Values-based Transformative Learning International Environment Forum
The broken relationship between humans and nature, despite a half-century of scientific research and valid efforts, is leading to existential crises. Most solutions, like the Sustainable Development Goals, largely address the material side of human development. Yet scientific knowledge has proven insufficient to motivate the fundamental transformation in society called for by the Club of Rome and Earth4All.
Powerful interests continue to block the necessary changes in the economic system and institutions of governance towards a just and sustainable world society in all its diversity.
Humanity has a potential far beyond our material existence, often called moral, ethical or spiritual, and featured in all faith traditions and
Indigenous worldviews. Beyond the science, transformative learning needs to focus on cultivating the higher human values of cooperation,
solidarity, moderation, humility, self-sacrifice and service, and empowering their expression across the wonderful diversity of the human
family, to motivate the necessary transformation in our families, communities, institutions and global society. Donella Meadows herself laid out the importance of new paradigms and values as leverage points for systems transformation.
The central purpose of the International Environment Forum (IEF) since its founding nearly 30 years ago has been to provide its membership, partners and the wider public with a deeper understanding of the science behind climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution and all the other challenges to the Earth System and human wellbeing, as well as a systemic perspective on their underlying causes in our economic system, social organisation, institutions and governance. Systemic change must start with a new paradigm of a higher human purpose founded in justice and equity, enabling all to refine their character and to contribute to advancing civilisation.
The IEF, as a Bahá’í-inspired professional organisation, has developed and partnered in educational approaches and learning materials
that combine the scientific realities of the challenges facing the Earth System and its dominant human species in the Anthropocene, with the
ethics and values required to accept the unity of the human family and the necessary solidarity in justice and equity, and thus to motivate
transformation in individual behaviour, community cooperation and collective action. Its website (https://iefworld.org/learning
available a wide variety of materials for transformative learning for sustainability and environmental responsibility. It also draws on the
wider experience of the Bahá’í community with spiritual transformation, community discourse and social action that has already
demonstrated its effectiveness in a multitude of cultural contexts around the world. The innovations explored combine science and values to
heal our relationship with nature, to draw on interfaith approaches across all spiritual traditions and Indigenous worldviews, and to
generate educational materials that can be incorporated in any educational system or used directly by individuals and communities.
The distinctive contribution of the IEF is its combination of science and values as complementary and mutually-reinforcing components of
education (4). The IEF has prepared and shared educational materials in many forms, from simple materials on environmental management for rural village use, and on-line courses, to case studies of effective social action. Inspired by the learning paradigm inherent in the Bahá’í
Faith, and by its openness to other faith traditions and to indigenous worldviews and spiritualities, it aims both to inform on the realities
we are facing, and to motivate change in behaviour, as essential contributors to more hopeful approaches to the future. Its website is its primary resource where these materials are freely available. Its interfaith course on climate change has been used widely (17).
IEF collaborated in an EU-funded programme to develop values-based indicators of education for sustainable development (5,6,7,8,9,10,11),
contributing to the International Partners Network founded by one of its members (https://www.inn.no/english/cc
Its approach is also founded in complex systems science, inspired by the efforts of the Club of Rome since 1972, and many other civil society and academic efforts to lay out the directions toward a better future. The many transformations of the Anthropocene are considered as a whole in their environmental, social and economic dimensions, challenging many of the assumptions about human nature and purpose that underlie the present system.
Our approaches to learning go beyond the present materialistic Interpretation of human purpose and social organisation to enable
diverse explorations of learning in communities rooted in their local realities and diversity, while recognising global responsibility for the
common good of all. That includes our essential dependence on nature and the Earth system in general, and the need to replace the exploitation of natural resources by responsible stewardship. The Sustainable Development Goals are a useful framework for integrated learning, and the IEF has created teaching materials making them relevant to communities, organisations and individuals (12,13,14).
Our materials designed for rural village use and for small island developing states feature indigenous wisdom and traditional knowledge alongside environmental science to reinforce holistic views of humans within nature and to encourage the maintenance or restoration of local traditional resource management practices (1,2,3).
As the dynamics of change accelerate, and the signs of disintegration in existing institutions become more evident, it is necessary to educate
for resilience and solidarity so as to find ways through the transition in the years immediately ahead. This requires responses at multiple
levels, from local communities and national governments to the global level, where the vacuum in effective governance and implementation of agreements is most obvious (15). We are pushing for management of the Earth System to become the fourth pillar of the United Nations (16).
Future learning must adapt to these rapid changes with flexibility and responsiveness, particularly for youth whose aspirations are threatened by anxiety at what they see around them. They need to be a primary target for education that gives hope and that empowers them to take action at whatever level available to them. Learning with a values dimension can help to give meaning and purpose as they devote their lives to service to their fellow human beings and to the natural environment upon which we all depend.
REFERENCES AND LEARNING MATERIALS CITED
1. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 1998. Small Island Environmental Management
Training Course. Prepared for the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional
Environment Programme, originally published on UNEP Islands website,
archived at http://yabaha.net/dahl/islands
2. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2002. Linking Science and Indigenous Knowledge for
Local Environmental Management. Presented at World Summit on Sustainable
Development, Johannesburg, https://iefworld.org/ddahl02b.
3. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2008. Rural Environmental Management: A
do-it-yourself course and training programme. 48 units. International
Environment Forum. https://iefworld.org/rem.htm
4. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2012. Ethical Sustainability Footprint for
Individual Motivation. Paper presented at the Planet Under Pressure
International Scientific Conference, London, 26-29 March 2012.
https://iefworld.org/ddahl12d
5. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2012. Values education for sustainable consumption
and production: from knowledge to action. Paper presented at the Global
Research Forum on Sustainable Consumption and Production, Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, 13-15 June 2012, on the theme: Global and Regional
Research on Sustainable Consumption and Production: Achievements,
Challenges, and Dialogues. Proceedings:
https://grf-spc.weebly.com/rio
1, pp. 1-7.
https://grf-spc.weebly.com/upl
6. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2013. “A Multi-Level Framework and Values-Based
Indicators to Enable Responsible Living”, pp. 63-77. In Ulf Schrader,
Vera Fricke, Declan Doyle and Victoria W. Thoresen (eds), Enabling
Responsible Living, Springer Verlag, Berlin/Heidelberg,
(hardback/eBook). DOI:10.1007/978-3-642-22048-7_
http://yabaha.net/dahl/papers/
7. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2014. “Putting the Individual at the Centre of
Development: Indicators of Well-being for a New Social Contract”.
Chapter 8, pp. 83-103, In François Mancebo and Ignacy Sachs (eds),
Transitions to Sustainability. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI
10.1007/978-94-017-9532-6_8
http://yabaha.net/dahl/papers/
8. Dahl, Arthur Lyon, Marie K. Harder, Marilyn Mehlmann, Kirsi
Niinimaki, Victoria Thoresen, Onno Vinkhuyzen, Dana Vokounova, Gemma
Burford, and Ismael Velasco. 2014. Measuring What Matters: Values-Based
Indicators. A Methods Sourcebook. PERL Values-Based Learning Toolkit 1.
Partnership for Education and Research about Responsible Living (PERL)
Available online: https://iefworld.org/fl/PERL_t
9. Dahl, Arthur Lyon, Marie K. Harder, Marilyn Mehlmann, Kirsi
Niinimaki, Victoria Thoresen, Onno Vinkhuyzen, Dana Vokounova, Gemma
Burford, and Ismael Velasco. 2014. Discovering What Matters: A Journey
of Thinking and Feeling. Activities Developed with Students, for
Students. PERL Values-Based Learning Toolkit 2. Partnership for
Education and Research about Responsible Living (PERL). Available
online: https://iefworld.org/fl/PERL_t
10. Dahl, Arthur Lyon, Marie K. Harder, Marilyn Mehlmann, Kirsi
Niinimaki, Victoria Thoresen, Onno Vinkhuyzen, Dana Vokounova, Gemma
Burford, and Ismael Velasco. 2014. Growing a Shared Vision: A Toolkit
for Schools. Activities for Organisational and Staff Development. PERL
Values-Based Learning Toolkit 3. Partnership for Education and Research
about Responsible Living (PERL). Available online:
https://iefworld.org/fl/PERL_t
11. Burford, Gemma, Elona Hoover, Arthur L. Dahl, and Marie K. Harder.
2015. “Making the Invisible Visible: Designing Values-Based Indicators
and Tools for Identifying and Closing ‘Value-Action Gaps'”, pp.
113-133. In Thoresen, Victoria W., Robert J. Didham, Jorgen Klein and
Declan Doyle (eds), Responsible Living: Concepts, Education and Future
Perspectives. Heidelberg and Switzerland: Springer. DOI
10.1007/978-3-319-15305-6_9
http://yabaha.net/dahl/papers/
12. IEF Toolkit for the Sustainable Development Goals. 2017. Resources
at the community, organization and individual levels.
https://iefworld.org/node/882
13. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2021. Why Education is Key for the Sustainable
Development Goals, essay on Global Governance Forum Website, 19 January
2021,
https://globalgovernanceforum.
14. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2021. For Nature’s Sake: A Moral Compass for the
SDGs. Viewpoints, G20 Interfaith Forum, 19 March 2021.
https://blog.g20interfaith.org
15. Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen, Sylvia and Arthur Lyon Dahl. 2021. Towards a
Global Environment Agency: Effective Governance for Shared Ecological
Risks. A Climate Governance Commission Report. Stockholm: Global
Challenges Foundation. 77 p.
https://iefworld.org/fl/dkarls
16. Dahl, Arthur Lyon. 2024. Towards Effective Multilevel Environmental
and Sustainability Governance for Shared Ecological Risks, chapter 19,
pp. 317-331 in Global Governance and International Cooperation: Managing
Global Catastrophic Risks in the 21st Century, Richard Falk and Augusto
Lopez-Claros (eds), London: Routledge.
https://globalgovernanceforum.
17. Muller, Christine. (frequently updated). Scientific and Spiritual
Dimensions of Climate Change. IEF website
https://iefworld.org/ssdcc0.ht
For the references, see https://iefworld.org/values_le
