Klammer: Using knowledge to avoid future crises

Member of the Council calls for investments in sustainability education

Berlin, 31 March 2009 Ute Klammer, a member of the German Council for Sustainable Development and Deputy Chancellor of the University of Duisburg-Essen for Diversity Management, has called on the German government and the state governments to redirect the course of educational policy: "If we want to avoid crises, we have to convey knowledge to young people about the long-term consequences of their actions," says Klammer. "Children learn too little in school about consumption with a low impact on natural resources and living a sustainable lifestyle. They don't learn to think intergenerationally."

On the occasion of the UNESCO World Conference on Education for Sustainable Development, from March 31 to April 1 in Bonn, she is calling for funds from the current economic stimulus package to be invested in a sustainability-oriented reform of education in schools, universities and vocational training institutions. "It is not enough to renew schools by merely renovating and supplying them with new equipment," says Klammer. "We also have to adapt learning contents and teacher training to future global requirements."

According to Klammer, a sustainability-oriented education can significantly contribute to avoiding disastrous trends like the current financial and economic crisis. She says that other global problems such as climate change and over-exploitation of natural resources are largely the result of short-term thinking and education that is out of step with today's needs.

Klammer is calling on politicians, the business community and the general public to take German Minister of Education and Research, Annette Schavan, by her word and demand a discernible, sustainability-oriented improvement in the German educational system. In her welcoming address to the current UNESCO World Conference, Schavan called education "the key to sustainable development" and said that it played a major role in building a future with a high quality of life and developing a sustainable society.

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