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Education is a key instrument for sustainable development,
Environmental problems and sustainable development require integrated solutions incorporating economic, ecological, social, cultural and technological considerations. But decision-makers tend to base their decisions on short-term benefits, and often ignore long-term environmental, social and cultural costs. In addition, organizations, institutions and structures, as well as science disciplines are factors that contribute to support such decision-making. Sectorialism and specialisation permeate society in general, and together with vested interests in politics, industry and the corporate sphere, form barriers that effectively block change towards more long-term, integrated decision-making favouring the environment and sustainability.
To enable future decision-makers to face the complexity of development problems syllabus change, as the basis for behavioural change (also known as re-socialisation) is needed to build bridges between disciplines and to reinvigorate ingrained working methods at all levels of education. Emphasis on the differentiation of scientific disciplines within universities has certainly obscured the opportunities for joint work between social and environmental scientists in fields that go beyond their disciplinary frontiers.
This actually is the approach of the UNESCO-Cousteau Ecotechnie Programme. UCEP's mission is to reduce barriers to change through new incentives and by providing future 'decision-and-policy-makers' with integrated, multidisciplinary education, training and research. Thus, it contributes to the objectives of the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD).
Special environmental areas of sustainability, which involve community action across subjects and specialism, are at the heart of UNESCO's Biosphere Reserves. Indeed, the prime function of a BR is as a learning and demonstration site to promote local capacity building for global citizenship and sustainability and the package is set within the framework of the DESD.
In this respect the BRs have:
- a nature conservation function - to contribute to the conservation of landscapes, ecosystems, species and genetic variation;
- a development function - to foster economic and human development which is socio-culturally and ecologically sustainable;
- a logistic function - to provide support for research, monitoring, education and information exchange related to local, national and global issues of conservation and development.
The aim is to encourage citizens of all ages to get involved with the integrated operational management of all these functions.
A limitation of BRs is that they have to be validated by UNESCO and the designation is approved on the basis of the importance of their nature conservation function. That is to say, the locality must have a nature site that meets the top standard of a National Nature Reserve.
The aim of COSMOS is to show how the above principles for citizen involvement designed for BRs can be applied to any area that its population defines as being a special environmental area of sustainability (SEAS). It is advantageous to begin citizen planning in a SEAS with biodiversity, because nature conservation generally brings in most sectors of a community. However, different localities will display different SEAS profiles but all will have the same basic features listed above so SEAS can be operated anywhere with the following four on-line elements.
- Interdisciplinary information about world development with tools for building personal bodies of knowledge linking culture and ecology;
- Citizenship toolkits for making and operating long-term plans for sustainability that deal with neighbourhood issues and family life;
- Open forums associated with a dedicated web viewer for networking ideas and achievements;
- A central webmaster to hold the network together on a day-to-day basis.
The software is of an international standard and available free or at low cost, with good inbuilt Help. The CMSC also has the capability of developing a dedicated IT/GIS network.
The product of SEAS is a greater capacity amongst local inhabitants to work tegether on constructive solutions to new problems of living in a shrinking, but environmentally troubled world.
Ecoscapes
Central to working on a broad ecological scale is the concept of 'ecoscape' . Ecoscape was proposed as a fourth level of 'place' by William Z Lidiker, who defined it as follows:
" Viewing the universe as being composed of hierarchically arranged systems is widely accepted as a useful model of reality. In ecology, three levels of organization are generally recognized: organisms, populations, and communities (biocoenoses). For half a century increasing numbers of ecologists have concluded that recognition of a fourth level would facilitate increased understanding of ecological phenomena. Sometimes the word "ecosystem" is used for this level, but this is arguably inappropriate. Since 1986, I and others have argued that the term "landscape" would be a suitable term for a level of organization defined as an ecological system containing more than one community type. However, "landscape" and "landscape level" continue to be used extensively by ecologists in the popular sense of a large expanse of space. I therefore now propose that the term "ecoscape" be used instead for this fourth level of organization. A clearly defined fourth level for ecology would focus attention on the emergent properties of this level, and maintain the spatial and temporal scale-free nature inherent in this hierarchy of organizational levels for living entities".
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