Learning, Work and Education for Sustainability

Abstract

<p>The genesis of this chapter is an article in the Journal of Vocational Education and Training (Coll, Taylor, & Nathan, 2003) exploring workplace-based learning as a means of developing Education for Sustainability (EfS). In the 16 years since that publication much has changed, and sadly not for the better. Climate change, which at that time was not perceptibly impacting many people’s lives, is increasingly an immediate reality, with record annual temperatures being recorded almost year on year (Lindsey & Dahlman, 2019), and global climate-related economic losses in 2019 of AU$76 billion (KPMG, 2019, cited in Snape & Ryan, 2019). While individual weather events cannot in themselves be attributed to climate change with any certainty, significant droughts worldwide, an increase in devastating fires (Yu, Xu, Abramson, Li, & Guo, 2020), and an increase in the frequency and severity of hurricanes reflect the trend that the climate is changing, and are consistent with longstanding IPCC predictions (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2014). Key messages from the latest Global Environment Outlook (GEO6) (UN Environment Programme, 2019) record a grim picture of the unprecedented rate of deterioration of the global environment. The extensively documented problems in addition to climate change include: worldwide loss of biodiversity, such as the global collapse of insect populations, many of which are vital in providing ecological services such as pollination (Carrington, 2019), increasing air pollution, and degradation of land and freshwater resources including plastic pollution of the oceans (see also, Hayward, 2018).</p>