Sustainable development becoming a higher education buzzword

When 22-year-old Dhaval Jain, then in his second year at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, decided to go for the Shodh Yatra – journey of explorations – as an elective for his two year MBA programme, he was expecting a mini-vacation.

As he trekked through five days of rough and mountainous terrain in India’s Leh district, in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir, slept in tents, and ate with and communicated with villagers and agriculturalists, Jain’s attitude underwent a sea-change.

“When you are at the IIMs [hailed as India’s best business schools], everything is a framework. By the time you finish your first year you are a machine, trained to solve problems mechanically.

“The shodh yatra put me in touch with myself,” said Jain, who is currently working with a consultant firm in Mumbai.

“You realise that sustainable development does not end with a statement. Rather you have to live it every day.”

Shodh Yatra is a module pioneered by IIM Ahmedabad’s Professor Anil Gupta, during which students spend a week trekking through India’s villages to unearth traditional knowledge and grassroots innovations that have simplified the lives of people and significantly contributed towards the conservation of biodiversity.

The 15-year-old trek has covered 5,500 kilometres since it began and become a favourite among students.

“All engineering and management students should be exposed to the hardships of daily life and become sensitive towards finding innovative solutions. They should know how India’s villages are coming up with simple grassroots solutions without any management education,” said Gupta, who is also the founder of the Honey Bee Network, which consists of a database and members who scout out, develop, sustain and reward grassroots innovators.

Focus on sustainable development

It’s not just IIM Ahmedabad that has integrated sustainable development into its curriculum. Several leading universities and centres including the Indian institutes of technology, the University of Madras, Jadhavpur University and TERI University have focused on the importance of education for sustainable development.

Notably, all of the four Indian-led institutional partnership projects selected for the first Obama-Singh 21st Century Knowledge Initiative awards, announced in Washington on 13 June, focus on sustainable development themes, such as renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure development.

The Indian government recently entered into an agreement to set up a Category I institute of UNESCO in New Delhi called the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Education for Peace and Sustainable Development.

The institute will promote education and research for peace and sustainable development, and the capacity development needs of member states with a focus on Asia and the Pacific region.

In the north-western state of Gujarat, eight Gandhian rural vidyapeeths (colleges) have decided that each year three students studying agronomy extension and veterinary science should focus their dissertations on themes such as organic farming and understanding traditional practices. So far they have produced more than 100 dissertations

“It is compulsory for doctors in India to serve in rural areas before they receive their final degree. This should be done for engineers and managers also. The higher education institutes that are focusing on sustainable development through practice and not just theory should be encouraged by the government,” said Gupta.

Going green

For several institutions, a green campus has become serious business. The trend began with IIT Kanpur’s five star rated Centre for Environment and Energy. The building was given five stars by Green Rating for Integrated Habitat Environment (GRIHA), India’s green building design evaluation system.

Following this, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (HRD) sent a letter to all newly established central educational universities that are in the process of building campuses.

“The HRD ministry asked us to make a presentation to all higher educational institutions since they are coming up with new infrastructure. We are in the process of helping some institutes with the design of their buildings,” said an official of GRIHA.

The campus of the Indian Institute of Science, Engineering and Research (IISER) in Kolkata, established in 2006, is being built at a cost of Rs5,000 million (US$90 million). Four major water bodies inside the more than 100 hectares of land sanctioned for the campus will be left intact and developed into nature parks by geo-scientists and wetland experts.

“According to the architectural plan, there will be no building over three storeys to disturb the natural look of the place and some of lectures may be held in the open,” said former director Sushanta Duttagupta, who was involved in the planning of the campus.

Attitudes to curriculum and pedagogy

Long before the United Nations launched the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development in 2005, the Indian supreme court in 1999 directed that environment education must permeate all levels of education.

Despite initial delays, most universities had introduced an undergraduate environmental studies course from the 2004 academic year.

According to Kiran B Chhokar, founding editor of the international, peer-reviewed Journal of Education for Sustainable Development, this is a significant step towards making environmental education and education for sustainable development a reality in undergraduate institutions, which account for 85% of students enrolled in higher education in India.

“Not many countries have made it compulsory to have a course on the environment as part of the curriculum. The supreme court ruling has immense potential to reach out to thousands of students if it is correctly implemented,” said Chhokar.

However, the potential may be lost due to the limited understanding of the concept of sustainable development among teachers.

“The court order is about including the environment as a subject, but what do people understand by environment? Most think it is about pollution, greening, dams etc. But the developmental aspects of environment are not considered,” she said.

Chhokar, who has taught in several universities and academic staff colleges in India, said education for sustainable development was kept in silos and lacks a holistic approach in higher education.

“Today education for sustainable development includes a focus on green economy, education for peace, conflict as a result of competing demands for resources and many other areas. But universities have subject experts in pollution, de-forestation, wildlife etc.

“Some of them are good at making linkages with social issues. But a majority just confine their lectures to the subject area,” said Chhokar, who recently retired as higher education programme director at the Centre for Environment Education.

Building capacity in sustainable education

The Centre for Environment Education (CEE), headquartered in Ahmedabad, has focused on capacity development of students, teachers and leaders in higher education institutions by delivering programmes and instructional material. In collaboration with institutions of higher and professional education, CEE designs and delivers tailor-made courses to institutions.

Notably, a survey conducted by CEE in 2007 into how compulsory courses on the environment were being taught, revealed that only two of the 37 respondents had received training to teach the course.

Two-thirds of the respondents reported that they followed the University Grants Commission model syllabus, stuck to lectures without any component of field visits and project work, and rarely gave their own inputs.

“India has made significant leaps with the introduction of masters courses related to sustainable development. But any course has to be contextual,” said Chhokar.

“Today there are content and facts that students are supposed to know, but questioning, trying to see how something affects you, how you are contributing to it, what you can do about it and the various alternatives, those critical thinking skills we do not teach in most sustainable development programmes yet.”

International footprints

Impressed by the Shodh Yatra and student’s experiences, Malaysia’s Ministry of Science and Technology has started learning walks in its universities. The Shodh Yatra at IIM Ahmedabad also attracts many international students.

The decade-old TERI University, which offers several courses and three masters programmes with a sustainability focus, is also one of the founding members of http://ProSPER.Net – the Promotion of Sustainability in Postgraduate Education and Research Network – an alliance of 21 higher education institutions in the Asia-Pacific region under the auspices of the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS).

Education for sustainable development has been taken up independently by a handful of higher education institutions in India in the absence of any focused advocacy or associations.

However, ahead of Rio+20, the UN summit for sustainable development being held in the coming week, Chhokar felt that not enough attention is being given to education on sustainable development even on international platforms.

“There is the official process that is happening. But most people involved in education for sustainable development have been feeling that there is not much focus being given to education,” she said.

“You are talking about sustainability or sustainable development but the role of education in achieving this is not being stressed. The kind of commitments that governments should be making to education for sustainable development are not there.”

Others like Anil Gupta are sceptical about international summits such as Rio.

“I am not very optimistic about these platforms. The solutions to India’s development needs will not come from Rio but from strong leadership within the country. Education for sustainable development has the potential to bring this change and our universities can play a significant role,” Gupta said.