Examination of Witnesses (Questions 313-319)
11 JANUARY 2005
MR PAUL
ALLEN AND
MS ANN
MCGARRY
Q313 Chairman: Good afternoon. Welcome,
Mr Allen and Ms McGarry. I think you have sat in and heard some
of our previous witnesses. I have to say at the very outset that
we would have loved to have come and visit the Centre for Alternative
Technology as part of our evidence gathering inquiry but we were
just unable to fit it in at this stage, nonetheless we hope there
will be an opportunity to come and visit in the future. Meanwhile,
we do appreciate your taking the time and trouble to travel all
this way to give evidence to us this afternoon. Before I ask Mr
Challen to start, is there anything that you would like to say
for the record in terms of what you see as the cutting edge as
far as this whole theme of education for sustainable development
is concerned and how that fits in with your whole set-up?
Mr Allen: I would say that generally
my experience and expertise is more in the general public sector
and Ann's is more in the formal schools and education sector,
so we may answer separately. I think the most important thing
is within sustainability, and I prefer "sustainability"
to "sustainable development" but I think it is important
to keep the continuity of the message so the public does not say
"Oh, it is called something else now" because then we
lose where we have got to so far, but sustainability does allow
for the fact that it may be more sustainable to leave things alone
sometimes rather than to develop them. There is a whole range
of issues, some are environmental, some are social, some are economic,
but within that there are some issues which are absolutely desperately
urgent and there are some issues that if we tackled them in 15,
20 or even 50 years' time that would be good enough. I think it
is very important that we pull out of sustainability the things
that are cryingly urgent. One of the criteria I would use to select
those things is whether they show signs of beginning to run away
of their own accord, which is one of the reasons why I would put
climate change at the top because the evidence is coming out now
that if we continue to behave as we are then climate change may
start to run away with itself, and even if we all switched everything
off and sat quietly it would not stop. There is a need to tackle
everything and make sure it is an inclusive term but to offer
some prioritisation of resources and guidance to the public about
what things should be tackled first because it is very easy for
a company to have a sustainable office policy and to recycle all
the paperclips while the actual carbon footprint of that company
is escalating enormously. We must not been seen as tinkering around
the edges.
Ms McGarry: The other issue that
is urgent in that sense, and it is not new that it is urgent,
is that it is intolerable that we do not deal with global poverty.
Those are the two key things that we always need to bear in mind:
is this going to make a difference to climate change and is it
going to make a difference to global poverty?
Q314 Chairman: If I understand you right,
you are talking about having a short, medium and long-term approach
as well and sorting out within that what needs to be dealt with
in the short-term and addressed in the medium and long-term, so
the timing is a factor in all of this, there is no synchronisation
of it.
Mr Allen: The parallel I would
draw is the wonderful people who arrive at road traffic accidents.
They have a very clear priority for what bodily parameters they
are looking to check for first, breathing and blood, and then
maybe a twisted ankle but they will deal with that some hours
later. Let us go for the important ones quickly while we have
time.
Q315 Mr Challen: I would just like to
explore one of the features that came out of the previous evidence,
which was that in Wales at least 30% of the population seem to
have heard of the expression "sustainable development".
You have said in your evidence that to many, but not all, the
term "sustainable development" has begun to take hold.
Also, you have said in your memorandum that to some extent the
phrase "has been diluted by numerous commercially driven
reinterpretations". I wonder if you could just comment on
these various features because it may be that the 30% that the
Welsh Consumer Council have heard about knowing the expression
are only familiar with diluted interpretations of that. What is
your view on that?
Mr Allen: I have been with CAT
for 16 years but it is its thirtieth anniversary this year, and
if we look back to 30 years ago CAT was pointing one way and government
policy was pointing in a very different way. If we look at what
the predictions were from the Central Electricity Generating Board
for energy back in the 1970s, they were expecting almost exponential
growth. What we have seen is a lot of agencies coming round and
moving much more towards the way we want to see them pointing.
Where I think it has taken hold is in Government. When we see
a White Paper coming out with a 60% target stretching to 2050
for fossil fuel reductions, that is a big uplifting thing for
a lot of people who recognise it is urgently important to see
that reflected in Government. Similarly, within the DTI there
are lots of very positive signs, particularly the enthusiasm for
developing renewable energies, which simply was not there 10 years
ago. Also, in the Welsh Assembly Government with the legal obligations
and what is reflected through the Assembly's supportive public
bodies, such as CCW and the WDA, there is a lot of recognition
of the core problems and the need to develop environmental goods
and services as part of the economic development. Also, in scientific
circles, the Royal Commission produced an excellent report, Energy
and the Changing Climate, which is producing solutions that
are pretty near the scale of solutions that we need to solve the
problems, they are not tinkering at the edges. Similarly, the
work done through the Hadley Centre and so forth is excellent
work, it is bang on target for what we should be doing and it
is probably leading the world. We are even seeing things like
a change in the position of the Archbishop of Canterbury who last
year came out and said that polluting the planet is a sin, which
is something that was not there before. We are seeing it take
hold in lots of areas but it is very easy for companies that do
not look at the big picture to tinker around the edges and use
it as a marketing tool because they know there are people out
there who are committed to sustainability who are the consuming
public and they will show a product preference for that, so if
they can allure to it then the marketing people will be encouraging
them to do that.
Ms McGarry: That is a problem,
that people will interpret sustainable development as developing,
ie growing, consuming more things, producing more things, but
tinkering around the edges. There is another problem of people
who think they are doing something significant in terms of sustainable
development by just recycling, for example, without looking at
any of the other issues. A lot of very useful work has come out
showing how, if we do not cut down on what we consume, the recycling
does not even keep up with the impact of that. That is one of
my worries about the people who knew the term but who are not
interpreting that as a significant change in their behaviour.
I would absolutely agree with Paul that there are lots of positive
signs as well.
Q316 Mr Challen: I get the impression
that perhaps a lot of professional groups that have a relevant
interest may be very familiar with a strong definition of sustainable
development but your view might still be that the general public
might be dancing, as it were, with this weakened thing. In that
context, would it be the case that the slightest hint from those
people in authority, whether it be a local authority or the Assembly
or national UK Government, that perhaps it is not quite so important
would have a major impact on public perception and it would be
an excuse almost to withdraw from this philosophy?
Ms McGarry: Absolutely, and I
think unfortunately an awful lot of teachers do not have an adequate
grasp of what it means either. For a lot of them they think recycling
is going a long way or they are very confused about issues of
climate change. Young people say to us that they are being taught
inaccurate things in school and that what they are being taught
in school is not joined-up.
Q317 Mr Challen: Amongst professional
groups which do you think are the most enlightened? I know you
have just produced a video for planners at local authority level.
Ms McGarry: I would not like to
say because I think our knowledge is probably much too patchy
to make a judgment on that.
Mr Allen: We have a traditional,
almost social collective memory on pollution because pollution
has been going for 200 years since the start of the Industrial
Revolution. Mostly that has been local scale pollution where,
when we stop pumping effluent into the river, the river begins
to improve and clear. We have a collective assumption that climate
change is simply greenhouse gases building up in the atmosphere.
When it gets a bit uncomfortable we will simply stop doing it
and the system will revert to where it started. However, those
organisations that have an active and continuing development programme
or have looked into it in any detail and read some of the reports
that have come out of the Hadley Centre or other learned journals
will realise that it is not like that; it is more like the behaviour
of the human body. It regulates the system but if you push it
beyond the point where the regulation is in control the regulation
breaks down and there is a rapid jump to a very different system.
Once that runaway process is set in train it is possible that
it will be unstoppable. I think that is the sort of realisation
that was brought to the attention of the Archbishop of Canterbury
and to several other leading people. Once they see that there
is a sort of basic human fear or indignance, "We just cannot
let this happen. Let's change", and people sharpen up what
they are doing. It becomes much more focused.
Ms McGarry: Where that happens
is incredibly hit-and-miss. It is an individual who will be well-informed
and knowledgeable, so you get certain teacher training departments
who are very good because there is somebody who is quite clued
up and knows where to find the right information and you will
get whole other barren patches basically where people do not know.
I do a lot of work with sixth form groups at the moment and a
couple of the schools that I have been into, and this is in design
and technology, the students have been really well-informed and
it is quite clear that in most geography departments they have
been well taught and they have understood about climate change.
Among the others there is the odd student who understands things
very well but there is a real lack of awareness and the teachers
are not in touch with it. They do not know the places to look
for the serious information.
Q318 Mr Challen: Is this just happening
in individual schools or is it regional or geographic? Do you
work entirely with Welsh schools, for example?
Ms McGarry: Mainly with Welsh
schools at the moment but not entirely, no. I work with English
schools as well.
Q319 Mr Challen: Have you been able to
trace any patterns?
Ms McGarry: Some areas are a bit
better than others but it does tend to depend on the individuals
in the schools more than other things, and subject areas.
Mr Allen: The reason that we particularly
focused on producing continuing professional development materials
for planners is that planners are in some ways at the cutting
edge. They are having to make a decision between actual reduction
of fossil fuel emissions and changes in the visual environment
and in order to make an informed decision about the relative weightings
of those two choices we felt it important that planners were aware
of the current scientific research and the robust conclusions
that are coming out of the models for climate change so that they
can make an informed decision.
Ms McGarry: It was only possible
to do that because the Assembly wanted to do it, so a lot of opportunities
were provided by the Assembly's commitment to sustainable energy.
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