceleration’
[Entschleunigung], and this cannot happen sufficiently under the conditions of destructive competition.’ (Dürr,
2000, 123; translated by RJ)
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bigger creates decision-making processes, hierarchies and power-structures which are undemocratic and open to
abuse. But it also follows that every consumption you don’t make is contributing to sustainability, as are smallscale decentralised technologies.

The Precautionary principle has emerged as a powerful tool to enable sustainability. It basically means that
before we launch headlong down the road of some development path or some specific technology, we should
assess its likely overall long-term impact. Linking back to the first principle, this will allow us to keep the future
open. We have to beware of developments which reduce our options in the future and constrain our freedom to
choose. Reversibility, i.e. the ability to correct mistakes, would therefore be a central aspect of a sustainable
society. Nuclear power is a classic example of foreclosing the future, because highly radioactive waste such as
plutonium will be a deadly threat for tens of thousands of years, long after the last nuclear power plant has been
decommissioned.

Gandhi’s Principle:
Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the
step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him
to a control over his own life and destiny? (Gandhi, 1999, Vol. 96, 311)
Despite all the rhetoric of democracy, with very few exceptions all the power structures in the world are
designed with the wealthy and powerful in mind, and serve their interests. And the wealthy and powerful will
do whatever it takes to keep it that way. This, more than most other things, is the driving motor for the
destruction and greed we are witnessing in the world. To quote Gandhi again: ‘The Earth has enough for
everyone’s needs, but not for some people’s greed.’ (quoted in Shiva, 2000, 19) Solutions cannot be designed
with the wealthy and affluent Euro-American consumer in mind, but only with a focus on those who can barely
make ends meet. Everything else, whether we like it or not, from wide screen television via people carriers to
transatlantic flights, has to be reassessed against this background of real, rather than manufactured, needs.
Only with such a perspective can we meaningfully talk about justice, as Wolfgang Sachs observes:
Justice is about changing the rich and not about changing the poor. [...] Against the backdrop of drastic
global inequality in resource use, it is the North (along with its outlets in the South) that needs
structural adjustment. (Sachs, 1999, 173; my emphasis)
The challenge is therefore to develop political systems, social communities and consumption patterns which can
satisfy the real and basic needs of everybody on Earth, in a fashion that can be generalised over time as well: ‘a lifestyle designed for permanence’, as Schumacher called it (1993, 9). 6 I hope to have shown above that our current
affluent global middle class lifestyle doesn’t qualify (see also Jucker, 2004).
But there is no need to despair. Once we get out of the current frame of mind which assumes that only the newest
fad is good enough, thinking within the perspective from below is not even that difficult, once we start to get the
priorities right again:
One good starting point would be to introduce a maximum, rather than minimum wage: ‘Directors would be
allowed to earn no more than a certain multiple – eight or ten perhaps – of the wages of the lowest paid member of
their workforce, including subcontractors. If they wanted more money, they would have to give everyone more.’
(Monbiot, 2000, 22) This also makes utter sense in a sustainability framework since high wages almost always lead
to overconsumption (see Sachs, 1999, 208).
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It is liberating, I think, to remind ourselves that most of the technologies that a human being really needs to
live an orderly, comfortable, and healthy life are ancient. Would anyone really want to seriously argue that
robots are more important to human beings than cloth woven from spun thread, or computers more
important than the house with roof, walls, and windows? (Lummis, 1996, 105)
Humility and simplicity: Maybe what we need in terms of moral renewal can all be drawn together in these two
terms: on the one hand, ‘humility’ in the sense of ‘tolerance and deep respect’, especially ‘reverence for all forms of
life’ (Forbes, 1992, 47, 129).7 On the other, simplicity: ‘To solve the problems of an unjust and unfair world order
we need to “live simply so that others may simply live”.’ (Kumar, quoting Elizabeth Ann Seton, 2000, 3)
4. The future is now: solutions for sustainable universities
What I have outlined above as general parameters for sustainable communities applies, of course, to educational
institutions on all levels. What consequences does this have for a university education which seriously embraces the
concept of sustainability?
It seems clear that the educational systems almost everywhere turn human beings into westernised urban consumers,
entirely dependent on the global economy (see Bello et al., 2003, 110-111). Yet, the crucial problem, as I perceive
it, is not in the first instance educating the students but training the trainers and managers in sustainability, before
they can engage in ‘sustainable education’ (Sterling, 2001) with their students.
Education for sustainability and environmental education always focus on the next generation. This is important, but
it is equally disingenuous. Those who most urgently need to be educated to understand and facilitate the transition to
a sustainable society are the current political leaders, the CEOs of transnational corporations, university professors
and everybody else who perpetuates the unsustainability of the current state of affairs daily with their actions,
decisions and lifestyle choices.
Therefore, nobody should really be allowed to lead a place of higher learning nor to teach in it without sound
training in Gandhian humility, systems thinking, complexity and history. This could be achieved by the following
requirements:
 First, people change their behaviour very quickly if they are faced directly with its consequences (i.e. a factory is
only allowed to draw fresh water downstream of where it feeds back its waste water). Therefore managers and
lecturers are required to live for at least six months amongst poor communities somewhere in the majority world
without any extra resources (say amongst the landless peasants in Brazil or sweatshop workers in the Philippines
or China). This would ensure that for once they would be at the receiving end of the consequences of imposing
our unsustainable model onto the world.
 Second, before being allowed to enter university service, academics and managers have to demonstrate that they
can lead a self-sufficient life within a sustainable total ecological footprint of 1.8ha (the global Earth share). The
few estimates that exist suggest that universities’ current footprints are nearly 2.5 times this figure! Any
overshoot would either prevent them from entering the service or could be deducted pro rate from their salary
(which might actually help them because overshoot is closely linked to monetary wealth).
 Third, they would need to demonstrate sound knowledge of the basic workings of the life-support system Earth,
environmental economics and the destructive history of so-called progress and development, including a critical
sustainability evaluation of much of what passes as science and high-tech.
Once there is evidence that university teachers and managers have translated their newly found humility, their
personal commitment to a sustainable lifestyle and their understanding of the ethics of sustainability into the day-today running of their institutions (the same, of course, would apply to businesses), the institutions can start to rethink
their teaching provision.
All of the above would need to be translated into subject-specific teaching (which should develop into wider
interdisciplinary understandings) and would, of necessity, comprise the following: Irrespective of discipline,
This is also warranted by the following insight: ‘Far from leaving micro-organisms behind on an evolutionary
ladder, we [human beings] are both surrounded by them and composed of them.’ (Margulis/ Sagan, 2001, 11)
7
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students would need to learn to grow their own food (or help growing it) and be enabled to lead a lifestyle with a
sustainable consumption pattern. A gap year between school and university might be a good opportunity to wise up
on points one and two above and get the necessary sustainability literacy. The disciplinary teaching, however,
would rethink the relevant subject within a sustainable economic, social and political framework, with a view to
long-term responsibility towards society.
But the end result will be the real test. Only if the graduates of our higher education systems turn out to be humble
human beings, living within the means of nature and able to use their privileged access to knowledge in ways to
reduce our dependency on consumerism and increase contentedness and sufficiency, will we know that the changes
envisaged by environmental education and education for sustainability have finally happened. Or, to put it in more
practical terms: We will know that we are on the right track when our current and future political and business
leaders loose their infatuation with expensive cars, expensive houses, expensive watches, global jet-setting and
excessive salaries.
People have criticised these suggestions as ‘rather idealistic, utopian ideas which don’t come across as very
practical’. This always reminds me of an old anarchist slogan: ‘Be realistic: demand the impossible!’ I do sincerely
believe that unless we are prepared to get involved into radical, even uncomfortable change which will affect all
dimensions of our lives – and now!, and it might hurt! – we will not turn the unsustainability tide.
But okay, I will give you a few more conventional ideas. For a truly holistic approach to sustainable education,
universities – and, in adapted form, other education institutions – should engage seriously with the following
questions (I follow closely some suggestions made by David Orr [1994, 90-92]):
1.
‘Does the curriculum provide the essential tools for ecological literacy?’ In other words, are all students, the
leaders of tomorrow, equipped with the necessary critical capabilities to understand the complexity of the real
world, i.e. the challenge of sustainability? [Curriculum]
2.
Is the institution’s pedagogical ethos fostering deep level learning and inquiry rather than superficial
vocationalism and uncritical absorption of ‘information’ and ‘knowledge’? [Pedagogy]
3.
How conducive is the shadow curriculum, the architecture, learning atmosphere and immediate surrounding to
foster sustainability? [Physical Structures/ Shadow Curriculum] (see Appendix I)
4.
What do the institution’s graduates do in the world? ‘Are they part of the larger ecological enlightenment that
must occur as the basis for any kind of sustainable society, or are they part of the rear guard of a vandal
economy?’ [Responsibility for effects of its educational practice/Civic responsibility]
5.
What about the institution’s research agenda? Is it primarily guided by vested commercial interests and focused
on furthering individual researcher’s careers, or is it taking seriously the responsibility HE institutions have
towards society as a whole and the local community? In other words, is most of the research helping with
establishing a sustainable society? [Research Agenda/ Responsibility towards society/community]
6.
Is the institution as a whole run in a sustainable way? How much paper, water, materials, electricity and fossil
fuels does the institution consume per student and how much waste, carbon dioxide and pollution does it
discard? [Resource Management] (see Appendix I)
7.
What about the institution’s finances? ‘Does the institution use its buying power to help build sustainable
regional economies? (...) To what extent are their funds invested in enterprises that move the world toward
sustainability?’ [Regional Regeneration]
8.
How proactive and co-operative is the institution engaged in working together with others to facilitate
sustainability? [Partnerships and Community Links]
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Dr Rolf Jucker
In what ways is the institution rewarding contributions by staff towards sustainable development and how is it
supporting the transition to a sustainable university on all levels?
But whatever we do on any or all of these levels, we should be mindful of the values and principles set out above. If
we manage to achieve the hardest change of all – decolonising our minds from the myths of ‘progress’,
‘development’, ‘growth’ and ‘consumerism’ – I believe change will be relatively easy. After all, as Lummis has
pointed out (see above), leading a simple, happy, fulfilled life does not depend on any new technical miracles or
wonder drugs, but on values and principles, which are readily accessible and understandable.
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Appendix I
Sustainable Solutions: energy, water, housing, transport, agriculture
Here are some suggestions for institutional improvements at universities which would all contribute to putting these
places of learning at the forefront of sustainable change:
1.
Sustainable energy: A recent study comparing the startling difference in wind energy provision in the
Netherlands and Denmark provided some interesting results. Even though the potential for wind energy was
roughly the same in both countries, the installed capacity in 2000 was five times greater in Denmark. The
reasons seem to be as follows: the Netherlands favoured a top-down, high-tech, large-scale approach which
quickly ran into technical problems and didn’t have public support. In Denmark, most of the wind turbines
were small-scale, owned and operated by communities with a direct interest in good functionality. This
bottom-up approach encouraged innovation through trial and error, it ensured ownership and backing of wind
energy by the communities and thereby overcame the sitting problem, which is almost insurmountable in
countries like Wales today (see Kamp, 2004, 320-329).
Universities are often large landowners and function as communities in many ways. Why not start a
community planning process to site a wind turbine or two on our campuses, thus enhancing energy selfsufficiency, economic viability, community identity and ownership?
2.
Sustainable water use: Arguably, the invention of the flush toilet was one of the worst ideas every inflicted on
humankind. Just think about it: on the one hand you have, if properly treated, a perfectly safe fertiliser,
constantly replenished: human urine and excrement. On the other hand, you have the life blood on Earth:
water. Rather than keeping them separately, and therefore useable, you mix them together, thereby
contaminating your precious water which you then have to clean at great expense, not to mention the increased
pressure on drinking water, used by the gallons to flush down your poo. From a sustainability point of view,
there is no question that the flush toilet is no match to the dry toilet. Enter a fascinating educational project at
the Secundario ‘Instituto Patria’, in Xico-Chalco, Mexico, where dry toilets yield rich educational fertiliser:
The dry latrine project simultaneously develops theoretical and practical skills. History, English, Spanish, social
studies, natural sciences, journalism, community development, recycling, waste ‘management’, and other disciplines
are taught in the integrated manner essential for engaging in moral education and ecological literacy. [...] The dry
latrine project involves ‘learning by doing’. The school day is divided into two parts. During the afternoon, teams
constituted of students, supervising teachers, parents, and neighbors install at least one dry latrine a week for the
entire academic year in the homes of community members. This is key to communal learning. The mornings focus on
theoretical explorations of this postmodern technology. The theory and practice of producing, promoting,
constructing, and installing dry latrines involves several elements: (a) curing themselves of the ignorance and
apprehensions regarding dry latrines – including fears of odor, disease, plagues, dysfunctionality, underdevelopment,
or backwardness; (b) liberating themselves from their blind faith that the flush toilet of the developed world is
superior or more desirable; (c) emancipating themselves through the discovery that even if the flush toilet were made
available to the population of Xico-Chalco, it would not be desirable; that, in fact, it would prove to be a catastrophe
for a whole set of ecological, economic, political, health, moral, and educational reasons; and (d) developing leaders
in the community for the production, promotion, installation, and construction of alternative postmodern ecologically
friendly technologies. (Prakash/Richardson, 1999, 65-78)
Universities could start a similar programme, reconnecting students with physical work, their own bodily
functions and practical knowledge for a lifetime. Building regulations could stipulate that every new building
or every refurbishment should be fitted with dry/compost toilets.
3.
Sustainable housing: There are two routes one can take, both with interesting aspects, even though the second is
probably the more sustainable over all. The first is the high-tech approach, as chosen by an innovative
communal housing project in London called Bed Zed.
Fifty per cent of the world’s population now live in cities, which currently account for around 75% of all
resources consumed and wastes produced. The proportion of people living in cities is forecast to grow to
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60-70% in this century. Therefore, making our cities sustainable is one of our greatest challenges.
Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED) is demonstrating how we can create high quality urban
environments and live within our 1.9 hectare target ecological footprint. (Desai/Riddlestone, 2002, 90)
The main features of BedZED are:
 Where possible building materials selected from natural, renewable or recycled sources and wherever
possible brought from within a 35-mile radius of the site.
 A combined heat and power unit able to produce all the development’s heat and electricity from tree
waste (which would otherwise go to landfill).
 Energy-efficient design – with the houses facing south to make the most of the heat from the sun,
excellent insulation and triple-glazed windows.
 A water strategy able to cut mains consumption by a third – including installing water saving appliances
and making the most of rain and recycled water.
 A green transport plan which aims to reduce reliance on the car by cutting the need for travel (e.g.
through internet shopping links and on-site facilities) and providing alternatives to driving such as a car
pool.
 Recycling bins in every home. (Source: http://www.bedzed.org.uk/about.htm)
The second is the revival of old, low-impact building technologies which rely entirely on local materials with
little embodied energy and little industrialised manufacturing. A few examples of the later can be found at Cae
Mabon in North Wales: a traditional roundhouse with thatched roof, a hexagonal block house with turfed roof,
built according to Native American Navajo traditions and a cob structure, built with local earth and straw (see
http://www.caemabon.co.uk/).
There is no reason why university buildings should not be carbon neutral, zero-waste, low-impact. In fact, if
higher education institutions want to lay justified claim to intellectual leadership, they’d better build nothing but.
4. Sustainable transport: How do you limit, for example, growth in private car use, in practice? One of the most
interesting examples to show how intelligent ecological solutions can be combined with social ones, if the necessary
political will is there, is the Brazilian city of Curitiba:
Jaime Lerner, the architect who has transformed Curitiba into one of the world’s greenest cities, has
been twice re-elected to run the city and is now state governor. Lerner’s creed is revolutionary: ‘The
poorer you are, the better the services you should have.’ When he first became mayor, Curitiba was
mushrooming as the rural exodus of the seventies sent people into the cities and the transport system
was heading for chaos: 50 bus companies competed in the city centre, the jams worsening every day.
Something drastic had to be done. A subway system cost too much, and would take too long to build.
So Lerner’s planners identified what made an underground system fast and applied it to the bus service.
Huge red articulated buses purr speedily up special lanes stopping at tubular steel and glass stations
where passengers buy tickets before boarding. As the buses stop, ramps descend from their doors and
boarding time is minimal. Neat little lifts in the pavement raise handicapped passengers to the platform.
Lerner has produced an efficient, passenger-friendly service. Bus jams never happen, vandalism is
unknown. ‘People don’t vandalise it because they like it. They feel respected, they show respect,’ says
Carlos Ceneviva, president of Urbs, the municipal company which collects fares and regulates 10
private companies. No subsidies are paid: 80 per cent of people go to work by bus; 28 per cent of car
owners take the bus instead, which has led to a 20 per cent drop in fuel consumption. This had three
effects: since most people take the bus the fares are so cheap that even poor people can afford it.
Additionally, the drop in private car use has made Curitiba the Brazilian city with the cleanest air and
the highest percentage of parks and green areas, since the demand for parking spaces is lower. Thirdly,
for low-income housing a clever scheme has allowed poorer families to live along the bus tracks in the
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city centre. Lerner says: ‘The less importance you give to cars the better it is for people. When you
widen streets for cars you throw away identity and memory.’ (Rocha, 1996, 18)8
But there are also individual solutions which minimise the impact of the private car, yet at the same time
provide the required service, namely getting you from A to B (albeit without the status, ego-kick and feeling of
power associated with a Jeep Cherokee). One such solution was developed by Swiss engineers and is called
Twike. It is a very light (246 kgs), mobile 3-wheel vehicle powered by rechargeable battery and/or pedal
power. Its efficiency and mobility is astonishing, compared with a conventional car which wastes 99% of total
energy input. It produces no noise or exhaust fumes, is half as wide and uses about 10times less energy per
mile than a normal car. Top speed is 85 km/h, battery range 250 km, and it can take 170 kgs of cargo (see
http://www.twike.de/de/index.html).
Okay, at times a Twike might be to small, but for most uses on campus and often beyond, it or a bicycle would
do fine. So next time the renewal of the vehicle fleet at your institution is due, think beyond conventional
solutions like LPG (liquefied petroleum gas).
5.
Sustainable agriculture: Something which is yet to happen to most of the heavily oil-dependent industrialized
countries has led to a veritable agricultural revolution in Cuba. Cuba’s urban garden program was begun in the
early 1990s to combat the serious shortage of food in the cities after the collapse of the Socialist bloc which
meant the breakdown of oil imports. Crops withered in the countryside, with no means of transporting them to
urban centres. In a three-year period the economy plummeted by more than 35 percent as trade traffic became
virtually non-existent. As a result, the national caloric intake dropped by a third as many Cubans lost as much
as 20 pounds. In response, urban gardens sprouted up everywhere – from schools, to community centres, to
factories to army posts. Today, the gardens are providing a steady and reliable source of food and strengthen
the fabric of the communities in which they flourish. The food is grown organically and no chemical fertilizers
or pesticides are allowed in the process. Urban farming has been a remarkable success as city gardens now
provide urban dwellers with a third of the vegetable diet recommended by the FAO. Today, half of the fresh
produce consumed by two million Havana residents is grown by ‘nontraditional urban producers’. What’s
more, this agricultural renewal has created tens of thousands of much needed jobs. (Sources:
http://www.oxfamamerica.org/advocacy/art6080.html; http://www.blythe.org/ai/cubanjobs.htm)
Again, there is no reason in a sustainability context, why universities and other places of learning should not
produce most of the food consumed on the premises themselves. In most cases, the necessary land is available
and there is certainly no shortage of hands (students and staff) who could work a couple of hours each week on
the vegetable plots.
References:
Desai, Pooran and Sue Riddlestone (2002), Bioregional Solutions: For Living on One Planet (Dartington, Green
Books [= Schumacher Briefing No. 8]).
Factor Four: Doubling Wealth – Halving Resource Use. A report to the Club of Rome (1997), by Ernst Ulrich von
Weizsäcker, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins (London, Earthscan).
Kamp, Linda M. (2004), ‘Wind Energy Policy 1970-2000: A Comparison between the Netherlands and Denmark’,
in The 2004 International Sustainable Development Research Conference (29-30 March 2004, University
of Manchester): Conference Proceedings (Shipley, ERP Environment), 320-329.
McKibben, Bill (1997), Hope, Human and Wild. True Stories of Living Lightly on Earth (St. Paul, Minnesota,
Hungry Mind Press).
Natural Capitalism. The Next Industrial Revolution (2000), ed. by Paul Hawken, Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter
Lovins (London, Earthscan).
Prakash, Madhu Suri and Hedy Richardson (1999), ‘From Human Waste to Gift of Soil’, in Ecological Education in
Action. On Weaving Education, Culture, and the Environment (1999), ed. by Gregory A. Smith and
Dilafruz R. Williams (Albany, NY, State University of New York Press), 65-78.
Rocha, Jan (1996), ‘Urban Renewal: Let them eat cake’, The Guardian, 5.6.1996, G2, 18.
8
See also McKibben, 1997, 57-115, Factor Four, 1997, 126-128 and Natural Capitalism, 2000, 288-308.
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