Examination of Witnesses (Questions 178-179)
14 DECEMBER 2004
MR TREWIN
RESTORICK AND
MS ALEXANDRA
WOODSWORTH
Q178 Chairman: Thank you for coming to
the Committee this afternoon and sitting in on the previous evidence.
We want to turn from the profession to the sharp end which I know
is where your organisation is. In the evidence you have given
us, you have said that ESD is not a term that resonates with people's
daily lives and that you are well placed to know exactly what
terms do resonate with people's daily lives. Can I ask whether
or not you feel there is any way that we can sell the sustainability
message if it is the case that we are not really getting the message
across at the moment?
Mr Restorick: If education for
sustainable development has lost its currency, you could ask did
it ever have a currency in the first place to lose. It does not
have any resonance with the general public, we feel, and the environmental
message has been lost. We can back those claims up in a number
of ways. Sustainable development is such a nebulous term that
there are many escape routes that people can charge down to avoid
the full environmental implications of the message. We have sustainable
airport policies or various other policies which are claimed to
be sustainable development policies and it is questionable whether
they are, because of the financial component. Because there is
a lack of political will behind the whole thing, people charge
down the escape routes.
Q179 Chairman: How do we sell it?
Mr Restorick: We have found the
way that students and households understand the messages is by
talking about things like environmental limits. They understand
the capacity of the earth, for example. They understand specific
environmental activities. If you go in on those specific environmental
issues, people very quickly start to make the other connections
and understand the financial and social connections, which are
all part of education for sustainable development.
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