Jonas Andreasen Lysgaard

A sustainable and environmentally friendly life does not simply drop from the sky. Contemporary industrialized societies struggle to understand and incorporate notions of how to develop along a path that will ensure future generations can enjoy the same standard of living as nations such as Denmark and South Korea at the beginning of the 21st century. Through heavy emphasis on ideas of evidence-based best practice, educators try to further such goals of education as will aid the individual to succeed and societies to prosper, while maintaining that democracy, nature, and climate should be protected as part of sustainable development. Yet, these high hopes regarding what education and Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) will bring must still face the ever present bad practice that is found in everyday life, in education, as well as in policy and business. Sustainable development and, in effect, ESE is thus one of the great conundrums of our time. On the one hand, few people would want to get rid of the comfortable lifestyle that unprecedented economic growth has made possible. On the other hand, we are witnessing how such growth threatens our future. ESE is a way to understand, challenge, and develop a way of living that aims to combine the possibility of living a full life without destroying the opportunity for future generations to do the same. The aim of this book is to develop the notion of ESE and other perspectives on education through a better understanding of the mechanisms that underpin the seemingly human condition of bad practice.