By Jeppe Læss에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트e, associate professor (jepl@dpu.dk)

Seen from abroad, the Danish contribution to an environmentally sustainable development is probably associated with Bj에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트rn Lomborg, who uses cost-benefit analyses to support his argument that we should tone down the efforts to preserve the environment. In spite of Bj에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트rn Lomborg's best efforts, the environment, and global warning in particular, has reached the top of the international agenda in recent months. Concern about the environment is on the rise, not least in Denmark, where the general population calls for increased political attention to the emerging climatic problems, as documented in research from Ugebrevet A4 and Zapera & Mandag Morgen.

How can the population's increasing interest in environmental issues be turned into increased popular commitment and participation in environmental work? To answer this question, we may turn to a pedagogical reflection based on another Danish contribution to the global ecological movement quite different from Bj에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트rn Lomborg's work. It is the result of several years' worth of environmental work initiated by, in turn, grass-roots and government organisations.

The vision of citizenship education
When, in 1987, the United Nations published a report called 'Our Common Future' (aka 'The Brundtland Report'), a number of projects were launched to change the role the general population plays in environmental issues. From being concerned spectators to the experts' media-born in-fights, the citizenry were to become active participants. Unfortunately the Danish efforts to meet this objective have proven to be quite difficult.

In fact the thought of citizenship participation was not new to the Danish environment organisations that had grown out of the youth movement in the late 1960s. During the 1970s, the movement organised local grass-root organisations throughout the country with the aim to establish a general opposition to destruction of the environment. In the beginning, the only real strategy was to use actual cases to exemplify the problems, to generate both a reflection on values and political education. This was all in the tradition of Danish citizenship education, which is rooted in the origins of modern Danish democracy, which was introduced in the mid-nineteenth century. The fundamental notion was to facilitate reflection on values among the 'common people' with the aim that people should learn to choose an active and responsible course of action in the face of societal challenges. The practical implementation took place in rural districts with the establishment of folk high schools, and in urban areas through night schools.

The environmental movement, however, exchanged the teaching-based citizenship education with an organisation of social and political learning processes in local grass-root organisations. Their values were gradually replaced by a focus on achieving success in the specific cases, and with the gradual professionalisation of the whole environmental discussion, the grass-root organisations' role as citizenship educators gradually petered out in the 1980s. Read more in Læss에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트e & Jamison, 1990.

Following the publication of the UN's Brundtland report mentioned above, the Danish government attempted repeatedly to spark a popular commitment to the environmental cause in a 'top-down' approach. The effort was based on a desire to revitalise the tradition for citizenship education, but in a contemporary form. Like the environmental efforts in the 1970s, citizens were included through informal local learning processes. This time, however, not in the shape of protest groups, but as a consensus-oriented effort. Through a series of publicly funded experiments and schemes, local initiatives could be established to promote action towards specific environmental improvements in the local area and to disseminate information about the efforts in the local community. By and large, these programs resemble the UN's Agenda 21.

Efforts stagnate
The question is whether this citizenship education-approach, which was launched in 1989 and closed down when government changed in 2001, actually succeeded in inspiring the population and to qualify the general population to make informed choices about sustainable development? Research projects and evaluations throughout the entire period have shown that in the most dynamic local areas in particular, the program inspired the local community to engage in projects that typically involved cutting down on resource consumption, increase the consumption of ecological foods, nature restoration projects and the like. The public funding meant that projects that would otherwise have been aborted could be carried out.

The idea was that the experience of being able to make a difference and the synergy in collaborating with other people should feed a continued commitment, and thereby a continuation of the projects and gradual inclusion of more and more citizens. Although a fair number of people were eventually involved, the program never really achieved critical mass. Instead, the process dwindled down in the late 1990s. A number of reasons can be presented for why the attempt to include citizens in local projects failed. From a social learning-perspective, I would argue that the approach itself was problematic in a number of ways:

• The debate about sustainability includes a number of dilemmas, conflicts between individual interests and the ethical requirements imposed by sustainability, between the local citizens' interests and those of the local administration, between the municipality and the outside world, between hi- and low-tech solutions, between economy and ecology and between social objectives and sustainability. Unfortunately, these tensions were ignored rather than addressed in a constructive and enlightening process. The principle of consensus-based collaboration was joined up with the principle of practical action. As a consequence, structural barriers, conflicts between various players and the dilemmas that the citizens themselves bring to the process are circumvented rather than addressed, discussed and (if possible) solved. The focus on citizens taking action and learning for themselves comprises a pedagogical potential, particularly when compared to a mechanical publication of information by experts. However, this can become problematic if and when 에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트“ as it actually happened 에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트“ the focus on action becomes an alternative to an open discussion.
• The principle of local organisation led to a focus on local solutions, but most environmental problems tie in with structures that transcend the local. The emphasis on the local meant that the global perspective was lost. There were no mechanisms in place to ensure that the interplay between local action and global consequences, or between global processes and local opportunities, were carefully considered.
• The open nature of the concept led to a laissez-faire approach. The projects were designed and carried out by the participants. The weakness of this approach is that the process did not inherently challenge them to consider or transcend their own subjective capabilities, their view of the project, their dilemmas concerning values and mores and so on. The citizens and those who worked to activate the citizens merely reproduced the then dominant discourse, in which sustainable development was considered an ecological modernisation including a win-win relationship between economy and ecology. The option to solve any problems as a consensus-based collaboration became a framework that no one questioned or challenged. (Læss에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트e 2007a)

Mediators as key actors
The attempt to include the citizens has, however, continued in a few of the larger and most dynamic Danish municipalities. In these municipalities, they still have employees whose task it is to ensure that citizens become involved in sustainable development, but we have also observed that some municipalities have hired consultants to set up citizens' participation in specific projects. We have a development, then, from NGOs, over public servants to private enterprises that have organised the citizens' participation in sustainable development. Mediators working for local municipalities may, for instance, work in 'local Agenda 21'-centres in various neighbourhoods, where they continuously work to enhance awareness about sustainable development and support local initiatives. The commercial mediators typically arrange or facilitate workshops where citizens can develop questions for politicians.

In my current research, I examine these professional mediators closely; these are people that bring the cause to the people and the people to the cause, so to speak. They play a key role as interpreters of sustainable development, as initiators of activities, as networkers between actors and as facilitators of the dialogue between them. This mediation is not in itself a new thing, but in the course of the 1990s, the mediators became autonomous actors that are neither a part of the citizenry or the public authorities. They are an independent third party, whose task it is to mediate between the other actors and to facilitate developmental and learning processes.

Regardless of how the roles are distributed, one common problem is that mediators, historically speaking, have not been trained to engage in didactical reflection. This could, for instance be issues such as:

• What is the aim with having citizens take part in sustainable development? The interpretation can vary widely, which may lead to populist, radical ecologist, functionalistic/adaptive or culturally critical approaches. (Læss에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트e 1995)
• What is the content and the nature of the issues? This may have a profound impact on whether the learning becomes focused on the environment, techniques, ethics, global relations, economical growth or something else entirely.
• What are the participants' preconditions for taking active part in various projects? It may be key to understand the various target groups' culture, ambiguities, experiences, resources and structural conditions.
• What socio-cultural dynamics and what historical process characterise the field? The organisation of the learning has to navigate the contextual conditions, which is to say recognise and work with these dynamics and processes rather than neglect them in order to only work from ideal, abstract notions.

The planning of the citizens' participation should be based on reflections of the above, but typically they are limited to the merely methodical/technical, e.g. what particular kind of workshop to make use of. Obviously the professional mediators need a range of tools, but the ability to wield a hammer is not enough in itself if you don't know what you are building and what part you play in the construction. This means you could easily repeat the mistakes that caused the attempts to engage the general population in the 1990s to fail.

Based on my research, I have identified four dilemmas that mediators must know about and incorporate into the didactical planning of their work. The four dilemmas are: The dilemma of autonomy versus control, between the local and the global, between an environmental focus and a socio-cultural approach, and between intimacy and distance (which has to do with mediators relations to the participants as well as to the cause). To describe the four in detail goes beyond the scope of this article, but one such description is available in an article which is currently in print (see Læss에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트e 2007b).

That we are dealing with dilemmas means that there is not one single correct answer, but that the mediator continuously has to determine how to best deal with a certain issue. Local projects, for example, can activate people and give visible results without any of the project's consequences (or its relevance) are considered in a global perspective, simply because none of the local actors assume responsibility for the global angle that typically increases the complexity by an order of magnitude. On the other hand, the mediator may choose to document the global threats to the environment, but the audience is often left apathetic and uncaring by such an abstract perspective. The solution could be to establish relations that go beyond the borders of the municipality to other regions of the world, relations that might give rise to processes and an increased awareness about the interplay between the local and the global.

UNESCO has made 2005-2014 the Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). This was done in recognition of the fact that Citizen Education is a key prerequisite for a sustainable development. As with all other education, however, this calls for high-quality training of the educators.

About Jeppe Læss에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트e
Jeppe Læss에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트e is associate professor at the Department of Curriculum Research at The Danish University of Education, where he is affiliated with the research program on Environmental and Health Education. His primary research interests include environmental education, empowerment and the facilitation of participatory change and learning processes.

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Sources

• Læss에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트e, J.(2007a): Participation and Sustainable Development: The post-ecologist transformation of citizen involvement in Denmark, pp. 231-250 in Blühdorn, I. & I. Welsh (eds): The Politics of Unsustainability - Eco-politics in the Post-Ecologist Era, Special Issue of Journal of Environmental Politics, Vol. 16, No 2.
• Læss에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트e, J. (2007b): Participation and sustainable development: The role and challenges of mediating agents, in Reid, A., Jensen, B.B., Nikel, J. & Simovska, V. (eds) (2007): Participation and learning: perspectives on education and the environment, health and sustainability. Dordrecht, Springer.
• Læss에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트e, J. (1995). Borgerinddragelse: Mellem Ã¥benhed og styring (citizen involvement: Between populism and paternalism). In P. Lübcke (Ed.), Milj에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트et, markedet og velfærdsstaten. K에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트benhavn: Fremad.
• Læss에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트e, J., & Jamison, A. (1990). The making of the new environmentalism in denmark. In A. E. Jamison, R., Cramer, J. (Ed.), The making of the new environmental consciousness. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
• Ugebrevet A4. (2006). Frit valg pÃ¥ de politiske hylder (No. 28). K에볼루션 카지노 웹사이트benhavn: Ugebrevet A4.
• Zapera, & Mandag Morgen. (2005). Trygghetsrapport 2005 - en analyse av nordmenns trygghet og utrygghet (No. 2005:1). Oslo: Mandag Morgen.

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