DEMOCRACY AT THE HEART OF SUSTAINABILITY

Perspective News - Sunday December 16, 2007

GUEST COLUMN / SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

DEMOCRACY AT THE HEART OF SUSTAINABILITY

To secure the future of this generation and the next requires that the choices we make respect the integrity of nature and the planet, writes LAWRENCE SURENDRA

The people of Thailand have in the past year or more agonised deeply over their democracy. With the Dec 23 general election only a week away, they must be eager to see a return to political normalcy.

Anxieties about democracy are not peculiar to Thailand. It is not about East or West, or who is more fit for democracy or who deserves it more.

Democracy is about ordinary people having control over their daily lives, about governments organising society in a manner in which all people, rich or poor, have a say. It is also about taking care of present needs without compromising the future.

The notion of "taking care of the present without compromising the future" is the central operative principle of the Brundtland Commission Report, Our Common Future, on which the activities of the United Nations system with regard to sustainable development are based.

The problem with the term "sustainable development' is that, while everyone may agree on the need for it, the emphasis and meaning that different persons give to the term will differ depending on where they stand in relation to the rest of society.

It is important, however, that these different and maybe even conflicting approaches be reconciled. Only then can society as a whole can arrive at a common approach that ensures the common good in a manner that also takes care of future generations.

To achieve this, democratic debate is central and crucial. Democracy and good governance are at the heart of sustainable development because only a society open to democratic debate and discussion over the choices for the future can ensure that the future of that society is sustainable.

No single individual or group of individuals - however altruistic and noble their goals - can decide the future for others. Democratic governance and sustainable development are like Siamese twins.

This is the reason that the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, or WSSD as it is known, clearly stated, "Good governance is essential for sustainable development. Sound economic policies, solid democratic institutions responsive to the needs of the people and ... an overall commitment to just and democratic societies are also essential and mutually reinforcing."

In turn, vibrant democracies are dependent on the competence and maturity of their citizens. Citizenship involves the ability to discern and make the correct critical choices that affect quality of life, now and in the future.

To secure the future of this generation and the next requires that these choices respect the integrity of nature and the planet. The way we choose to live today could result in making the Earth so unlivable that humanity in the future may have no choice but to commit collective suicide. On the other hand, future generations may thank us for the sense of responsibility and wisdom in our choices.

To ensure that we, to borrow from a slogan of yesteryear, "live simply so that others may simply live" requires responsible citizenship on the part of all of us, nationally and globally.

BROADENED VISION

At the heart of responsible citizenship is education, which can provide the capacity and competence for people to make good decisions for their children's future. That is also why the Johannesburg Summit in 2002 broadened the vision of sustainable development and proposed the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Subsequently, the United Nations General Assembly in December 2002 passed such a proposal for the period from 2005-2014.

We are now in the third year of this important decade, but neither its objectives nor its importance has really permeated through the world's governments, or even the UN system.

Unesco is the lead agency for promoting the Decade and the Unesco Regional Office for Asia Pacific has taken a more active role than other regional offices, including Europe, with sustained activities to promote education for sustainable development, or ESD.

Sheldon Shaeffer, the director at the Unesco Bangkok office, has made a creative contribution by showing that ESD can be the fifth pillar of learning, namely, "Learning to Transform", joining the other four pillars of learning outlined in the famous Jacques Delors International Education Commission Report to Unesco, on "Education for the 21st Century" and known more popularly by the title "Learning the Treasure Within." The report considered these four "pillars"as the basic foundations of education.

The first pillar is "learning to live together." The next is "learning to know." The third, "learning to do", and last but not least, "learning to be".

In a world where many societies are riven by ethnic conflict, teaching how to live together is very important. So too, is making our young people aware of the fact that education need not necessarily be about "learning to know". Sometimes we get a message in this globalised world which seems to promote only an ethic of destructive individualised competition that is so detrimental to the growth of young persons, and produces such stress and tension and fear of failure, pushing many a youth even to suicide. So it is important to show young people how important "learning to be" is.

Governments in the Asia and Pacific region today face a multitude of serious challenges simultaneously. This has produced a crisis of credibility that threatens to undermine their very governability.

The erosion of confidence in the governments of the day in turn have seriously impacted the faith of ordinary people in democracy and the rule of law, and in the impartiality and fairness of the governance systems that they live under.

To stem this erosion of confidence and restore hope, public education has a big role to play. What is meant by public education here is the education and moulding of the populace as participants in a democracy, inculcating the notion of "citizenship" as opposed to allowing the notion of the "consumer" to take precedence.

It is in such a perspective that ESD has much to offer, especially in dealing with the challenges posed by globalisation. The Decade of Education for Sustainable Development must be seized as an opportunity by both governments and the UN. It is an opportunity to prove that the cynics who constantly run the UN down are wrong.

SYNERGISING UN

Yet the United Nations system also must take some share of the blame for the cynicism that prevails. To rectify this state of affairs, there needs to be greater coherence within the system. Therefore the UN reforms that the present UN secretary-general is currently steering are very important.

A reform that goes under the slogan of "One UN" aims at synergising the different parts of the UN system, with particular emphasis given to regional institutions since they are closer to the member states. Staff in regional offices have to function in a manner that encourages trust and confidence in the UN. This greatly depends on the quality of leadership in the major UN institutions.

Recognising this, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon accomplished a master stroke in appointing Ms Noeleen Heyzer as executive secretary of UN-Escap. This must not be seen as the token appointment of a woman to a high post within the UN.

Dr Heyzer has an impeccable track record of intellectual accomplishment, competence and commitment to social development. She is from the region, and above all, she is a person known for high standards of integrity and probity. She will be an important contributor to an entirely new chapter in the history of UN-Escap, now seen by many as a moribund institution.

After taking the oath of office as the new executive secretary of UN-Escap, in an interview broadcast over UN radio, Dr Heyzer significantly said, "I have also been a strong development practitioner and a development thinker. Therefore I would like to put many of the issues in a much larger development context and really to bring in an integrated approach to look at society, economy and the environment. And definitely the secretary-general's agenda on environmental sustainability, the impact of climate change on communities, on societies, is something that we will also be picking up."

That statement also encompasses many of the objectives of the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development - at the heart of which is democracy.

Lawrence Surendra, an Indian economist, is an internationally recognised expert on Asian social, economic and environmental affairs.

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