ESD and the Current Crisis of Capitalism Teaching Beyond Green New Deals

ism, education for sustainable development At a time when the global capitalist economy is in crisis, UNESCO’s Bonn Declaration ignores economic and political realities. I argue here for a more critical form of education for sustainable development (ESD) linked to global citizenship education. I do so by reference to the limitations of the ‘green new deals ’ being carried out as part of fi scal stimulus packages, the alternatives proposed by ecosocialists, and the partly confl icting and partly complementary nature of forms of critical ESD based in social and cultural theory. In late March/early April 2009, 700 participants met in Bonn at the UNESCO World Conference on ESD to carry out a stocktaking of the implementation of the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development and develop strategies for the way ahead (See Journal of Education for Sustainable Development [JESD] 2009, multiple articles). At the same time, leaders of the world’s richest countries met at the G20 summit in London to agree on a package of measures designed to inject new resources into a moribund global economy and clean up fi nancial markets. The sum-mit brought anti-capitalist protestors onto the streets to draw attention to the latest crises of capitalism (the credit crunch of 2007, the fi nancial crash of 2008 and the recession of 2009) and the need to radically reshape the global political economy so that more sustainable forms of development can be realised. John Huckle is an ESD consultant and visiting fellow at the University of York, United Kingdom