Education for planetary well-being
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This is a self-archived version of an original article. This version may differ from the original in pagination and typographic details. Author(s): Title: Year: Version: Copyright: Rights: Rights url: Please cite the original version: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ Education for planetary well-being © 2023 the Authors Published version Aaltonen, Valtteri A.; Hiljanen, Mikko; Layne, Heidi; Lehtonen, Anna; Löyttyniemi, Meri; Mykrä, Niina; Virtanen, Anu S.; Heikkinen, Hannu L.T. Aaltonen, V. A., Hiljanen, M., Layne, H., Lehtonen, A., Löyttyniemi, M., Mykrä, N., Virtanen, A. S., & Heikkinen, H. L. (2024). Education for planetary well-being. In M. Elo, J. Hytönen, S. Karkulehto, T. Kortetmäki, J. S. Kotiaho, M. Puurtinen, & M. Salo (Eds.), Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Planetary Well-Being (pp. 246-258). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003334002-24 2024
Education is the key to transforming practices1 The ongoing global crises are the motivation for the concept of planetary well-being (Kortetmäki et al., 2021). These crises can be regarded as being nested in one another (Heikkinen et al., 2023; Kaukko et al., 2021). The most discussed of these nested crises are the climate emergency and the global loss of biodiversity, but the global tangle of crises also includes social and economic crises, like the social justice gap between the global North and the global South, and health crises, like global pandemics (e.g., Johnson et al., 2020; Kaukko et al., 2021). To be able to solve these nested crises, humans must learn to act in a new way; in other words, humanity needs to make a rapid shift from unsustainable practices to sustainable ones. The term green transition has increasingly been used to describe this shift (e.g., Bianchi, 2020), the urgency of which has been recognized worldwide. Learning and education play a key role in the green transition. However, in order to change prevailing practices, learning and education need to be understood in a new way. Traditionally, education has socialized new generations to conventional practices and ways of thinking. Given the present circumstances, reproducing prevailing practices and habitual belief systems is no longer defensible; rather, education should promote new kinds of practices and new ways of thinking. Education should, in other words, promote transformative learning that aims for something unprecedented (Mezirow, 1994; O’Sullivan, Morrell and O’Connor, 2002; Wals, 2011). Transformative learning means bringing about such a fundamental change that it transforms a person’s psyche, forming a new kind of identity; it is a shift of consciousness that dramatically and permanently alters the human way of being in the world. Such a profound transformation involves experiencing a deep, structural shift in the basic premises of thought, feeling, and action. 18 EDUCATION FOR PLANETARY WELL-BEING Valtteri A. Aaltonen, Mikko Hiljanen, Heidi Layne, Anna Lehtonen, Meri Löyttyniemi, Niina Mykrä, Anu S. Virtanen and Hannu L.T. Heikkinen DOI: 10.4324/9781003334002-24
Education for planetary well-being 247 Toenablesuchatransformation,wemustfirstcriticallyexaminetheprevailing practicesandreflectontheirunderlyingbeliefs.Onefundamentalbeliefsystemthat makes us reproduce previous practices in a path-dependent manner is our humancentred worldview, in other words our anthropocentrism. The concept of education for planetary well-being advocates a more-than-human view, or rather a planetary view, as the basis for education—one which manifests as a dialogic relationship between humans and the rest of nature. The current paradigm of socialization— that is, societal continuity and reliability based on educating new generations with required knowledge and skills (Värri, 2018)—appears to be inadequate to securing planetary well-being. For example, according to Ruuska (2017), higher education reproduces the current drastically unequal economic systems, which exacerbates the ecological crises. This notwithstanding, in recent decades, numerous initiatives and frameworks have been introduced in order to address this problem. These initiatives, which we refer to as current frameworks, have been helpful but have not beensufficienttoeffectfundamentalchange.Nonetheless,inourview,someof these ideas are germane to the concept of education for planetary well-being and therefore germane to our present purposes. The key question is how to put into practice a form of education that promotes the necessary transformative learning and renewal of practices and that maintains a planetary state in which “organisms (including humans) can realize their typical characteristics and capacities” (Kortetmäki et al., 2021, p. 4). To answer this question, we suggest the concept of education for planetary well-being as a framework that could bring together important existing educational themes and ideas with a new, more focused stance. Education for planetary well-being refers to the processes of upbringing, teaching, and learning that enable individuals and communities to promote the well-being of the planet and its inhabitants, which we refer to as life on Earth (consisting of nonhuman and human life in the biosphere and its ecosystems as well as the geophysical Earth systems). Education for planetary well-being promotes transformative learning and empowers individuals and societies to make responsible choices in terms of life on Earth. It focuses on learning about the interconnectedness of all life on Earth and the importance of preserving the liveable planet into the future, emphasizing the need to advance toward this goal. The undercurrents of education for planetary well-being Humanism, instrumental rationality, and dualism A considerable number of the problems of our time (in education systems built on “Western” beliefs) stem from anthropocentric thinking, which attributes the greatest value to that which is good for humans. In other words, the actions and activities thatyieldbenefitsforhumansareseenasworthpursuingforemost.Thisworldview does not necessarily take into consideration what is good for the rest of nature.
248 Valtteri A. Aaltonen et al. Quite the contrary: Very often humans have acted in a way that undermines the well-being of the rest of nature. The origin of these problems can be traced back to the birth of the Enlightenment and humanism. A decisive change in thinking was the shift towards Cartesian dualism in the sixteenth century, based on the philosopher René Descartes’ concept that the human mind is separate from the world outside of it; that is, humans are conscious “subject” and the rest of the world is regarded as an “object” of human thought and action. The transition to Cartesian dualism was also on the background of the Enlightenment project. Originally a European philosophical movement that beganattheendoftheseventeenthcentury,theinfluenceoftheEnlightenmenthas continued into modern times, especially with regard to its emphasis on rationality and knowledge (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1972). In humanism, what is good for humans is thought to have the highest absolute value. A phrase by Protagoras of Ancient Greece was quoted as the motto of humanism: Homo mensura—the human being is the measure of everything (Hietalahti, 2022; Niiniluoto, 2015). The Enlightenment and humanism thus share the assumption that all life on Earth exists for humans. One of their guiding principles was that humans should free themselves from the power of the natural forces. The greatest achievement of the Enlightenment era was thought to be that the human species had managed to subjugate nature and other lifeforms on Earth to its own use with the help of human reason. In other words, everything on Earth was deemed to be of instrumental valueforthebenefitofhumansspecifically:SincetheEnlightenment,thevalue of nature has been measured from the perspective of how it increases human wellbeing and wealth. The Age of Enlightenment has thus been seen as the triumph of instrumental rationality. Education has further reproduced and developed the idea that humans should use their reason to subdue natural resources for their own advantage (Horkheimer and Adorno, 1972). Posthumanist thinking has emerged as a counter-movement to this tradition (Hietalahti, 2022). Posthumanism assumes that the continuation of life on this planet is of higher value than the life of one particular species, Homo sapiens. Posthumanism has developed from various philosophical origins and has expanded inmanydirections,anditisnotaunifiedschoolofthought.Itisratheranumbrella termthatchallengesanthropocentricwaysofthinkingandredefinestheideaof what it means to be human and how humans (should) relate to their material and mediated environment (Ennser-Kananen and Saarinen, 2022). The concept of planetary well-being is based on a similar criticism of human-centredthinkingtypicalofposthumanism.Inthedefinitionofplanetarywell-being,the highest value, according to our interpretation, is not attributed to human well-being exclusively but rather to achieving a planetary state in which organisms, including humans, can realize their typical characteristics and capacities. Therefore, the concept of planetary well-being can be considered a natural continuation of the discussion that has taken place within posthumanist theorization in terms of its critique of Cartesian dualism, instrumental rationality, and anthropocentric humanism.
Education for planetary well-being 249 Consequently, education for planetary well-being is also based on this thinking. It is not our intention to claim that education for planetary well-being is the only educational approach that is based on non-anthropocentrism and the critique of instrumentalrationality,astherearealsootherapproachesinthefieldofeducation that share these assumptions to varying degrees. These current frameworks are introduced in the upcoming section to present the earlier and current stages and conceptsinthefieldofeducationthathavepavedthewayfordevelopingtheconcept of education for planetary well-being introduced in this chapter. The historical background of the current frameworks There are a number of approaches in the field of education whose common denominators are sustainability, protection of nature, and consideration of the natural environment. We call these approaches current frameworks. They consist of different initiatives, literature, and terms related to environmental and social responsibility as well as intergenerational justice in the context of education. Such currentframeworksarepresentedherefirstlyasahistoricalcontinuum.Thesecurrent frameworks offer a kind of mirror against which we outline the idea of education for planetary well-being. According to Bianchi (2020), the historical development of initiatives and literatureofthefieldhasundergonethreephases.Originatinginthe1960s,thefirst phase is characterized by the impact of Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring (1962) and others whose work preceded the environmental movements and the tradition of environmental education. The environmental education tradition embraced ecological arguments without conceits and eschewed anthropocentrism (Robottom, 1992).WhilethesedevelopmentswerethefoundationforthefirstinternationalUN conference on environmental issues, organized in Stockholm in 1972, these principlesdidnotinfluencetheframeworkandkeytermthatwastodominateenvironmental policy in the coming decades: Sustainable development. According to Our Common Future (World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), 1987, p. 16): “Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”. Although the legacy of sustainable developmentanditsemphasisonintergenerationaljusticehashadsignificantinfluence in the world, ultimately it was founded on anthropocentric humanism and can be seen as directly continuing the Enlightenment project, albeit in a slightly toned-down form. The second phase was framed around the UN Rio conference in 1992 and the adoption of Agenda 21, a non-binding sustainable development action plan that pushed educational policies towards skills and values linked to social, developmental, and environmental justice. This is the explicit educational foundation for the sustainable development tradition, currently present in the United Nations Educational,ScientificandCulturalOrganization(UNESCO)framework(Laurie
250 Valtteri A. Aaltonen et al. et al., 2016). According to UNESCO (2017), learning about sustainability must preparestudentsandlearnersofallagestofindsolutionsforthechallengesof today and the future. Education should be transformative and should allow citizens to make informed decisions and take individual as well as collective action to change our societies and care for the planet. The third phase is the era after the World Summit for Sustainable Development that took place in Johannesburg in 2002. This event served as the impetus for the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–2014), which emphasized lifelong learning and spurred initiatives worldwide. That project was followed by the UN Global Action Programme (2015–2019), which aimed to intensify the initiatives of Education for Sustainable Development and set Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a framework adopted by the UN in 2015 which, in addition to providing general guidance for sustainable change, places an explicit focus on the quality of and conditions for education (SDG 4) (Bianchi, 2020, p. 11). Currently, the UN Global Action Programme is being followed up by UNESCO’s Education for Sustainable Development as part of its 2030 programme, which aims to bring about the personal and societal transformation that is needed to achieve sustainable development worldwide (Bianchi, 2020; UNESCO, 2022). Sustainable development and sustainability are ubiquitously present in educational policy discourse, but it is not always clear what these terms mean. Bianchi (2020, p. 10) sums up the recent policy focus on sustainable development and sustainability as follows: Sustainability and sustainable development are often used interchangeably, despitetheirconceptualdifference.InreferencetotheUNESCOdefinitions, sustainability is best described as a long-term goal, such as attaining a more sustainable world; while sustainable development, like the term suggests, refers to the many processes and pathways to achieve development. The “take-home message” of Bianchi is that it makes a difference whether we discuss sustainability or sustainable development, and that this choice has consequences for education. As indicated by Matero and Arffman (see Chapter 7), the concept of sustainable development has been interpreted in different ways during its relatively short history, depending on the context in which it is used. However, often it has been connected to the idea of continuous economic growth, especially by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the EuropeanUnion.Economicgrowthasapolicygoalisdifficulttoalignwithplanetary well-being as it has been previously linked to overconsumption of materials, ecosystem destruction, inequality in human societies, and the general destruction of life on Earth (see Kortetmäki et al., 2021). Hence, the concept of sustainable development too can be regarded as a direct heir of the Enlightenment tradition and the belief in human progress based on instrumental rationality.
Education for planetary well-being 251 Sustainable development-related frameworks are globally influential in the fieldofeducationtotheextentthattheycanevenbereferredtoasaparadigm, delineatingthesetofconceptsandbeliefsthatprefigurepublicdebateduringa particular period of time. The ambiguity of sustainable development can be seen in the ambivalence surrounding how the concept is interpreted and used by different scholars. Therefore, some educational researchers consciously avoid using the term sustainable development or are sceptical of the concept of sustainability. However, there are also approaches that use the word sustainability but still want to distinguish themselves from the idea of continuous growth implied by the concept ofsustainabledevelopment.Furtherstill,therearesomeframeworksinthefieldof education that make no reference at all to either of these concepts (e.g., Bianchi, 2020; Connelly, 2007; Jickling and Wals, 2008; Snaza et al., 2014). Next,webrieflyintroducesomewell-knownandcommonlyusedframeworks as alternatives to the prevailing sustainable development paradigm, that is, alternatives that support the idea of education for planetary well-being. The concept of sustainability as education,asdefinedbyStephenSterling(2001,2010)and Arjen Wals (2006, 2015), who are among the earliest and most central authors representing the move, called for holistic behavioural change and transformative learning. Sterling’s (2001) original distinction between sustainability as education and education for sustainable development highlights that the latter was framed to raise awareness without challenging the existing institutions and status quo. Sustainability as education, instead, requires a profound change in one’s worldview, switching from a dualistic, hierarchical worldview to systems understanding and relational sustainability competences. Global Citizenship Education Otherwise (Andreotti, 2015; Stein and Andreotti, 2021) criticizes the framework of the taken-for-granted Eurocentric knowledge system in regard to how, for example, Sustainable Development Goals are framed and understood as global goals by the United Nations. The education for global citizenship promotes the transition from a singular universal belief or knowledge to an approach of listening and including counternarratives on knowledge in the curriculum. In this approach, education is viewed as a dialogue that considers diverse historical, political, and knowledge foundations (Andreotti, 2015). In the Nordic countries, the concept of eco-social education (or eco-social Bildung)isoneofthemoreinfluentialcurrentframeworksthatcallsfortransformation by stressing the acute need for prioritizing diversity of life on Earth in the value system. Eco-social education has been part of the public debate for more than a decade, and it is explicitly mentioned, for example, in the national core curriculum of Finland (Finnish National Board of Education, 2014; Halinen, 2018; Lehtonen, Salonen and Cantell, 2018). Eco-social education emphasizes ecology, takes climate crises seriously, and considers planetary boundaries (Rockström et al., 2009) instead of the economy as the basis for social and economic well-being (Salonen and Konkka, 2015).
252 Valtteri A. Aaltonen et al. Ecojustice education (Martusewicz, Edmundson and Lupinacci, 2011, p. 9) highlights “the necessary interdependent relationship of humans with the land, air, water, and other species with whom we share this planet”. Ecojustice education calls for critical awareness of the unequal power dynamics related to binaries (e.g., men/ women, white/other, European/other, culture/nature, reason/emotion, science/local), indigenous knowledges, and how these inequalities are sustained across different languages and means of communication. The theoretical foundations of ecojustice education include ecofeminism and neo-agrarianism, with a shared dedication to a feminist ethic of care for ecological social justice and posthumanism (ibid.). Other examples of approaches that avoid using the term “sustainable development” are environmental education, in its advanced mode, (Reid et al., 2021) and the hybrid concept of environmental and sustainability education (Wals, Weakland and Corcoran, 2017). Both of these can be regarded as taking a critical stance toward anthropocentrism. Additionally, we acknowledge that critical approaches to human-centred education have also been raised by posthumanist writers (e.g., Morris, 2015; Snaza et al., 2014). Overall, posthuman education has wider perspectives in its critic of humanism in education, such as colonialism and complex relations not only between humans and nonhuman animals, but also technology. Criticism of anthropocentrism can be seen as a distinguishing factor according to which education for sustainability can be divided into two different types of approaches: Weak and strong (Connelly, 2007). The weak form is associated with continuous technological development and economic growth, or, at best, so-called ecological modernization (ibid.,p.270)emphasizingefficiencyinenergyuseand recycling of materials. The weak approach also includes an assumption about sustainable development benefitting all humanity, but, in reality, the approach accepts drastic inequalities between different human communities, such as the division between the global North and global South. Education for sustainability in the strong sense, in contrast, could be translated as eco-socialism (ibid.) with an emphasis on a just transition toward the well-being of all life on Earth, which aligns well with the concept of planetary well-being. Based on the review above, we conclude that our concept of education for planetary well-being builds on the ideas raised by many of the current frameworks. In many respects, education for planetary well-being agrees with the mentioned frameworks; it advocates non-anthropocentric and posthumanist thinking as well as sustainability in the strong sense. However, it is more explicit in instilling the educational approach with the encompassing idea of planetary well-being as a state in which all organisms, including humans, can realize their typical characteristics and capacities. Dialogue as an ontological and pedagogical principle Our conceptualization of education for planetary well-being is rooted in a dialogic relationship between humans and other lifeforms on Earth, one in which it is assumed that human well-being is built in dialogue with the rest of nature.
Education for planetary well-being 253 Dialoguecanbeidentifiedimplicitlyinmanyofthecurrentframeworks,suchasin sustainability as education, global citizenship education otherwise, and ecojustice education. In education for planetary well-being, however, the dialogical way of being is central and explicitly present, drawing from Buber’s (2004) dialogical philosophy and posthumanism (Braidotti, 2013, 2019). The opposite of a dialogical relationship is a monologic (and an instrumental) relationship. The monological relationship is based on the aforementioned dualistic assumption that nature is understood as an object separate from humans and as an instrument for human well-being. In a dialogical relationship, humans are viewed as one of the species living in a given ecological niche of the Earth system and as largely dependent on and connected to different ecosystems and various forms of life on Earth. It is only through the interaction of species in and between ecosystems, including human societies, that well-being occurs (see Kortetmäki et al., 2021, p. 3). The dialogic approach provides an ontological basis for the concept of education for planetary well-being. As an ontological principle, dialogue can be regarded as a human way of being where the relations between beings are more fundamental than the beings themselves and where the ethical aspect of these relations is emphasized. Beings are understood to be constructed through these relationships, which are characterized by interconnectedness, diversity, and respect for alterity. The nature of this ontological “in-betweenness” has been aptly described by Martin Buber (2004) as two basic modes of existing, representable as word-pairs: I–it and I–Thou. According to Buber, the monological I–it relationship is characterized by the experience of a detached object and a concept of oneself as an isolated subject of experience that definesanotherbeingaccordingtoone’sinterests.AccordingtoBuber,onecanbe truly human only in a dialogical relation between I and Thou, where the other is encounteredopenlywithoutanyrestrictingclassification.Hence,asatrue“other”, Thou has an inherent value. Applied to the planetary well-being concept, this means that both humans and the rest of nature have an absolute value, or rather, that human dignity is best realized through the recognition of the dignity of nature. In this case, human beings are not seen as separate from the rest of the world, but as embodied being who coexists through senses and affects. These ideas of co-existence and interdependence are also typical of posthumanism. For example, Braidotti (2019) calls to become aware of human embodiment and accountability to the way one affects and is affected in the dynamic web of human and nonhuman relations. Education for planetary well-being requires dialogic consideration and an empathic understanding of other species’ needs also in the pedagogical practice. Dialogical practice is a way of learning new, posthuman, and even planetary ways to relate to other species (see Davies and Renshaw, 2020; Saur and Sidorkin, 2018). However,theneedsofdifferentspeciesareoftenconflictingandevokechallenging ethical questions that should be acknowledged and discussed (Valtonen, 2022). Posthumanism offers a view of pedagogy that emphasizes a critical awareness