134
V. R. Vargas et al.
structure in their disciplinary separation and hierarchical organisation by faculties,
departments, courses and management. Hence the popular view that academia is far
removed from the ‘real world’, but it doesn’t have to be this way:
Accordingly, systems thinking does not concentrate on basic building-blocks but rather on
basic principles of organisation. Systems thinking is ‘contextual’, which is the opposite of
analytical thinking. Analysis means taking something apart in order to understand it; systems
thinking means putting it into the context of a larger whole.’ (Capra 1996: 29)
Perhaps, HEI engagement with a truly integrated stakeholder network could
provide the necessary meta-function to unify the units within universities, to become
whole systems—similar in structure to multi-cellular life forms (ourselves included),
whereby a number of organs, flows and processes operate within a semi-closed
system, far from equilibrium. At a different scale, ecosystems display similar
structural patterns.
The ecosystem concept – defined today as ‘a community of organisms and their physical
environment interacting as an ecological unit’ – shaped all subsequent ecological thinking
and, by its very name, fostered a systems approach to ecology’. (Lincoln et al. Capra 1996:
33)
In addition to asking how may a stakeholder networks support universities to
deliver the SDGs, we may turn the question round to ask how may universities
support other stakeholders in this task? Better still, perhaps we should consider how
they may support each other, as a sustainable living network. Here the word ‘development’ has been deliberately dropped and replaced with ‘living’, as the word development assumes the perpetuation of neoliberal capitalism as a means of addressing the
transformative challenges we face. Many would argue that this assumption renders
SD to be an oxymoron (Haley 2017) and furthermore, to be linked to the social and
environmental crises that have become the climate emergency, species extinction and
ecological collapse (Klein 2018; Kahn 2010; Haley 2020: 4).
Given the dominant neoliberal economic context, therefore, how may HEIs find
stakeholders to support sustainable living beyond development? Climate emergency
declarations (Climate Emergency Declaration 2020) by universities, local government authorities and corporations have in many cases become a double-bind for
these institutions (Haley 2017), as their good intentions to support the SDGs are
compromised by a political-economic culture that compromises and confounds the
situation (Meadows 1999). Indeed, some corporations, national and international
bodies that are unable to break the western paradigm, maintain that ‘sustainable
growth’ (Inc.) is the only solution, while others like BP (BP 2020a; Storrow 2020)
make unbelievable and unsubstantiated claims to relinquish their carbon industrial
interests. The cynicism of such powerful potential stakeholders, the financiers of the
majority of UK research funding (BP 2020b), makes things very difficult for universities and other educational institutions (including schools, academies, FE colleges
and research centres) to shift from unsustainable networks to sustainable networks.
From a university perspective, much Environmental Education has already been
appropriated, as Richard Kahn puts it;
V. R. Vargas et al.
structure in their disciplinary separation and hierarchical organisation by faculties,
departments, courses and management. Hence the popular view that academia is far
removed from the ‘real world’, but it doesn’t have to be this way:
Accordingly, systems thinking does not concentrate on basic building-blocks but rather on
basic principles of organisation. Systems thinking is ‘contextual’, which is the opposite of
analytical thinking. Analysis means taking something apart in order to understand it; systems
thinking means putting it into the context of a larger whole.’ (Capra 1996: 29)
Perhaps, HEI engagement with a truly integrated stakeholder network could
provide the necessary meta-function to unify the units within universities, to become
whole systems—similar in structure to multi-cellular life forms (ourselves included),
whereby a number of organs, flows and processes operate within a semi-closed
system, far from equilibrium. At a different scale, ecosystems display similar
structural patterns.
The ecosystem concept – defined today as ‘a community of organisms and their physical
environment interacting as an ecological unit’ – shaped all subsequent ecological thinking
and, by its very name, fostered a systems approach to ecology’. (Lincoln et al. Capra 1996:
33)
In addition to asking how may a stakeholder networks support universities to
deliver the SDGs, we may turn the question round to ask how may universities
support other stakeholders in this task? Better still, perhaps we should consider how
they may support each other, as a sustainable living network. Here the word ‘development’ has been deliberately dropped and replaced with ‘living’, as the word development assumes the perpetuation of neoliberal capitalism as a means of addressing the
transformative challenges we face. Many would argue that this assumption renders
SD to be an oxymoron (Haley 2017) and furthermore, to be linked to the social and
environmental crises that have become the climate emergency, species extinction and
ecological collapse (Klein 2018; Kahn 2010; Haley 2020: 4).
Given the dominant neoliberal economic context, therefore, how may HEIs find
stakeholders to support sustainable living beyond development? Climate emergency
declarations (Climate Emergency Declaration 2020) by universities, local government authorities and corporations have in many cases become a double-bind for
these institutions (Haley 2017), as their good intentions to support the SDGs are
compromised by a political-economic culture that compromises and confounds the
situation (Meadows 1999). Indeed, some corporations, national and international
bodies that are unable to break the western paradigm, maintain that ‘sustainable
growth’ (Inc.) is the only solution, while others like BP (BP 2020a; Storrow 2020)
make unbelievable and unsubstantiated claims to relinquish their carbon industrial
interests. The cynicism of such powerful potential stakeholders, the financiers of the
majority of UK research funding (BP 2020b), makes things very difficult for universities and other educational institutions (including schools, academies, FE colleges
and research centres) to shift from unsustainable networks to sustainable networks.
From a university perspective, much Environmental Education has already been
appropriated, as Richard Kahn puts it;