This article starts from the assumption that a key aspect of sustainability is that it requires us to connect different aspects of our lives and of our world that are often separated. Sustainability thus poses a key challenge of situating areas of knowledge and concern in the bigger sustainability picture. This piece begins to re-conceptualise development education (DE) in the context of connective sustainability and aims to tackle the following questions:

•     How can we conceptualise ‘Big Picture Sustainability’?
•     What does DE do best and where does it fit in Big Picture?
•     Could thinking about Big Picture sustainability and education for sustainability (EfS) indicate new directions for DE?
•     How can DE contribute to meeting the challenge of climate change?
•     Does the holistic nature of sustainability mean that everyone has to do everything?

Knowledge pathology and ecology

Our current view of life tends to separate important aspects of the world from each other according to perceived importance and categorisation. This is a kind of knowledge pathology from the sustainability perspective. This fragmented worldview generates a pathology not just of misunderstanding but also of identity. If, as holism suggests, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, then to focus only on its constituent parts rather than on their relation to the whole organism is to lose vital knowledge. This point has been heavily emphasised by those thinkers in sustainability and EfS who stress the contribution of ecology to joined-up thinking. Indeed, to abstract living beings from the ecological networks of life which both sustain and utilise their life-cycles is to lose vital knowledge about their reality. 

            There is a lot of debate about whether and to what extent this view is ‘ours’ – or just who is ‘us’ in this context. Some people argue that the compartmentalised system of ‘modern’ knowledge is a relatively recent cultural phenomenon and mostly adhered to by elites. Others also propose a gender difference to ‘our’ views of life. In addition, local and indigenous knowledge has begun to be recognised as an important addition to expert knowledge in helping to produce more sustainable solutions.

Big Picture sustainability

The diagram below was taken from ‘Situating EfS’, a chapter I authored for the forthcoming book Journeys Around Education for Sustainability, which contains a collection of edited work from the London South Bank’s Education for Sustainability (EfS) international distance learning Masters’ Programme. It aims to provide one way in which we can conceptualise Big Picture sustainability.

Fig. 1 Framework approach to understanding connective sustainability

A: Necessary conditions for life: cosmological/atomic/chemical domain – the relatively stable cosmological, atomic and chemical structures and powers form the basis for the development of life and the context within which the evolution of life has occurred.

B: Life support systems/ecological domain – this forms the material and ecological base of all life; human life forms a part of this, but also increasingly impacts upon it.

C: Human material systems/social-ecological domain – human groups use ecological resources, thereby impacting directly on the ecological domain (B).

D: Human social systems/social-institutional domain – these organisational forms contribute to shaping material practices at C and thus condition the impact of B on A.

E: Human cultural systems/cultural domain – helps people make sense of the world; provides value-loaded images of the world; impacts on C and B.

            Development education is faced with the challenge of situating itself within, across, or between the systems represented in this diagram, and deciding which systems it can best influence on both local and global levels.

The development education prescription for the knowledge pathology

The separation of things is not just a problem from an ecological perspective. Critics of individualist cultures of social identity and consumerism have also noted that to separate out human individuals from their relationships to other humans is also to lose vital knowledge that may have great practical and ethical importance. If we do not know the connections between consumption of cheap imports and overseas gross labour exploitation this is a failure of knowledge about ourselves and the kinds of social and economic relations to which we (unwittingly) contribute. Development education in its many different forms claims that to separate out the economic effects (in monetary terms) from their related effects on social justice, human well-being and rights is also to lose vital information. To be unable to make these connections prevents us from understanding the causal relationships between things and hence diminishes our capacity to find solutions. 

            Maybe this knowledge pathology also prevents us from knowing ourselves in some important moral ways. Are we part of the problem or part of the solution? Are we careless parasites on the suffering of others, or just powerless individuals in the grip of a juggernaut system that is denying us moral agency? DE raises these vital issues by attempting to increase our awareness of these connections.

            Because we live in a compartmentalised culture it is generally easier to deny problematic causal relationships on a daily basis. DE therefore has an important role in raising these connections between our economic, social, cultural and ecological life on this planet. To be aware of these connections and not recognise their moral significance is another kind of failure, although one based on choice. This may emanate from a sense of disempowerment arising from the conviction that we are too deeply implicated in an unjust society to contribute to meaningful change. It is important that DE promotes the joy and liberation of living in a more joined-up and ethical manner through positive examples such as fair-trade purchasing or cross-cultural dialogue and solidarity. DE could contribute more by way of showcasing cultural alternatives and engaging in debates on sustainable livelihoods.

The contribution of development education

This diagram utilises the framework approach to begin to analyse the contribution of DE to Big Picture sustainability.

Fig. 2 Analysing the contribution of development education to Big Picture sustainability

Joined-up change: the example of climate change

A key point to sustainability is that it necessarily focuses us on joined-up change. In terms of ecological sustainability the complex material and social factors that are contributing to climate change are being measured and studied including, importantly, predictions of likely effects on ecosystems and life-support systems. However, the economic, social, cultural and human consequences of climate change are currently receiving much less attention. In the field of economics we have had the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change in 2006 look at the implications of climate change for increasing poverty. The review estimates that without significant financial investment to avoid the worsening effects of climate change, a 20% reduction of life-support capacity for the planet can be expected in the future, which makes grim reading for the poor and affluent alike.