Make a Difference : Learn to Last

1
Chairperson Prof. Madya Dr. Abdul Rashid Mohamed
2
International Organisation for Science and
Technology Education XII IOSTE Symposium 30 July
4 August, Penang, Malaysia
Science and Technology Education for Sustainable
Development
Dzulkifli Abdul Razak - vc_at_usm.my
since 1969
UNU Regional Centre of Expertise on
Education for Sustainable Development

3
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• Rio Summit 1992 put SD on world agenda

• December 2002 the UN General Assembly adopted a
  resolution to implement a UN Decade of Education
  for Sustainable Development (DEfSD) beginning
  from 2005 to 2014.

Nothing much has happened since then
4
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• Nearly 10 years later, since Rio 1992
  sustainable development has largely failed as an
  organising principle
• lack of progress in confronting climate change,
  biodiversity loss, and other pressing global
  environmental challenges is glaring
• the seeds of sustainable development's failure
  were in fact sown at its
  inception

Daniel C. Esty, A Term's Limits, Sept 1, 2001
5
Kofi Annan UN Sec-Gen
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• Our biggest challenge
• in this new century is to
• take an idea that sounds abstract
• sustainable development
• and turn it into reality
• for the worlds people

Can we meet the challenge?
6
EfSD (2005-14) MDG (2000-15)
Ensure Environmental Sustainability
Halve Extreme Poverty
Universal Primary Education
Reduce maternal mortality by 3/4
Reduce lt5 mortality by 2/3
Empowerment of Women/Gender Equality
Form a Global Development Partnership
Reverse spread of diseases spread esp. HIV/AIDS,
Malaria
for aid, trade, debt relief
2000 United Nations Millennium Summit
7
What is Sustainable Development?
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• Development
• which meets the needs of the present
• without
• compromising
• the ability of future generations
  to meet their own needs

World Commission on Environment and Development
(1987) in Our Common Future (the Brundtland
Commission). Oxford Oxford University Press
8
EfSD Two key concepts
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?

• the concept of needs, in particular the essential
  needs of the world's poor, to which overriding
  priority should be given
• the idea of limitations imposed by the state of
  technology and social organisation on the
  environment's ability to meet present and future
  needs.

World Commission on Environment and Development
(1987) in Our Common Future (the Brundtland
Commission). Oxford Oxford University Press
9
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
Approved by UN 57th session in 2002
Inaugurated March 1, 2005 at UN
UNESCO is the lead UN agency
10
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
DEfSD has 4 Action Areas
1. Promotion and improvement of basic
education 2. Reorienting existing education at
all levels to address sustainable
development 3. Developing public understanding
and awareness of sustainability 4.
Training the workforce with knowledge and skills
to perform their work in a sustainable
manner
11
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
Where are we?
Drawing from the research of 1,300 experts from
95 countries, the UN report concludes that 60 of
the systems that support life on Earth are
being degraded or used unsustainably.
The Wall Street Journal Europe (2005) Questions
for the Future, July 13, A6
12
The Ecological Footprint arising from present
model of development
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
With implications on present day ST practices

• A tool for measuring and analysing human natural
  resource consumption and waste output within the
  context of natures renewable and regenerative
  capacity or biocapacity

www.RedefiningProgress.org
13
Ecological Footprint Report (2004)
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• World Average 2.18
• World Biocapacity 1.89

global hectares per capita
Are We Living Beyond Our Means ?
14
How big is your Footprint?
global hectares per capita

• Myanmar 0.76
• Vietnam 0.76
• Indonesia 0.98
• Philippines 1.11
• Thailand 1.41
• World 2.18

• Korea Republic 2.43
• Malaysia 2.99
• Japan 3.91
• Korea DPRP 4.07
• Singapore gt 6

15
Living within our means
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
The alternative?

• requires that we
• live within the regenerative
• and absorptive capacity
• of the planet university/colleges

ieusing ST in sustainable way
16
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
Human activities many of which are ST-driven
have ecological impacts at least 30
beyond the planets capacity to renew itself and
absorb pollution
Sacquet (2005) World Atlas of Sustainable
Development, p. 53
17
Biocapacity breached in mid-1970s
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
World Ecological Footprint (1961-1997)
The trend continues
Breached
Rio Summit 92
Brundtland 87
Source Ecological Footprint Report (2004)
18
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
Technological Transformation

• Steam Power 1780s
• The Railways 1840s
• Electric Power 1890s
• The Motor Car 1930s
• ICT 1980s
• Biotechnology 1990s
• Nanotechnology 2000s
• Brain science ?

Modified from Hope J Hope T Competing in the
Third Wave (1997)
19
Socio-Economic Revolution
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
P-economy
Industrial Wave
Information Wave
K-economy
Modified from Hope J Hope T Competing in the
Third Wave (1997)
20

What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
Knowledge era
Biotechnology era
IT era
Major changes
Technological era
21st century
Agricultural era
Primitive era
650
1750
1950
2000
Modified from Richard W Oliver, The shape of
things to come
21
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
Nanocomposite body parts
Nanopollution
Materials
Environment
Electronics
DNA nanochips
Life sciences

• Super-hi-speed transistor
• Hi-capacity memory chip

• Biosensors
• Genomic drugs
• Nano-delivery systems
• Nanorobots

Nanotechnology future core technology for
next generation of industries
Nanoparticle toxicity
Japan Close-Up, Feb. 2003, p. 7 New Scientist,
Mar 29, 2003, p. 14-15
22
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
The Rise Fall of the Modern Man
Medical Tribune (2004), Stitches The Journal of
Medical Humour, December 1-15, p. 30
modified
23
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
www.epa.gov/r10earth/ sustainability/problem.jpg
24
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
www.epa.gov/r10earth/ sustainability/problem.jpg
25
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
willmclaughlin.astrodigitals.com/Antarctica/B.
Named B-15 iceberg that calved from the Ross Ice
Shelf in March 2000. Equivalent in size to
Jamaica, B-15 had an initial
area of 11 655 square kilometres but subsequently
broke up into smaller pieces
(B-15A, enough drinking water to
supply the world for several months)
willmclaughlin.astrodigitals.com/Antarctica/B../ht
tp//www.uscg.mil/pacarea/polarsea/images/ArchiveP
ix/B-15-k.jpg
26
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
27
New hi-tech types of hazards
28
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
High-risk plants
Hazardous products
Environmental pollution
Weapons of destruction
Other forms of modern-day hazards
29
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
30
Consequences of ecosystem change
for human well-being
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
31
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• Brian Swimme
• It's a result of our fear of nature and our
  peculiar Western drive to control it.
• .traces this fear back to the fourteenth
  century and the Black Death, when huge portions
  of the population die without any apparent
  reason.
• This fear of nature is a recoiling from the
  world "It's going to kill us, so let's take
  control."

The quest for control is the fundamental
impetus for much of science and technology.
The Spread of Black Death (1340-50s)
1346 1347 1348 1349 1350 and later
wps.ablongman.com/.../0,6472,268318-,00.html
The spread of Black Death, spread by merchants
and traveler, and killed more than a third of
Europes population in 5 years
32
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• Brian Swimme
• "Scientists have discovered these amazing
  truths, and they have done so, for the most part,
  within a materialistic mind-set."
• D Ikeda
• In the 20th century, human influence extended
  to outer space but our inner development was
  shamefully neglected.
• H Henderson D Ikeda (2004) Planetary
  Citizenship, p. 83

http//www.thesunmagazine.org/lertzman.html
Over the last two centuries, science has become
ever more abstract and more allied with consumer
culture not of knowledge
http//science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2004/30dec_tita
n.htm
33
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
Why, Im STILL not happy
Education for Development
Unsustainable
http//www.dep.org.uk/downloads/nothappy.jpg
34
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• The TEN Happiest Nations
• 1 Denmark Vanuatu
• 2 Switzerland Colombia
• 3 Austria Costa Rica
• 4 Iceland Dominica
• 5 Bahamas Panama
• 6 Finland Cuba
• 7 Sweden Honduras
• 8 Bhutan Guatemala
• 9 Brunei El Salvador
• 10 Canada St Vincent the
  Grenadines

• 17 Malaysia
• 23 USA
• 35 Germany
• 41 Britain
• 178 Burundi

The frustration of modern life, seem to be
much less significant compared to health and
financial needs. - Adrian White, U of Leicester
Source Univ. of Leicester (2006) New Economics
Foundation (Happy Planet Index)
35
(IMD) World Competitiveness
11
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• 2006 2005
• United States 1 1
• Hong Kong SAR 2 2
• Singapore 3 3
• Iceland 4 4
• Denmark 5 7
• Australia 6 9
• Canada 7 5
• Switzerland 8 8
• Luxembourg 9 10
• Finland 10 6
• Malaysia 23 28
• India 29 39
• South Korea 38 29
• Italy 56 53

http//ceda.com.au/public/publications/wcy/yearboo
k_2006.html
36
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
Cross-culture
37
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
The unveiling of the genetic data confirms
that there is no scientific basis for the concept
of race.
Between humans, DNA differs by only 0.2, or 1
in 500 bases.
http//www.nature.com/genomics/human/
http//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/76092
1.stm
38
http//news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/sci_tech/2000/
human_genome/763972.stm
"From a genetic perspective, all humans are
therefore Africans, either residing in Africa or
in recent exile."
-Dr Svante Paabo
Max Planck Institute of
Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany.
Adapted from Terry Pearson and "The Scientist"
magazine
www.wabw.org/mainframe.htm
39
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
www.nicholsoncartoons.com.au/ cartoon_921.html
40
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
Im sorry Youve got it WRONG!
I know nothing of HUMANITY
ST
I have here a list of your ST
crimes against HUMANITY
www.markstivers.com/Cartoons/main.html
The Economist Oct 22-28, 2005
41
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
the crisis of truth has perhaps never been so
acute as in our age. Modern philosophy and
science are unable to give a conclusive answer to
the permanent question about truth
thus divesting truth of its objectivity.
Syed Muhammad Naquib Al-Attas Islam and the
Philosophy of Science. May-June 1989, USM
42
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
43
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?
Modified
Quality of Life
Knowledge
1
2
3
4
Fame/Name
Wealth
44
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
"I was blinded by work and
my drive for
achievement."
KIM KYUNG-HOON / REUTERS
Somatic cell nuclear transfer technique
used by Hwang in
his research
Dr Hwang Woo-suk leaves
his office, SNU Dec 2005
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hwang_Woo-suk
45
Science versus Politics
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
POLITICS
AIDS TOBACCO Stem-cells etc.
ST
46
Ubuntu Declaration (2002)
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
oo-BOON-too means "humanity towards others"
On Education and Science and Technology for
Sustainable Development

• Called for mainstreaming of sustainable
  development into the school curricula at every
  level of education
• Designated educators as the one of
  10 Stakeholder groups responsible
  for Sustainable Development

47
Ubuntu Declaration (2002) is supported by
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• United Nations Educational, Scientific and
  Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
• United Nations University
• African Academy of Science
• International Council for Science
• International Association of Universities
• Copernicus-Campus
• Global Higher Education for Sustainability
  Partnership
• Science Council of Asia
• Third World Academy of Sciences
• University Leaders for a Sustainable Future and
  
• World Federation of Engineering Organizations
  

http//www.scj.go.jp/en/sca/data/ubuntu.html
48
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• The Asia-Pacific DEfSD Launch was on June 28,
  2005 in Nagoya, Japan
• together
• with the designation of seven RCEs
• Regional Centres of Expertise on EfSD
  worldwide

49
Core elements of RCEs turn it into
reality
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• Governance and sustainability
• Scope of collaboration
• Research and development
• Transformative education

A.H Zakri, Towards Promotion of the Decade of
Education for Sustainable Development,
Nagoya, 28 June 2005
50
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

Transformative Education

• Our university today flounder for want of a
  larger and more comprehensive context. Having no
  adequate larger context in which to function, our
  higher educational institutions operate within a
  splintered and fractionated world view.
• One of the most common solutions to this vacuum
  is in the reinstatement of past forms of
  humanistic studies in a core curriculum, a
  curriculum which includes philosophy, ethics,
  history, literature, religious studies and some
  general science.

E OSullivan (2001) Transformative Learning
Educational Vision for the 21st Century (London
Zed Books), p. 93.
51

Descartes
Newton
Transformative Education
The modern scientific perspective
that has come down to us via
Newton and Descartes has left no role
in the universe for purposes, values, ideals,
possibilities and qualities, and there is no
freedom, creativity, temporality or divinity.

E OSullivan (2001) Transformative Learning

Educational Vision for the 21st Century (London
Zed Books), p. 93.
52
Edward Wilson (1998) Consilience the Unity of
Knowledge
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD

• The ongoing fragmentation of knowledge and
  resulting chaos in philosophy are not reflections
  of the real culturally diverse
  world but artifacts of scholarship

53
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
How is the interest of a purely speculative
knowledge to be brought home to people for whom
intelligence is nothing but a means of acting on
matter and turning it to practical ends, and for
whom science, in their limited understanding of
it, is above all important in so far as it may be
applied to industrial purposes ? Rene Guenon
(1924)
Orient et Occident (1924) Publisher Sophia
Perennis (July 2, 2004)
http//www.abc.se/m9783/trg.html
54
The Historical Co-evolution Process Perspective
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?
The Future?

• Specialisation gtgt
• Co-evolution

• Knowledge

• Divergence gtgt
• Convergence

• Energy

• Knowledge
• Telecom
• Industries

• Materials

• Manufacturing,
• Chemical
• Transportation
• Industries

• Commerce
• Crafts

• Population/Land

• Agriculture

1900s
17th Century
Industrial Revolution
Time
Modified from
Now
https//www.wfs.org/RadnorWFS05.ppt
55
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
Scientific dimension EfSD
www.eolss.info/ eolss/5a.htm (modified)
The complex interactions among the different
dimensions of sustainable development
56
1999 World Conference on Science
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?

• modern scientific knowledge and
  traditional knowledge derived from the indigenous
  peoples can be integrated and harnessed to
  conserve biological diversity and better manage
  natural resources.

INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON SCIENCE IN SOCIETY
A NEW SOCIAL
CONTRACT - The Bangalore Communiqué on Science
and Society 29 January 1999
http//www.nature.com/wcs/m01s.html
57
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?
Science for the 21st Century A
New Commitment
"traditional and local knowledge systems, as
dynamic expressions of perceiving and
understanding the world, can make and
historically have made a valuable contribution to
science and technology."
- Declaration of a 1999 UNESCO co-sponsored
conference
58
Paradigm shift in ST
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?
old 3Rs
new 3Rs
Restraint Resourceful Reciprocity
Reading (w)Riting (a)Rithmetic
Information age
Information age Restorative
Industrial age
Industrial age Exploitative
Unsustainable
Sustainable
59
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?
A New Vision from Science Ervin Laszlo
At the end of this 20th century, the world
concept of science is changing in place of
Newtons harmonious but
mechanistic clockwork
universe.
The picture most people call science is
obsolete. science gives a dehumanised picture of
the world, dry and abstract, reduced to numbers
and formulae. The universe appears as a soulless
mechanism
www.3mfuture.com/sustainability/...html
60
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?
In the emerging concept of the new science there
is no categorical divide between the
physical world, the living world, and the world
of mind and consciousness The cosmos is a
seamless whole
- Ervin Laszlo, A new vision from science
(n.d)
www.spaceandmotion.com/Images/cosmology/human.../
www.3mfuture.com/sustainability/...html
61
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?

• Everything must be done in order to reunite
  these two artificially antagonistic cultures
  scientific culture and literary or artistic
  culture so that they will move beyond to
  a new transdisciplinary culture, the
  preliminary condition for a transformation of
  mentalities.
• Instilling complex and transdisciplinary thought
  into the structures and programs of the
  University will permit its evolution towards its
  somewhat forgotten mission today the study of
  the universal.

B
Nicolsecu (1997) The Transdisciplinary Evolution
of the University
62
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?
Back to Basics
Balanced, Harmonious, Peaceful, Ethical, Honest Li
ving in the context of Sustainable Development
Cosmologically Coherent
chaosdancer.egoplex.com/waves.jpg
63
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?

• Laszlo
• While technology is what drives the unprecedented
  speed of this macroshift, it is
  our vision, values, and actions now that will
  ultimately determine the outcome.
• The choice is up to us - the power is in our
  hands.
• Sir Arthur C. Clarke (in foreword)
• What we do today will decide the shape of
  things tomorrow.

http//www.crystalinks.com/nebula.html
64
Changing Worldviews on Education

• Community of Scholars
• Nation-building

• Marketplace
• Sustainability (?)

Transdisciplinarity
Truth
Wisdom
Knowledge
We are drowning in information but starved
for knowledge. -John Naisbitt
Information
Data
http//www.ankn.uaf.edu/sop/images/realm-diagram.j
pg
65
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?
Warning Time for a change
EDUCATION
I need a new worldview
(modified)
66
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?
Education and Practice Disconnect?
Disentangling ST Educational Goals towards
Sustainable Development
Sustainable
Development
(modfied)
ST Education
67
What Why EfSD?
Global Transformation
Lessons Learned
Emerging Ideas
History of EfSD
What purpose education?

• I believe we will need nothing less that an
  education revolution to nurture a new kind of
  human capital that is equal to the tasks and
  challenges ahead.

- YAB Dato' Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi
13 Januari 2004, Putrajaya
68
Monograph UNU-IAS-USM Regional Workshopon
Education forSustainableDevelopment
69
The University in a Garden