Tag: sustainability

Categories
Geography Hopeful Education Optimism and progress

Is ‘progress’ preferable to ‘development’?

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (source: Brookings Institute)

Is it time to revisit ideas of ‘progress’ to answer critics of ‘development’ and to offer meaning in uncertain times?

Six years ago, my two-year old nephew was suddenly taken ill.  He was diagnosed with leukaemia and spent several days in intensive care, before undergoing six months of treatments at Manchester Children’s Hospital.  And whilst some of his fellow patients sadly never pulled through, Mateo did, and he is now a happy and healthy boy.

This would not have happened were it not for cumulative advancements in medical technology, economic prosperity, and the stable and successful governance which facilitated the welfare state over the preceding decades, plus many other ‘progressive’ trends which operate in the background.

Most people are quite comfortable talking about – and indeed celebrating – such advancements in isolation.  But we have become increasingly wary of applying the word ‘progress’ to describe the combination of ways in which society has experienced ‘change for the better’.

And yet we have achieved many such changes, which I freely admit that I don’t tire of revisiting and repeating.  For instance, for most of human history, around one in two children died before reaching the age of 15; by 2020, this had fallen to 4%. What a success!  The global adult literacy rate was 36% in 1950; now it is 87%.  Wow. The share of the world’s population without access to electricity has halved since 2000, from two in ten to one in ten. Take a moment to let these trends sink in.

Understandable wariness in referring to ‘progress’

Nevertheless, wariness in using the term ‘progress’ is understandable, as it is often associated with the grand, modernist, ideological projects which bruised and battered humanity in the twentieth century.  It is also used when referring to large scale infrastructure schemes, many of which override the concerns and voices of local communities, for example ‘megadams’ such as the Three Gorges Dam in China, which displaced over a million people in the early 2000s.

‘Progress’ has also become associated with universalism, which has fallen out of favour in this era of multiple identities, growing suspicion of authority, and a questioning of objective truths.  I have sympathy with those who regard the term with scepticism, as colonialism, neo-colonialism, and the oppression of minority voices and opinions has often been undertaken in the pursuit of ‘progress’ and ‘the greater good’.  Frequently it is also seen as being synonymous with economic growth, shading out social, cultural, and environmental considerations of what makes a flourishing society.

The failings of ‘development’

But in many ways, ‘progress’ is preferable to the term ‘development’, which has been under attack by critical thinkers over recent decades for implying a unilinear, ‘one size fits all’, path for all countries to follow on the way to economic prosperity.  Critics often balk at those who refer to countries as being ‘under-developed’ or ‘less developed’, as these terms imply that some parts of the world are inferior to others.  Moreover, to call a country ‘developed’ implies that it has reached its goal: the term masks the inequalities, injustices, and other social and environmental challenges that are present everywhere.

‘Development’ also implies growth, which, when applied to the consumption of materials and energy, and, some would argue, the scale of economies, is difficult to achieve in an environmentally sustainable fashion.  As Johann Rockström and colleagues at the Stockholm Resilience Centre have demonstrated, we have already overshot six of the nine planetary boundaries within which humanity can continue to thrive for generations to come.  It is taking too long for us to wake up to the fact that infinite growth is impossible in a finite world.

Attempts to modify the concept of ‘development’ by aiming for ‘sustainable development’ deserve widespread support – and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals are perhaps the best framework we currently have to formulate shared global goals.  However, we should be wary of the now ubiquitous use of the term ‘sustainable’, which can be stretched and misused.

Reclaiming and chastening ‘progress’

So, is it time to revisit using a chastened notion of ‘progress’ to help guide us to consider where we want to be as a society?  Can we reclaim it from being associated with ideological steamrolling aimed at imposing economic systems or social conformity?  Can we rescue it from being pigeonholed as being labelled as an archaic ‘western’ notion and reaffirm the fact that its moral underpinnings are universal to humankind? Can we shear it of its Enlightenment excesses and yet retain the germ of the idea that ‘gradual improvement’ of the lot of humanity is a worthwhile goal?

It would be tough mission, but we could begin by trying to hold Max Roser’s ‘three truths’ in our mind simultaneously:

  1. In many respects, the world is awful (4% of children die before they are 15)
  2. The world is much better than it used to be (in the past, half of children died)
  3. The world can be much better (in the EU, 0.45% of children die)

Within the sphere of education, teachers could lift our students’ eyes above the narrow quest to achieve qualifications, allowing them to interrogate concepts of progress as part of the process of socialisation, and to offer a source of meaning and direction.

And beyond schools, we should bring a wide variety of voices into discussions about progress.  We should deliberate what it means and what it could mean, as the concept is not set in stone.  Uncertain times call for such ‘big picture’ thinking – are you up for the challenge?

A version of this post appeared in the Yorkshire Post, 26th March, 2025, to coincide with a symposium on Education, Knowledge and Progress which I spoke at and was part of the organising team for, at the Institute of Education, UCL, London, on 26th March.

Categories
Geography Outdoor Learning

To fly or not to fly?  The Geography teacher’s dilemma

Double Rainbow in Iceland (Source: Discover the World Education)

When three environmentalists discuss the pros and cons of flying, as they did in a recent podcast episode, and at the end of it, they all agree to continue undertaking this high-carbon activity, what are geography teachers supposed to do?

Raise their eyebrows at the hypocrisy?  Shake their heads in despair?  Agree and move on?  Or listen and consider their position on the issue as educators and global citizens?

Benefits of flying

I recognise the huge benefits of flying – it has helped me to explore the world, meet new people, become more open-minded, and to become a geographer.  And I would like those benefits – as well as the ‘awe and wonder’ component of many foreign field trips – to be experienced by young people.  I also recognise the vast social and economic benefits of travel to many destination communities around the world.

But I have difficultly coming to terms with the very real impact of not just my own carbon footprint, but that of the dozens of children who I encourage to fly on school trips to locations such as Iceland.  Facilitating 26 student return plane journeys to Iceland, as I did last month, weighs heavily on my mind.  Many of you reading this post will no doubt have also experienced this dilemma.

Premises

Let’s take a step back and look at this issue as part of the bigger picture of flying.  My premises for this post are as follows:

  1. Geography teachers are very well-informed people about environmental issues
  2. Being well-informed of such issues, we recognise the existence of, and impacts of, anthropogenic climate change – and that such impacts are overwhelmingly negative for almost all people in almost all parts of the world
  3. We also recognise that climate change is a collective action problem – that is, a situation in which all individuals would be better off from co-operating, but in which there are few incentives for individuals to take individual action
  4. We recognise that as affluent members of an affluent country, we are likely to have a large carbon footprint
  5. We recognise that transport, particularly air transport, is likely to be one of the biggest contributors to our carbon footprint
  6. We recognise that, as teachers, we are role models to our students (and often to those in the wider community), so our decisions about how we act and what we say are likely to have a significant impact on the opinions and behaviours of others
  7. Field trips are an essential part of what we do as geography teachers.  We are very likely to organise them, lead them, take part in them, or facilitate them
  8. Whilst essential in their educational role, field trips have an impact on the environment – and generally, those involving trips abroad are more likely to involve flying

So what do we do when we consider opening our students’ eyes to the world by organising field trips which involve flying?  Cut out the flights altogether?  Always go local?

Let’s return to the podcast for a moment.

Outrage and Optimism

It’s called Outrage and Optimism, and it’s highly recommended listening for geography teachers who want to keep up to date with developments in climate change policy.  The three presenters have all been working in international environmental policy making and advocacy for decades: Christiana Figueres is the Costa Rican diplomat who led the negotiations which resulted in the 2015 Paris Agreement, and Paul Dickinson and Tom Rivett-Carnac continue to play active roles in this sphere.

They all fly frequently as part of their work, and they have all taken steps to try to minimise their flying: for several years, Paul only flew for work and not for family holidays, and they all make trips count by combining meetings and rejecting others in favour of remote working.  But they all recognise the importance of face-to-face meetings, as well as keeping in touch with family members, and they were all wary of moralising and preaching (as am I!).

They also recognise the range of opinions in the climate change community: in a survey they issued prior to the programme, 21% of the respondents said it was okay to fly, 21% said it wasn’t, and 58% said it was okay to fly in some circumstances.  They are under no illusion as to the role of flying in climate change, and the fact that its contribution to emissions is likely to rise owing to growing global prosperity and the decarbonisation of other sectors.  They flag up efforts to decarbonise the aviation sector: in keeping with the ‘Optimism’ part of the podcast’s title, they are open to the idea of technological solutions in the mid- to long-term.  But they are honest about the limited impact these will have in the next decade or so.

The Figueres Defence

The most powerful contribution to the discussion was by Christiana.  She issued a forceful defence of carbon offsetting:

“I have been abundantly public for many years that I am an offset proponent.  I think it is important, because I come from a developing country, and I have seen the benefit in developing countries of receiving funding for projects that otherwise would not be funded”

She pointed out that the offset market uses rigorous methodologies.  Nevertheless, she recognised that providers of offset schemes are unregulated and there is much uncertainty in the sector.  To compensate for this, she implored listeners: “if you’re going to offset, offset abundantly and generously” and “make sure that you have covered and over-covered your emissions, and that you are investing in high quality projects in developing countries who need that investment.”

How might Christiana’s contribution speak to the geography teacher’s dilemma?

Six suggestions for Geography teachers

Returning to the premises at the start of this post, we should be mindful of the carbon footprint of field trips and we should also consider how we might run them in a way which facilitates the discussion of these issues by students and teachers alike.  So here are six suggestions for how geography teachers might approach the dilemma of flying and field trips:

  1. Use flights on a field trip when other alternatives are not reasonably available
  2. Fly when the experience warrants it
  3. Organise field trips that involve flying less often than you might be tempted to – perhaps once every two or three years?  We now interleave our foreign field trips, which used to take place annually, with one to the excellent Field Studies Centre in Millport, on the Isle of Cumbrae in western Scotland.
  4. Carbon offset your flights, and consider ‘over-offsetting’ – see Christiana’s comments above
  5. Ask tour providers what they are doing about the impact of their flights.  When I called three school tour operators a few years ago about this issue, only one had formulated a policy about it: Discover the World Education.  So I stopped using our previous tour company and began working with DtWE.  More tour companies are developing their sustainability policies, but it is still worth asking questions of them
  6. Involve students, parents, and indeed your senior leadership team, in your deliberations, and take the issues out in the open.  For the first time this year, we included a slide on sustainability in the parent’s information presentation, and this began not with reusable cups and paper straws, but with the ‘elephant in the room’ – the flights – and why we were contributing to Discover the World’s ‘Greener Growth’ offset scheme.  We are proud that we have paid £20 per student into this scheme: a total of £520

You may well be further down the road in terms of sustainability of your geography field trips than me, or you may have just begun the journey.

You may have already dismissed the idea of offsetting, or you may have embraced it.

You may feel that the geography curriculum – and the acts of its teachers – should be clearly separated from issues of how we ‘act sustainability’.

But whatever your stance, I believe that if you return to the premises I set out at the start of this post, you will agree that the issue of flying is certainly worth paying attention to, and perhaps worth acting upon.  I welcome your thoughts.

Readers may be interested to read a post I wrote a few years ago called ‘In defence of carbon offsetting’.

Categories
Geography Hopeful Education Optimism and progress Teaching and Learning

Grounds for hope in geography

After several years in gestation, and with the assistance of Elaine Anderson and Richard Bustin, I have distilled my ideas of how teachers may offer students ‘grounds for hope’ for their future and that of the world into an article for the Spring 2024 issue of Teaching Geography journal.

I have been inspired by many people, among them the psychologist Maria Ojala, who argues that fostering ‘constructive hope’ can enhance students’ engagement with issues of sustainable development, and David Hicks, who has written much on the topic of hopeful geography over the past couple of decades.

I take Hicks’ work further by drawing more heavily on global scale examples of ‘social progress’ to improve students’ aware of ‘big picture’ changes. I foreground Max Roser’s ‘three truths’ argument: the world is awful, the world is much better, and the world can be much better (see below):

The article also features resources which can help teachers to keep their understanding of global social trends up to date, including Gapminder, Our World in Data, and Pixels of Progress and in doing so it recognises the legacy of inspirational public health professor Hans Rosling.

A number of teaching resources which could be used by teachers wanting to engage with hopeful geography are featured in the article and as downloads; I have trialled all of them in schools (one example of a student’s future timeline is given as an illustration).

I give the threefold concept of hopeful geography, which can be taken further as the foundations of a hopeful education. I have written about this elsewhere in this blog, although my ideas evolve over time. I advocate for a curriculum which enables our students to do three things:

  1. Evaluate progress
  2. Believe in humanity
  3. Create a sustainable future

Any approach to education should be open to criticism, and hopeful geography is no exception. I acknowledge several concerns, most notably the accusation that it could lead to complacency, and I try to address each one.

As the article went to press, Hannah Ritchie’s book ‘Not the End of the World’ was published, and whilst it too is not exempt from critique, the guiding message of that book chimes with mine: it is helpful to open the possibility to our students that they might be “the first generation to build a sustainable planet” – and as geographers, there is no better opportunity than now to inform and inspire this generation.