Promoting Sustainable Education in Karachi, Pakistan

• In Event: Poster session III
  In Poster Session: Poster session 3

Proposal

Education for Sustainable Development, as defined by UNESCO, aims to equip human beings with the knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values necessary to shape a sustainable future. It encompasses incorporating key sustainable development issues into the teaching and learning experience.

The iconic Brundtland Report emphasized the crucial role of ‘the world’s teachers’ in bringing about ‘the extensive social changes’ needed for sustainable development (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987, p. xiv). Agenda 21 of the UNCED also identified education as critical for the promotion of sustainable development and improving people’s capacity to address environmental and development issues (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, 1992, ch. 36, p. 2).

Pakistan faces a myriad of environmental challenges. According to Germanwatch, a German think tank advocating for the prevention of dangerous Climate Change, Pakistan is ranked the 7th most vulnerable country to Climate Change. Although environmental issues have always been on the peripheries of political debates in Pakistan, it is for the first time in the history of this country that environmental concerns have become part of mainstream political narratives and debates. In the recent general elections, major political parties stressed the need to address the environmental problems that plague Pakistan, marking a paradigm shift in how environmental issues are now perceived to be interlinked to development discourses and debates in the country. The newly elected Government has initiated programs to tackle deforestation, urban air pollution and water scarcity, some of the key environmental challenges facing the country. Problems like air and water pollution, increased heat-waves due to climate change and food and energy insecurity have become a part of life for most of its citizens. This is especially true in the context of Karachi – Pakistan’s largest city with a population of around 21 million people. It is in this context, education for sustainable development is the pressing need of the hour.

The aim of the paper is to explore the contribution of Habib university towards finding sustainable solutions to the environmental problems that exist in Pakistan through an interdisciplinary approach. Habib university is Pakistan’s first liberal arts university that aims to provide a multidisciplinary education by promoting creativity, academic freedom, and the exchange of ideas in an intellectually-stimulating environment characterized by mutual respect and collaboration. The philosophy of ‘Yohsin’ is central to Habib, a multidimensional concept, Yohsin incorporates a worldview where the worth of a person is measured not just in terms of the depth of their technical knowledge or skills, but by their interaction with nature and society at large.

While environmentalism in the North, it has been contended, emerged as a result of the post materialist society and exists outside the production processes, the intersection of development and environmentalism in the South originates as a clash over productive resources. The nexus between the environment and development in the South is interwoven in questions of human rights and distributive justice. Although, this clash comes across as a class conflict, somewhat as red, but it has ecological/green implications. Therefore, the debates and issues around environmental issues are always centered around class, gender, politics and distribution of resources. Thus, it is pertinent to address policy issues from a multidisciplinary perspective.
One of the greatest challenges with climate change is that it is always presented as a technical problem, an inaccessible area that is the domain of experts of a certain field. At Habib, this is beginning to change where complex environmental issues are streamlined into academic debates from interdisciplinary perspectives. Habib University is offering courses on sustainability and climate change on a broad spectrum. The Playground is a space, and an ecosystem, designed exclusively for creative collaborative work at Habib University. It serves as a gateway to making and design activities across departments and schools. Through workshops, pop-up classes and industry and community projects students are able to learn, and apply their learning, across disciplines and media. Karachi is the sixth most water stressed city in the world. Workshops like imagining alternate futures for Karachi and Ideas for rolling out a sustainable urban mobility for Karachi provide students with the opportunity to use innovative approaches towards not only comprehending, but addressing the critical environmental issues that the metropolis faces.
In addition to the workshops at Playgrpund, there are various courses that are designed to promote education for sustainable development. These courses are offered by the two schools of the university. ‘Introduction to Sustainability’ and ‘Climate Change and Us’ introduce students to the concepts of sustainability and sustainable development in its modern context. Through class discussions, eco-fiction, hands-on laboratory work and field trips, they get to understand and develop their own perspectives and ideas on solving sustainability challenges within the context of their communities.
The course on Food Security uses an innovative approach and employs workshop methodology to teach the numerous factors influencing food security in the 21st century including the increasing pressures on resources due to climate change and rapidly increasing world population. The course also puts in perspective the idea of urban farming through hands on experience, thus empowering students with practical skills. The workshops are also facilitated by non-academic experts from Karachi. The curriculum is further enhanced by field trips which will showcase responses to a diverse range of agricultural, economic and urban environmental challenges through appropriate technology solutions. Through this course, collaborations have been formed with leading NGOs and environmentalists of Karachi, thus providing students with a hands on learning experience to the challenges surrounding food security in Karachi. Similarly, ‘Development and Environmentalism’ examines the policy debates surrounding world environmental challenges and development discourses, with a particular focus on the Global South. Simultaneously, it attempts to encapsulate complex and diverse dialogues within the ‘real sphere’ of global politics and the ‘theoretical sphere’ of abstract.

Through designing an innovative program, Habib university is promoting education for sustainability, and preparing the youth to address the dynamic environmental and development challenges we face today.


References:
Clapp, J. & Dauvergne, P., 2005. Peril or Prosperity? Mapping Worldviews of Global Environmental Change, Paths to a green world: the political economy of the global environment (pp 1-16). Cambridge: MIT Press,

https://www.dawn.com/news/1419200

Gosh, Amitav. 2016. The Great Derangement. University Of Chicago Press

Guha, R. & Martinez-Alier, J., 1997. Varieties of Environmentalism North and South. London.
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development 1992, Agenda 21.

World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, Brundtland
Report: Our Common Future.

Authors

• Tajreen Midhat Jafri, Habib University, Karachi

• Shama Dossa, Habib University, Karachi

• Amber Ajani, Habib University, Karachi