Commodity value chain analysis as a sustainability education process: Case studies from South Africa and Sweden.

• In Event: Internationalization and sustainability efforts in higher education

Proposal

“All hands are needed”, indeed. If globally and as regions we are to achieve well-being for all, including ecological integrity, changes are needed at all levels of society, in homes, universities, workplaces and government offices, to name a few key sites for change. Education certainly has a role to play. But often our educational efforts fall short of the depth and scope of transformation that is required to achieve sustainable development goals. Why?

The problem as we see it has several dimensions. Firstly, sustainability education activities are focused almost exclusively on the behavior of individuals, while not only individual behavior, but entire social, cultural and economic systems need to fundamentally change. Secondly, we have become excellent at raising awareness, and at communicating about environmental disasters and risks. But what follows after awareness-raising? What do the recipients of education do, once they are aware of environmental issues? Research shows that without a sense of how to move from awareness to action, without the means to address the problem, learners young and old can become despondent, desperate, cynical or simply bored.

Thirdly, action to address sustainability challenges, is not necessarily straightforward. Individuals may faithfully switch off the lights, only to find that corporates and/ or governments continue to choose fossil fuels to keep the lights on at maximum capacity. Educators educate individuals. How do these individuals' actions relate to system change? Who should be educated? And how? Finally, how exactly do we address both ecological and developmental issues, when they seem to involve conflicting interests requiring unequal trade-offs? When we do manage to bring government, corporations and communities around the table to discuss sustainability issues, we often encounter conflicting values and mindsets preventing progress towards solutions.

These are some of the questions challenging sustainability educators. Twenty-seven years after the Rio Earth Summit and the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, educators have built considerable experience. The authors would like to share what we have learnt in this time as sustainability educators and education researchers working in industry, government and higher education contexts, in South Africa and Sweden, and invite others to comment and help us further build our theory and practice.

One research-based educational method which we think has the potential to address all of the questions raised above, is learner participation in developing, analyzing and expanding commodity value chains. Independently, on different sides of the globe, we have come up with a remarkably similar educational process. In South Africa, colleagues at two universities (Rhodes and Wits) have been collaborating in a programme aimed at skills planners, policy makers and human resource developers in government and industry (www.greenskills.co.za). We have conducted studies in several industries (agriculture, mining, chemicals, packaging, state procurement) to see how these industries can ‘green’, extend, make circular, or entirely transform the value chains for the commodities they produce. Our purpose was to identify leverage points for change, and the associated tasks and occupations, so that the system could start preparing people with the skills to practically and fundamentally work towards sustainability within those industries. We found that these skills were required in teams of different occupational role players that need to work together to achieve the fundamental changes needed. When we started sharing the analytic tools we used for these studies with educators (teachers, teacher educators, conservation and development education facilitators and environmental education specialists), we discovered that they found them not only novel, but pedagogically rich. Here was a means to overcome the despondency and boredom that we risk by getting stuck in awareness of problems. And as we published and shared these tools, we discovered that at Jonkoping University in Sweden, educators were using similar commodity chain analyses with education students in Development Studies, and found that here, too, the methodology had the power to bring about profound insights and positive motivation towards change.

Using the example of a simple everyday object like a plastic water bottle, our presentation will share how the value chain methodology works at different levels of depth, and what participants in value chain workshops and courses have said about it. We will then unpack what we perceive to be its innovation and educational value, particularly in relation to the individual change - system change relationship and the potential to integrate social, economic and ecological benefits. For when we start thinking about expanding value chains (or webs) that recognize the embedded nature of economy and society, and the connections between markets, households, governance and the commons (Raworth, 2017), we may enable the sharing of values and potentially deep, transformational shifts in mindsets, practically manifesting in new skills for old and new occupations.

Our discussion will be informed and enriched by our contrasting contexts in which we, in South Africa and Sweden, shared surprisingly common interests.

Authors

• Eureta Rosenberg, Rhodes University Environmental Learning Research Centre, South Africa

• Presha Ramsarup, Wits University

• Åsa Westermark, Jonkoping University