Policy and Practice (Asynchronous - Online Only)
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Sustainability, Identify, Relationality, Practice: Transforming Global Society from "Me" to "Us" View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ronnie Lipschutz
Common approaches to sustainability and cognition focus on changing individual behaviors from less to more-sustainable practices. However, as social practice theorists have discovered, most individual behaviors are based on what is socially normative rather than individual preference and choice. This leads to the proposition that normative practice can only be changed by the aggregated behaviors of individuals and a shift in individual identities to comport with new social norms. In this framework, social relations enter as the conduit for communicating new norms from one individual to another, through a network of associations. Ultimately, consciousness and cognition are rooted in the individual connected to the world of nature and culture through the network (or web). This is not a new idea: the noosphere of Vernadsky and Teilhard de Chardin; Murray Bookchin’s humans as “nature rendered self‐conscious,” and some versions of Gaia theory all raise this possibility, but all start from the assumption of the individual. But what if there is no such thing as the individual? What if individual “identify” is a purely social phenomenon, arising out of that web of social relations? What if there is no “I” or “Me” without “You” or “We?” This model suggests that the individual is constituted through the world rather than the mind, and that such relations form identities that not only shaped by nature and culture but integral to creating the person and the self? What are the implications for creating an integral sustainable society rather than one based on eight billion individuals?
The Politics of Place: Reframing the Conversation of Sustainability View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Robin Reid
While the concept of sustainability has been around for a very long time, it was in 1987 when the Bruntland report coined the term “sustainable development” giving impetus to economic conditions and opportunities to protect the environment and meet the needs of current and future generations. However, for the past three decades economic systems of valuation focused on short-term growth and profit maximization have fallen short in accounting for the true value of a healthy planet and the wellbeing of humanity over the long term. The result is, we are currently pushing up against the limits of a finite planet. Where do we go from here? In the context of nature based tourism, bringing together the cultural, social, economic, environmental and political aspects of sustainability is challenging, but necessary. While the political dimension of sustainability is not highlighted in the literature, it is an important consideration if we are serious about pursuing sustainability as a framework for the future. The political decisions made today about safeguarding wilderness at a local level have future implications at a global level. While the pandemic has curtailed international visitors in wilderness spaces, the local interest and engagement with natural landscapes has increased. This paper focuses on nature based tourism in British Columbia, Canada to frame the discussion of politics and partnerships in maintaining the carrying capacity of intact wilderness.
Teaching Sustainably: Integrating Anti-racist Teaching Strategies Within an Environmental Justice Course View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sharon Radcliff
This paper describes adaptations made to a course on Environmental Justice and Information Literacy taught during the pandemic to incorporate best practices in anti-racist teaching and discuss assessment of the research papers created by students using the University's rubric for the general education sustainability requirement. The approach includes a class project: the creation of a student survey on various climate justice, sustainability, environmental justice and science literacy topics. A report on a pre/post survey on attitudes toward environmental issues taken by students before and after taking the course is also shared.
Measuring Transportation Equity and Sustainability in Local Governments in a Southern California Region View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kimberly Collins
Governance at the local level is a key to implementing solutions that will bring about community sustainability and equity. This project developed a scorecard for local governments in the Inland Empire region of California to measure the level of sustainability and equity in the transportation system. The results show that out of 56 local government entities in the region, none were ranked outstanding. Less than half or 48% received a score of average and 52% were below average. This paper reviews the methodology used to score and rank the local governments and provide a series of actions that need to be taken to improve sustainability and equity in the region's transportation system.
Andean Ancestral Wisdom in Conversation with Western Worldviews: Challenging Unsustainable Practices by Engaging Indigenous Epistemologies View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sara Sophia Lowden, Pascual Yepez Morocho
This paper considers example of transdisciplinary work unfolding in the equatorial Global South. In the transition to more sustainable futures, many Kichwa communities in the Ecuadorian Andes are building resilience through local cultural revitalization projects that also aim to reach a non-Indigenous audience. The ILADES Institute in Quito created the Ancestral Knowledge and Sciences major to provide non-Kichwa speaking students the opportunity to learn traditional Andean knowledge, including cosmovision, the history of indigenous movements in Ecuador, Kichwa culture and language, traditional gastronomy and food sovereignty. The program promotes a pedagogy that examines fundamental differences between Indigenous ancestral knowledge and Western epistemologies. Attempting to address the impacts of 500-years of colonization both scholars and students, along with urban and rural Andean communities, are reclaiming and disseminating their traditional ways of seeing, feeling, speaking, governing, celebrating and relating to each other and Pacha Mama (mother nature). Elders, youth, community and spiritual leaders, are producing traditional textiles and growing traditional foods to bring to market. One key goal in the effort to promote ancestral knowledge is to reach international audiences and to contribute knowledge to the global conversation of environmental, economic, social and cultural sustainability. The current challenge is finding the necessary resources and collaborations for such outreach and cross-cultural alliances. This study examines the dissemination of Andean ancestral knowledge outside of Ecuador as part of the global process of decolonization and the transition to alternative social, economic, cultural, and environmental realties.
The Effects of Climate Change on Women's Security : A Case Study in Mozambique View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sophie Luijten
Climate change is a universal crisis. However, its devastation is felt first and worst by women in poor countries. It is crucial to recognize and examine these gender disparities closely in order to understand how to protect vulnerable women and create a more effective, inclusive, and just climate policy framework. Therefore, I pursue the question: How does climate change impact women differently than men? In answering this question, I examine the effects of climate change on the security of women, with a case study of Mozambique. Mozambique is especially susceptible to the effects of climate change due to its low-lying coastal villages, and Mozambican women have borne the brunt of the mal-effects associated with the 2016 El Niño-induced drought. This case study contributes an evaluation of the collective findings of the existing literature on gender and climate change. The ultimate findings are that women, particularly rural women in developing countries such as Mozambique, endure greater ill effects of climate change than men, including gender-based violence, reduced educational outcomes, and negative health consequences.
Ecological Contradictions of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals : A Case Study of Malaysia View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Ellen Fitzpatrick, Mariko Frame
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) seek to promote a broad set of economic and environmental goals. However, a survey of the extant sustainability literature reveals that there are inherent contradictions of specific economic goals with sustainability objectives, in particular increasing economic growth, international trade and foreign investment, and industrialization. In addition, a case study of Malaysia’s development path offers further insight into the environmental costs of such goals for a country that has been lauded for its development achievements. The case study underscores the unlikelihood of Malaysia achieving the environmental SDGs without radical change from business-as-usual economic activities, as well as the limitations of the environmental SDGs themselves.
Overtourism and Sustainability in Polish Tourist Areas: Theoretical Contexts and Social Resonance View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Piotr Majdak
The phenomenon of overtourism is defined as "excessive tourism", which affects both the local community and tourists in a too oppressive and destructive way. However the negative effects of overtourism are not limited to the subjective sphere of individual discomfort. They are much wider and affect both the natural, economic and socio-cultural environment of a given region. Tourist areas in Poland are a perfect example of this: in many places where increased tourist pressure can be observed, various negative phenomena, never previously recorded on such a large scale, can be noted. These include, among others, the destruction of cultural facilities, degradation of the natural environment, disturbance of the feeling of security, rising prices of food and housing, communication problems and many others.The starting point for the considerations presented in the study is the analysis of the theoretical framework of overtourism and the concept of sustainable development, which provides interesting inspiration to reduce the negative effects of "excessive tourism". Next, the results of own research are presented, the main purpose of which was to identify and characterize the factors influencing the shape of overtourism in Poland, with particular emphasis on the social aspects of the issue. The conclusion presents a catalog of practical solutions that may contribute to minimizing dysfunctional phenomena in tourism not only in Poland, but also in other tourist areas.
Assessment of European Quality Assurance Frameworks: Do They Practice What European Policy Documents about Sustainability in Higher Education Preach? View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Lise Janssens, Tom Kuppens, Eglė Staniškienė, Ingrid Mulà Pons De Vall, Anne B. Zimmermann
One of the crucial facets to make the transition to a sustainable society happen is education. The Berlin declaration (2019) expresses this importance by announcing the fact that ‘transformative learning for sustainable development is a necessity for our survival and that of the future generations’. A key mean to bring about the change required is the incorporation of transformative learning for sustainable development in quality assessment procedures to guarantee continuous improvement of HEIs towards sustainable development. But do quality assurance agencies in Europe support these practices? To answer this research question, the ESG guidelines and the quality assurance frameworks used by quality assurance agencies in the European higher Education area were collected and analysed. With the help of NVivo software first a word frequency analyses was conducted. Afterwards the research team used a common and evolving HESD-oriented heuristic to develop senziting concepts in a coding scheme. A combination of inductive and deductive coding approaches were used to analyse the different frameworks. Regarding to the ESG guidelines the link to sustainability is implicit and unclear and except ‘student-centered learning’, ‘experiential learning’ and ‘active learning’ concepts linked to transformative learning are rarely mentioned. Also little support for transformative learning for sustainable development was found in the national QA frameworks. Some exceptions were the QA frameworks used in the United Kingdom, Holy See, Estonia, Romania, Sweden, Switzerland and Ukraine. Furthermore, when analysing other QA documents also some good practices were found in Andorra, Austria, France and the Netherlands.
