Sequestered Sustainability

Mainstream economics may drive environmental problems, but excluding it from study closes down transformative opportunities

This post on Sustainability Dispatch was written by Tommaso Mondovi, a student of the Environment and Society Studies Master at Radboud University.

Though education in sustainability is extremely relevant, especially in the modern society where we are confronted by much strife, its teaching is characterised by grand challenges. Overwhelmingly, or at least in my experience as a Master student of Environment and Society at Radboud University, the teaching of sustainability is in a bounded setting which prevents from granting an incentive to students for an active academic debate across discording views.  

I believe my study programme is providing me with an abundance of tools to understand sustainability in the broader sense, to unravel its plethora of meanings and definitions and to recognise its challenges and implications in relation to today’s society. I feel empowered when I realise I am part of a study program with like-minded study peers and professors, whose intention is to contribute, in one way or the other, to the great causes of environmental justice, social inequality and climate change, amongst others. I feel empowered because I know that academia and research can have an impact on policy making, which, thereafter, can shape societal behaviour in the broader sense and possibly provide solutions to current challenges. I feel empowered because I do not only believe that this study will provide me with the instruments to make a difference in my professional career at a later stage in life, but because I believe I am contributing to change already now, by learning , writing and raising awareness on sustainability-relevant themes. These sources of empowerment ought not to be taken for granted.

Oftentimes, university students from all disciplines reflect upon their studies stating that “the studies do not mirror what is taking place in the real world” or that they “lack to see their practical application.” In most courses of my master’s programme, I see how the issues we deal with are directly linked to the problems our society faces. We critically think about the role of the government in driving change, of NGOs supporting this transition and businesses often seen as a competitive force that lobbies against change. We also see what ought to be our role as citizens, consumers and, ultimately, students of Environment and Society, and how our actions and purchases might have an influence on shaping demand and the market in the long run. This connection to the problems I care about is one of the great virtues of teaching sustainability issues.

One of the challenges I do recognise within my study programme of Environment and Society, and possibly more generally within academia, is the lack of transdisciplinarity. We are being taught sustainability in a setting where all students are striving for change and for a more sustainable society. Professors and students seldom have contrasting views on how problems need to be addressed and solved and tend to work with a similar or overlapping set of theoretical postulates.

For example, in my sustainability programming there appears to be a general consensus on the role that economics should play in the broader political context of policy making. We often talk about pluralism in education and that study programmes in economics and political sciences can benefit from further sustainability embeddedness. But in the case of the powerful force of economics, the solution has been to exclude it from sustainability instruction, rather than incorporate it. My sense is that economics is neglected or overlooked in sustainability education because of a contradicting nature of the economic and financial system with ecological preservation and human rights consideration. In mainstream economics, the terms which are best fitting the studies are often related to “growth”, “utility and capital maximization” and “profits”, which fail to go hand in hand with sustainability conceptions more often addressing decline in production and hence consumption as well as fair wages and working conditions to all workers across the supply chain of a certain produce. The lack of consistency between these themes sees, in my view, a solution in excluding the economics component from the study, to address more directly sustainability issues in terms of governance and policy-making.

I argue that sustainability programs could also benefit from pluralism. Being taught about markets and economics and on how we have gotten to a merely global system where neoclassical views dominate the economy can also grant us with further understanding of underlying societal issues and more feasible solutions to have these issues addressed. Also, learning in a transdisciplinary setting, with cross-faculty students can incentivise an active debate, where conflicting interests can come to the surface and stimulate dynamic discussions.

Out of seven courses attended throughout my master’s, only one course benefitted from some extent of transdisciplinarity, meaning that it was a mandatory course for the student within my specialisation and an elective for students of Organisational Development, which is a more business-oriented study. In this partially transdisciplinary setting, I was astonished by the number of interesting debates that emerged in the classroom amongst which the role of economics and businesses in constituting part of the change rather than being seen as the enemies hindering a transition toward sustainability.

I suggest that one way in which university institutions can achieve further transdisciplinarity in education is constituted by including one or multiple courses (e.g. Rethinking Sustainable Economies) in both curricula of sustainability and economics which are mandatory for students of both disciplines. In these courses groups of students from distinct disciplinary backgrounds come in contact with one another. By means of working groups, students ought to be encouraged to actively debate and discuss their viewpoints on the content from the frontal lectures. Potentially they may be asked to work together in the writing of a group essay or research paper where one of the requisites for group composition is that the group members belong to different studies.

An alternative approach I suggest concerns lecture themes. Courses across different faculties are scrutinized individually, and wherever themes across different disciplines and courses are overlapping, these are handled in a lecture room with students from a multiplicity of faculties. While this alternative may cause logistical complications in large bachelor’s courses, at a master’s level, where classes are usually constituted by few students only, this could be achieved rather simply.

Encouraging further integration amongst group and hence transdisciplinarity would be of use not only to sustainability students who are used to discussing solutions alongside likeminded people but also to students of other disciplines (including economics) where, in some instances, they can benefit from further exposure to sustainability-relevant matters. This exposure may result into developing further sensitivity toward social and environmental themes. As a matter of fact, while young students may receive a message relevant to sustainability in a different way should it be conveyed by a lecturer/adult rather than other study peers.

While I am truly content with the choice of my master’s program which is constantly challenging me with new perspectives to look at the world and at our modern society, I do recognise there are problems which the study suffers from. I worry that the lack of transdisciplinarity within this specific educational program is only providing students with particularly sustainably-driven mindsets to act on a shift towards sustainability, rather than involving also those who are usually placed outside of this discourse or who may have contrasting views on the solutions we propose in our studies, but who, ultimately, may end up in powerful positions and constitute a resisting force against a shift toward sustainability.

Tommaso Mondovi can be reached at tommaso.mondovi@ru.nl