Critical Perspectives on Sustainable Development in Sweden

1. Uppsala 2009-09-02 Critical Perspectives on Sustainable Development in Sweden Daniel Mossberg, Director of Studies CEMUS – CSD UPPSALA daniel.mossberg@csduppsala.uu.se

2. How do I help my students uncover their passions? What infuriates or terrifies or enraptures them? What does all three, and more? What messages do my students desperately want and need to convey, and to whom must they convey them? […] It goes back to the same old question, but with a new one at the end. Who are you? What do you love? And the new one: What do you want? (Jensen 2004:182-83)

3. Together try to define what this course uniquely can offer you as students • Start the process of critical thinking and develop a set of tools for forming critical questions to lecturers • Connect the sometimes elusive and fuzzy concept of SD with a useful scientific approach • To present you with a personal reflection and perspective on Sweden The purpose of this evenings lecture/mini-workshop:

4. What is your general view of Sweden?1. On your own write down everything that comes to mind 3 minutes2. Discuss with the person/s next to you5 minutes

5. Sweden and Sustainability?1. On your own write down everything that comes to mind 3 minutes2. Discuss with the person/s next to you5 minutes

7. Critical Perspectives on Sustainable Development in Sweden

8. What is Sustainable Development?

9. ”Sustainable Development” a romanticlabyrinth with manyview points19thcentury

16. 1. Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It contains within it two key concepts: the concept of 'needs', in particular the essential needs of the world's poor, to which overriding priority should be given; and the idea of limitations imposed by the state of technology and social organization on the environment's ability to meet present and future needs. Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development , Chapter 2: Towards Sustainable Development, http://www.un-documents.net/ocf-02.htm#I

17. In general terms, let’s define sustainability as the ability of a system to continue working (and evolving) over the long term. AtKisson, Alan, 2008, The ISIS Agreement.

18. Sustainable development has three dimensions: economic, environmental and social. These are frequently referred to as the triple bottom line, and are used to gauge the success of a particular development program or project.Rogers et. al., 2008:42, An Introduction to Sustainable Development

20. What is a Critical Perspective?

21. It is not obvious what critical thinking is, and philosophers of education accordingly have developed accounts of critical thinking that attempt to state what it is and why it is valuable—i.e., why educational systems should aim to cultivate it in students. These accounts generally (though not universally) agree that critical thinkers share at least the following two characteristics: (1) they are able to reason well—i.e., to construct and evaluate various reasons that have been or can be offered for or against candidate beliefs, judgments, and actions; and (2) they are disposed or inclined to be guided by reasons so evaluated—i.e., actually to believe, judge, and act in accordance with the results of such reasoned evaluations. Beyond this level of agreement lie a range of contentious issues. "education, philosophy of." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2  Sept.  2009  <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-261243>.

22. These questions have given rise to other, more specific and hotly contested issues. Is critical thinking relevantly “neutral” with respect to the groups who use it, or is it in fact politically biased, unduly favouring a type of thinking once valued by white European males—the philosophers of the Enlightenment and later eras—while undervaluing or demeaning types of thinking sometimes associated with other groups, such as women, nonwhites, and non-Westerners—i.e., thinking that is collaborative rather than individual, cooperative rather than confrontational, intuitive or emotional rather than linear and impersonal?Do standard accounts of critical thinking in these ways favour and help to perpetuate the beliefs, values, and practices of dominant groups in society and devalue those of marginalized or oppressed groups? Is reason itself, as some feminist and postmodern philosophers have claimed, a form of hegemony? "education, philosophy of." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 2  Sept.  2009  <http://search.eb.com/eb/article-261243>.

23. Whatdowesee?Whatdoweunderstand?What are ourreflective emotions?

24. Whatdowenot see?Whatdowenot understand?Whatreflective emotions are not felt?

25. …that is, what can we uncover and reveal in the focus of our research and studies with the help of a scientific method and perspective,critical thinking and reflection,that would otherwise have been hidden from us?

26. ”Critical Sustainability” a critical and sometimes politically incorrect discourse20th century

27. http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2002/1203apollo17.html

28. http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/2002/1203apollo17.html

29. Why do you think there are so few images in the popular culture for sustainability? "Sustainable" is essentially the opposite of "industrial." Sustainability implies a non-exploitive relationship with nature and a basic self-sufficiency in life. Well, industrialism can't allow that to exist because that kind of living would not create, manufacture, use or consume. Sustainability, community and self-sufficiency are antithetical to industrialism.Yes, they have come up with this idea now called "sustainable development," but it is actually the most odious oxymoron going around. Development of the kind that is meant in industrial civilization is destructive of communities, people's lands, and eventually, of people's livelihoods. Sustainable development is a convenient industrial myth. It really means that corporations try to get people in the great world south to become consumers so they can keep this Ponzi scheme of industrialism going. Sale, Kirkpatrick, An Interview with Kirkpatrick Sale – Rebel Against the Future, hämtad 2009-06-26, http://www.culturechange.org/issue9/kirkpatricksale.html

30. The idea of “sustainability” has gone mainstream. Thanks to Prius-driving movie stars, it’s even hip. What began as a grassroots movement to promote responsible sustainable development has become a bullet point in corporate eco-branding strategies.[…]Sustainability. Gone are the days when the word conjured up images of unapologetic veganism, dreadlocks, and mud-brick homes. From ecohippie to ecohip.Adrian, Parr, 2005, Hijacking Sustainability.

32. Planetary, biosphere limits and basic needs Human limits and basic needs

33. Sustainable Development/s

36. What is Sweden?

38. Uppsala, Sweden

39. Uppsala, Sweden 7 december 1972

43. Try to formulate a number of general starting points, principles, tools…for the Q & A with lecturers 1. On your own try writ down a couple of principles3 minutes 2. Discuss with the person/s next to you 5 minutes

45. Art, like religion, is one of the ways we digest what is happening to us, make the sense out of it that proceeds to action. Otherwise, the only role left to us -- noble, but also enraging in its impotence -- is simply to pay witness. The world is never going to be, in human time, more intact than it is at this moment. Therefore it falls to those of us alive now to watch and record its flora, its fauna, its rains, its snow, its ice, its peoples. To document the buzzing, glorious, cruel, mysterious planet we were born onto, before in our carelessness we leave it far less sweet.Time rushes on, in ways that humans have never before contemplated. That famous picture of the earth from outer space that Apollo beamed back in the late 1960s -- already that's not the world we inhabit; its poles are melting, its oceans rising. We can register what is happening with satellites and scientific instruments, but can we register it in our imaginations, the most sensitive of all our devices?McKibben, Bill, 2005, What the warming world needs now is art, sweet art, Grist Magazine, http://www.grist.org/article/mckibben-imagine/

46. Most of us sense that the Earth is more than a sphere of rock with a thin layer of air, ocean and life covering the surface. We feel that we belong here as if this planet were indeed our home. […] The new understanding has come from going forth and looking back to see the Earth from space. The vision of that splendid white flecked blue sphere stirred us all, no matter that by now it is almost a visual cliché. It even opens the mind's eye, just as a voyage away from home enlarges the perspective of our love for those who remain there.The first impact of those voyages was the sense of wonder given to the astronauts and to us as we shared their experience vicariously through television, but at the same time the Earth was viewed from outside by the more objective gaze of scientific instruments. These devices were quite impervious to human emotion yet they also sent back the information that let us see the Earth as a strange and beautiful anomaly. They showed our planet is made of the same elements and in much the same proportions as are Mars and Venus, but they also revealed our sibling planets to be bare and barren and as different from the Earth as a robin from a rock.

47. If we are "all creatures great and small," from bacteria to whales, part of Gaia then we are all of us potentially important to her well being. We knew in our hearts that the destruction of a whole ranges of other species was wrong but now we know why. No longer can we merely regret the passing of one of the great whales, or the blue butterfly, nor even the smallpox virus. When we eliminate one of these from Earth, we may have destroyed a part of ourselves, for we also are a part of Gaia.There are many possibilities for comfort as there are for dismay in contemplating the consequences of our membership in this great commonwealth of living things. It may be that one role we play is as the senses and nervous system for Gaia. Through our eyes she has for the first time seen her very fair face and in our minds become aware of herself. We do indeed belong here. The earth is more than just a home, it's a living system and we are part of it.James Lovelock, What is Gaia?, hämtad 2009-06-12, http://www.ecolo.org/lovelock/what_is_Gaia.html

48. En eldav … (Malm 2007)Geosfär - Biosfär –– Atmosfär - Noosfär - TeknosfärVladimir Vernadsky

49. The world faces significant environmental problems: shortages of clean and accessible freshwater, degradation of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, increases in soil erosion, loss of biodiversity, changes in the chemistry of the atmosphere, declines in fisheries, and the possibility of significant changes in climate. These changes are occurring over and above the stresses imposed by the natural variability of a dynamic planet and are intersecting with the effects of past and existing patterns of conflict, poverty, disease, and malnutrition.The changes taking place are, in fact, changes in the human-nature relationship. They are recent, they are profound, and many are accelerating. They are cascading through the Earth’s environment in ways that are difficult to understand and often impossible to predict. Surprises abound. At least, these human-driven changes to the global environment will require societies to develop a multitude of creative response and adaptation strategies. Some are adapting already; most are not. At worst, they may drive the Earth itself into a different state that may be much less hospitable to humans and other forms of life. (Moore et al. 2001)Berrien Moore III, ArildUnderdal, Peter Lemke & Michel Loreau (IGBP Science No. 4) 2001, Global Change and the Earth System: A planet under pressure http://www.igbp.net/documents/resources/science-4.pdf

50. One of the things that we as Okanagan people know is that our very flesh is our land. Our very breath that we take is our land. Everything that is about us is our land .... And so when we call on our spirits in the spirit world, that's how we talk to them. When we refer to everything that is, we have only one word meaning the all, everything, the land, the water, the birds, the insects – everything, including ourselves. We say tamihu. And that means everything, including us, has that life force in it. (Armstrong citeradavSuziki et al. 2004)Jeanette Armstrong, citerad ur From NakedApe to Superspecies 2004… the third great discovery of modern science: the realization that the Earth's system is itself self-organizing or self-regulating. And one easy way to capture this is simply to say that the Earth is alive. Of course, it's not alive the way a salamander is. It doesn't give birth to baby Earths. But it's alive in the sense that is actually organizes itself so that the complexity of its life forms might continue. (SwimmeciteradavSuziki et al. 2004) Brian Swimme, citerad ur From NakedApe to Superspecies 2004Our planetary difficulties: our techonologies have resultedhttp://books.google.com/books?id=M72CiOOwtpYC&pg=PA47&dq=brian+swimme&hl=sv#PPA47,M1