Lifelong learning as a lever for sustainable development at the regional level: the case of the island of Rhodes

It is clear that during the last decades developed societies are in a dead-end, blocked by material prosperity and an endless consumerism on the one hand and the huge and perhaps irreversible ecological disasters on the other. Human vanity, together with the huge economic interests that determine development, continues unabated its destructive work, disorienting public opinion, while misinforming societies about the actual risks they take with their behaviors. World conferences on the environment essentially fail to meet their targets, mainly because of the reluctance of powerful "actors" to set limits to the rate of growth, adopt rational management of natural resources and decrease polluting sources.Faced with this ecological-economic dead-end, the modern active man has made attempts to find links between rational development and ecology. These attempts resulted in the theoretical definition of the principles of “sustainability”, "sustainable development" or “long-term viable development”, and in the formation of sustainable development models based on philosophical ethics of intergenerational justice. The basic promise of such models are to allow development without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.For these models to be successful, two prerequisites are necessary: the first concerns the political will of governments to choose their developmental orientation in harmonization with the principles of sustainability; the second refers to the people’s adoption of such principles in their lifestyle. The degree of citizens’ readiness and commitment to such a harmonization between development and ecology is related to education, and more specifically to an educational strategy that is specified into effective learning processes, programs and activities. Given the present needs, such processes should be able to support all the people, irrespective of age and socio-economic background. In other words, as with other issues, the harmonization of development and ecology relies heavily not only in formal education but on educational processes and activities that come under the umbrella of lifelong education. By educating people of any age and societal group through lifelong educational processes, by providing information in connection with appropriate stimuli, by finding attractive ways to increase awareness about the impacts of irrationally high rates of development on the environment, there is an increase in the probability of changing attitudes and behaviors about the environment. If this happens, then it becomes more feasible to shift towards softer development models and make sustainable development a well accepted target. Given the above, this work aims to study how lifelong learning affects the adoption of the principles of sustainable development, to what extent this is done with the existing lifelong learning institutions that are specialized in environmental education and what is the effectiveness of some of the instruments and approaches that are applied for this purpose. For meeting these targets, the present work is divided into two main parts, a theoretical and an empirical. The theoretical part examines the present state of art with respect to the basic principles of lifelong learning in general and more specifically of lifelong learning about/for the environment and sustainable development. This part examines as major axes: the “supply side” related to the institutions that undertake the responsibility of educating in a non formal way about the environment and sustainable development; the “demand side” concerning the need for such education and the usual methods and instruments that are available for such educational processes. The theoretical part results in some “open questions”: At the supply side, there are institutions that deal with this issue, but the variety of them makes difficult any general conclusion about their appropriateness. At the demand side, the need for lifelong learning programs depends on many factors and differs according to the specific characteristics of each society. Finally, there is no consensus with respect to the effectiveness of the tools and methods of lifelong learning if these are applied to different groups of people. The “open questions” have been transformed into research questions that are investigated empirically in the second part of this work. Specifically once the contribution of lifelong learning to the promotion of sustainable development is theoretically established, the empirical part is designed along three research unities. The first examines the bodies and institutions of lifelong education that specialize in education for the environment and sustainability. The second explores the need to promote sustainable development through lifelong learning programs. The third examines in a comparative way the effectiveness of specific lifelong learning programs for both adults and adolescents. In order to investigate the above, four research projects were implemented.The first was conducted on a national level aiming to monitor the organizations and institutions that are activated in the direction of raising awareness and educating the public about issues related to the environment.The second helped to define the adults’ needs for lifelong learning about issues concerning the environment and sustainable development. An effort was made to determine the level of environmental knowledge, attitudes, perceptions and habits of the adult population of the island of Rhodes in order to assess the need for the implementation of such programs to adults. The third and fourth research unities aimed at measuring the effectiveness of Environmental Education programs in adults. For this purpose two experimental research programs were designed and implemented focusing on producers’ practices and consumers’ habits within the context of environmental crisis. The first program was applied to a group of 20 young people so as to study how young people are involved in non-formal educational processes. The second was applied in a group of 15 adults with a view to proposing variations - improvements in the way of designing and implementing programs of environmental education in these age groups.A key criterion in the selection of the subject of these two programs (entitled "Educational approach to sustainable production and consumption patterns") was the attempt to demonstrate the existence of actual ways to reconcile economy and ecology through sustainable methods of production and consumption. The basic conclusions derived from this work is that in Greece there are many institutions that are active in the field of education for the environment and sustainable development. In spite of this, there seems that people’s awareness and knowledge about the impact of development on the environment is not as extensive as it should be. As derived from the investigation of the adults’ attitudes, the citizens feel this inadequacy and believe that lifelong learning opportunities should be given to them. These opportunities should be given in the form of programs. As derived from the comparative research in two age groups, programs for young people with the right adjustments could become appropriate for adults. The whole work results in a general proposition: There should be a decentralized institution that will undertake the entire effort for the promotion of education for the environment and sustainable development as part of the local agenda 21. This new innovative local environmental structure should have the mission of planning and implementing holistically environmental policy at a local level. It will be an Environmental Center that will “borrow” the philosophy and some of the processes and activities of various environmental structures, mixing them with two strong "competitive" advantages: that of locality and that of active participation of those citizens who are willing to have a voice in matters related to the development of their region