Professor Paul Clarke,
Cambridge Education, St Mary's University College, &
Cambridge Education/Mott MacDonald, London, England

Cultivating a Future? Growing Sustainable Communities

3.3 billion people live in urban environments, by 2030 this is estimated to increase to 5 billion of a global population predicted to peak at around 9 billion. The dominant narrative of the modern urban world that forms many of the conditions in these urban spaces has emerged from the industrial era. Industrialisation has shaped our economies, our societies and our cultures, and its language of improvement and effectiveness largely determine how we collectively think and act. Simultaneously we are witnessing an unprecedented collapse in our global ecosystem and dysfunction in our existing human systems of education, health, politics, economics, and agriculture. This suggests that the way we relate to our world is outdated, destructive and unsustainable, our solutions are predictable and short term. What happens next?

I will argue that education for ecological literacy is a way of meeting the basic needs to sustain existing life whilst not impeding the possibilities of life for future generations. This is a radical departure from our current industrialised version of education which perpetuates a view of the earth as an infinite resource to be plundered in the name of managed progress. Instead, it focuses on three fields of activity, permaculture, biomimicry and cradle-to-cradle design, each demonstrate the way that natural systems thinking can inform and guide sustainable choices. We urgently need education with the Earth in mind, demonstrated through human activity that is ecologically sustainable. In Cultivating a Future I explore how this might just happen.