The Importance of Educational Programs

Many major institutions namely schools universities and schools consist of Sustainability branches and in fact they are full-fledged offices or departments and are considered part and parcel of the formal set-up. Such programs uphold the Ecological Integrity group of the remaining guiding principles that follow after the first four guiding principles or which are referred to as supporting principles. The Ecological Integrity group specifically states that there must be adoption of “patterns of production, consumption, and reproduction that safeguard Earth’s regenerative capacities, human rights, and community well-being. Such an adoption must extend to schools if the Earth Charter is to be integrated into all kinds of institutional arrangements that exist in a country. Furthermore, another one of the groups that the such programs upholds is the “Democracy, Nonviolence and Peace” group, which encourages regard for the environment to be considered and emphasized in education, as in “integrate into formal education and life-long learning the knowledge, values, and skills needed for a sustainable way of life.

Having environmental audits in schools is also one means by which a holistic type of teaching can be encouraged. This is because environmental auditing involves integrating the use of mathematics with an appreciation of the environment. In a fast-changing world with an increased usage of technology, there needs to be an appreciation of quantitative and qualitative analysis, which encourages “generic knowledge and skills of integrated environmental, economic and socio-cultural agendas and imperatives,” which is cited as being one of the Aspects of Sustainability, as identified by the Review of Environmental Education and its Contribution to Sustainability in Australia: Further & Higher Education, which is part of the Learning and Teaching for Sustainability Resource Toolkit and Templates, released by RMIT Melbourne.

As more institutions are realizing that sustainable practice is increasingly becoming the norm in institutional arrangements that must be followed, there is a need to figure out plans to integrate sustainability into such institutional arrangements. Apart from incorporating “Re-use, Reduce and Recycle” into the input-output cycle of institutional arrangements, there is an application of the sustainable development concept into such arrangements. This is being achieved by appreciating that the economy, society and the environment all need to be sustainable and whilst “Re-use, Reduce and Recycle” targets the economy pillar of sustainable development, it is such teaching programs that benefit the society and the environment.

References

http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mods/theme%5Fa/mod02.html?panel=5#top

Learning and Teaching for Sustainability Resource Toolkit and Templates, http://www.rmit.edu.au/teaching/sustainability

The Issue of Corporate Social Responsibility in India

As a person interested in Corporate Social Responsibility from an academic point of view, it is from a close-up perspective that I know that India’s favourite area to invest funds  is Education as a lot of media reports. Having said this, Corporate Social Responsibility can also divert funds to other aspects that make up India, namely the roads around major corporate offices.

It may be too much of a generalised statement to state that welcoming corporate entities into India has also led to the rise of the issues that are prevalent in tech countries of their origin. CSR is then a holistic approach to doing business and as India offers a massive consumer and employee base for companies, there must be useful CSR tie-ups that contribute to India and overcome its limitations in a productive manner.

It is all right to focus on the economic trajectory of growth within India but one must pay attention to research carried out on ethics and the relationship to consumerism. In a country of 1.2 billion people, of which a large percentage live in cities, it is absolutely important that CSR initiatives begin to pay attention to other initiatives apart from diverting funds to education, which is all well and good.

The glaring issue that everybody avoids talking about is the fact that child well being is not related to National Income per head if one considers urge countries that form part of the OECD as well as the countries that are often referred to as developed countries. For example, the USA is consistently ranked the worst on the index of health and social problems in relation to the Gross National Income per head, according to the Equality Trust.

India must begin to decide as it is at the helm of making change whether economic growth will be given utmost importance at the cost of the other two pillars of development, mainly the society and the environment. After all, India has shown its thirst for change with its recent election of Prime Minister Modi combined with a demographic which includes a lot of people entering the workforce, who are now increasingly aware of how changes can be made to benefit them.