Four years after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, education was in danger of becoming the ”forgotten priority of Rio”, according to a United Nations report to the Commission on Sustainable Development.
Now universities are mobilising to ensure the same fate does not befall education at — and beyond — the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD).
They are doing so against a curious background: although the agendas of previous world summits centralised education, they failed to specify any explicit role for tertiary education.
Rectifying this at the WSSD, and winning formal recognition for the leading role universities play in sustainable development, is the mission a partnership of four university consortia, consisting of 19 universities from five countries, set itself last week.
The Linked University Consortia for Environment and Develop- ment — Industry and Urban Areas (Luced-I&UA) draws on universities in South Africa, Botswana, Denmark, Malaysia and Thailand.
The universities of Botswana, the Witwatersrand, Durban-Westville, Natal, Western Cape and Cape Town form one of the four consortia, known as the Southern African Consortium of Universities for Development and Environment — Industry and Urban Areas (Sacude-I&UA). Denmark, Malaysia and Thailand each have their own similar consortia. Fully functional since 2000, the consortia have been funded by the Danish aid agency Danida.
Luced-I&UA held a conference in Botswana’s Chobe National Park last week in the run-up to the WSSD.
”World reports on the environment and development barely acknowledge tertiary work and research,” said Professor Sharon Siverts, vice-chancellor of the University of Botswana, in her welcoming address.
”We must make universities more visible,” Professor Robert Fincham, director of Sacude-I&UA, told the conference. ”Higher education has made a muted contribution to sustainable development so far.”
Delivering a keynote address, Botswana’s Minister for Lands, Housing and Environment, Jacob Nkate, said: ”Environmental issues don’t have boundaries, so universities must engage with them in a more comprehensive way.”
Strongly endorsing the Luced partnerships, Nkate told the Mail & Guardian that members of Luced should call on his and other governments to help access funding.
”Governments should give their blessing to such approaches about funding. And the Botswana government is prepared to approach its South African counterpart in this respect.”
Nkate told the conference that Africa faces a ”peculiar problem: we have natural resources in abundance, but are backward in development.
”The problem of poor governance must be resolved. African countries can buy all the friends they want with their natural resources, but if they’re not used for the good of the nation — if it means another dictator opening another foreign account — that’s not progress.”
Universities’ contributions to leader-ship and governance in relation to sustainable development were recurring emphases at the Chobe conference. Tertiary institutions produce research results, said Professor Susse Georg of Denmark’s Copenhagen Business School, but they also ”educate the decision-makers of tomorrow”.
Fincham observed that universities have a critical role in developing a ”new cadre of leaders to run the world”.
For the past two years the universities in Luced-I&UA have cooperated to increase and link their environmental management teaching and research capacities in environmental administrative units, environmental organisations and the private sector in the participating countries.
Luced-I&UA’s main focuses are human resource development via the exchange of students, researchers and teachers; curriculum development; improved teaching methods; research networking; continued education; and joint research and courses.
Luced-I&UA’s mission includes providing indigenous human resources capable of promoting democratic reforms, social equity and sustained human development, Fincham said at the conference.
This involves ensuring that indigenous culture and traditions are safeguarded and taken into the learning and research processes, to counteract brain drainage to other countries.
Considering partnerships between development agencies and the tertiary sector, USAid representative Franklin Moore told the conference that universities are dealing well with the environmental and social dimensions of sustainable development, but need to deal directly with economic and poverty-reduction concerns.
”The WSSD, unlike the 1972 Summit or the 1992 Rio Summit, will deal explicitly with poverty reduction. This is a significant responsibility of development organisations.”
By way of example, Moore said that, for a biologist, ”the mission should be not just how to preserve and conserve landscapes, ecosystems and species, but also how to sustainably use them to eliminate poverty”. The challenge is ”not just how a park is established and maintained, but how it is managed in ways that provide livelihoods to the surrounding communities”.
Luced’s Chobe conference concluded last week by producing a declaration, hammered out by all four consortia, for presentation at the WSSD. The declaration says universities are indispensable partners in sustainable development. It will be read at a programme to be held next week under the joint auspices of Unesco and the national Department of Education.