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← Sustainable Development

What Sustainability Means to You

Students set down what they already think sustainability means, meet the definition the world actually uses, and then test what it implies about meeting people's basic needs now and later.

How it is taught

Put students into pairs or small groups. Project the Defining Sustainability slides.

What you need

  • Per group:
  • A small whiteboard
  • Markers
  • A whiteboard and markers at the front of the room
  • Projector and computer
  • The Defining Sustainability slides

What it is for

  • Students will be able to:
  • Define sustainability: meeting the needs of the present without spending what the future will need.
  • Describe the future they want, and set out a plan for getting there.

The manual states these. What it does not state is not here.

The manual leaves this session untitled. The name is ours, taken from what the session says it is for; everything below is the manual's.

How it runs

The teaching sequence as the manual gives it.

  1. 01

    Step one. Get them onto the subject.

  2. 02

    Ask what sustainability means. Let them answer from whatever they already have — words, ideas, actions, anything the word brings up.

  3. 03

    Give them quiet time to write their first thoughts in their notebooks. Then ask them to say them aloud, and write the key words on the board as they come.

  4. 04

    Mark the words that come up more than once — circle them, star them, join them with arrows. If the class is new to the idea, spend a few minutes brainstorming more.

  5. 05

    Photograph the board. You will want it again at the end of the unit, to show them how far they moved.

  6. 06

    Expect them to talk only about the environment. That is normal, and it is not a mistake to correct.

  7. 07

    The unit is going somewhere wider than that — environment, people and money, all held together — and the next step does the correcting for you.

  8. 08

    Step two. Let them work it out.

  9. 09

    Give them the definition: sustainability means meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Tell them this is the definition most of the world uses, and that the lesson is going to test it. Then ask: what are people's basic needs?

  10. 10

    Do all people need the same things?

  11. 11

    Will someone born long after you have gone need what you need today?

  12. 12

    (This is the Defining Sustainability slide.)

  13. 13

    Let them think alone first. Then in pairs, writing the answer on the small whiteboard. Then one from each pair presents to the class. If there is time, open it to everyone.

  14. 14

    Explain that most basic needs fall into three groups: environment, society, economy. Ask them to sort the needs they listed into the three, and to notice the ones that sit in more than one.

  15. 15

    These three are what sustainability stands on, and it stands on all three at once — because sustainability means getting our basic needs met, and our basic needs sit in all three.

  16. 16

    Now run the same exercise on time rather than category:

  17. 17

    How can what we do now change what is possible later?

  18. 18

    Give one example of something you could do today that makes the future better.

  19. 19

    Step three. Let them say it back.

  20. 20

    Ask the question on the slide: what do you want your future to look like? Give them a few minutes, then take answers and write them up. Does the future they described meet their own basic needs? Which answers belong to the environment, which to society, which to the economy?

  21. 21

    Step four. Move it somewhere new. The slide shows a vacant plot in bad condition — the kind at the end of most streets, half rubble and half rubbish. Ask how it compares with the future they just described. Then set the groups this: how would you change this plot to get closer to that future? Each group works out:

  22. 22

    Who will use this space, and when?

  23. 23

    How does it serve what this neighbourhood needs now, and what it will need long after?

  24. 24

    What does it do for the environment, for the people here, and for anybody's income? Let them draw the plan on their whiteboards. Every plan has to answer all three. Then each group presents.

  25. 25

    Step five. Assess. Mark them on how they took part.

Talking about it

Discussion points, worked examples and the handouts the manual prints with this session.

More from the manual

Background for the teacher. Ask most people what sustainability means and they will say something about the environment — conserving resources, cutting waste, less pollution. None of that is wrong. It is just not the whole of it.

This lesson gives students the Brundtland definition. It comes from a report to the United Nations called Our Common Future, written by a commission chaired by Gro Harlem Brundtland, which said that development is sustainable when it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. That one sentence is still the working definition almost everywhere. Out of it came the habit of judging any decision against three things at once — environment, society and economy.

Ending it

How the manual closes this session, and where it can go next.

If it goes well

Groups can turn the plot into a real plan of action, working backwards from what they want it to become. It should answer:

  • Who benefits?
  • What does it need — money, material, permission, people?
  • What could go wrong that nobody intended? Will it need watering every week? Will it block a lane?
  • What are the steps, in order, starting on Monday?

Where this comes from

Bridge the Gap is a compilation. This is what the manual records for this session.

The manual prints no source for this session. It is published here as Swechha has used it, adapted over years of classroom work; if you recognise its origin, tell us and we will credit it.

Before you start sets out where the compendium as a whole comes from.

Next

Where to go from here.

Next session

Drain or SustainSustainable Development, 7 of 11

The theme

Sustainable Development11 sessions and the background reading

All eight themes

Teach43 sessions across 8 themes

Understand the data

The whole library · the A to Z