On higher education.

For the global climate strike day on Friday 20 September at Sheffield University our branch of the Universities and Colleges Union (UCU) organised a lunch time gathering at the centre of our university at the front of the Students Union. I was there with my daughter, some colleagues and friends and we heard various speakers address the rally, before marching to join the larger city wide protest for most of the afternoon in Sheffield City centre.

I was gratified to see that our Vice Chancellor (University President) Professior Koen Lamberts responded and addressed the protest gathering directly from the makeshift stage, committing our university to placing action against environmental breakdown at the centre of everything we do at our university, and to using our amazing research and educational resources to do so. This includes making sure that every degree programme and module connects the subjects of study to issues of sustainability. Indeed, the VC generously gave staff time to attend the rally without any punitive action and endorsed the sentiments of the rally by attending himself.

This is what we are doing at our university to change our ways of thinking and behaviours. Our Vice Chancellor is completely in agreement and is leading change, even as people lower down do their little bit too. It's not nearly enough, for sure, but it is not correct to assume that nothing is going on in our own back yards to change our worlds even as we comment on Japan. Indeed, I would like to ask when a University President in Japan addressed a climate strike on university property among staff and students in any similar way.

More to the point, environmental breakdown is the most serious issue facing humanity, and it is not an issue that should be reduced to a country level approach. Indeed, the issues are truly global. Nature pays no attention to human diplomatic borders, and in addressing these issues we should take a truly global and nature-centred approach.

Indeed, we are now talking in the UK about decolonisation of the curriculum. Although I support the progress being made here, especially given the UK's terrible history of imperialism, I am a bit puzzled by this concept because from all that I have read on the issue, it is still human-centred and makes bare mention of nature and the other species of life that inhabit the Earth. It still prioritises human colonisation of the Earth at the expense of the rights and survivability of other species. By definition it therefore is no decolonisation. If ever there was a case for decolonisation it would be for placing humans alongside other species on an equal basis in terms of our various emphases in research and education.

We have a very very very long way to go before true decolonisation is achieved, sadly. And it is already too late for many. However, we are working hard in Sheffield to achieve more, day by day. I am sure that every other institution of higher education in the UK is also working hard in its own way, possibly harder than us in Sheffield. I hope so.

Nevertheless, I think it is also true that Japanese universities and their staff and students, generally speaking and with notable exceptions, don't do enough and perhaps have further to go. Personally, I see this as something that is much more than just an educational issue, but is systemic, from the very top at the Prime Minister's Office, all the way down, as I alluded in my original post on Japanese diplomatic efforts at the Paris COP21 conference. Yes, Japan has(had) a reputation for being environmentally advanced, but that is really confined to the area of action against pollutants to public health, such as industrial discharges and emissions. Even that is not as effective as touted, since there are still around 80,000 premature deaths per year in Japan from atmospheric pollutants alone. There is some decarbonisation of the economy, but it is a slow process - sort of two steps forward one step back, and the concentration on nuclear devlopment at the expense of renewables, and its unwinding after 2011 did not help at all. Japan's record on biodiversity and rewilding/reforestation is also poor. And I am just as critical of the UK's record on biodiversity - which is probably worse than Japan's, given that the UK is one of the most nature depleted countries in the world.

The difficulty we face in addressing these issues is, just as we would wish to 'globalise' them beyond the artificial constraints of national borders, the primary method of governance - and therefore effective action - is still national governments (the EU excepting here). We cannot discuss changes in governance and behaviours on a large scale without discussing countries and their structures, regulations, behaviours, cultures, histories and so on. And culture is important. To deny it is foolish, because we know it exists and we know it is a powerful influence. But it is mutable and we can change if we want to.

Anyway, just my thoughts after reading through a very exciting discussion; and once again thank you to Peter Cave for initiating.

best wishes,

Peter





----- Original Message -----
From: SSJ-Forum Moderator <ssjmod@iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp>
To: ssj-forum@cal.iss.u-tokyo.ac.jp
Date: 2019/10/4, Fri 08:14
Subject: [SSJ: 10858] Re: Climate strikes and Green politics in Japan


From: Edward Vickers <edvickers08@googlemail.com>

Date: 2019/10/03

Dear All,

Many thanks indeed to Peter for initiating this fascinating and important
discussion. I did some work a couple of years ago looking at the way in
which ideas of 'sustainability' are presented in the Japanese school
curriculum (for primary and junior secondary). This was by way of a
preparatory 'country study' for a 2017 UNESCO report I co-authored on 'The
State of Education for Peace, Sustainable Development and Global
Citizenship in Asia' <https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000260568 >

I broadly agree with the (rather depressing) comments that have been made
about the lack of attention to climate change in the education system
generally, and the factors militating against much discussion of this issue
in formal classrooms (at any level). I'm disappointed to see accusations of
'racism' flung at people for making this point. Of course, we should always
generalize with caution - but, generally speaking, it is fair to say that
open and critical discussion of the climate crisis is strikingly absent
from mainstream public discourse in Japan. And that certainly goes for the
school curriculum, too.

But one irony is that there is nonetheless probably still a prevailing
assumption here that Japan is a 'leader' in terms of environmental
consciousness. This is partly related to self-stereotyping notions of
Japanese culture as emphasizing the 'oneness' of man and nature - in
contrast to a 'Western' tradition seen as postulating an essential divide
between the human and natural worlds, with the modern West portrayed as
'exploiting' nature in a spirit of 'instrumentalism' and 'individualism'.
(Interestingly, China's Communist regime seeks to popularize a similar
dichotomy, with its current propaganda around 'ecological civilization' and
traditional 'Chinese values'. For a discussion of 'sustainability' in
relation to a supposed East-West cultural divide, see this exchange on the
'NORRAG' site: first this

<https://www.norrag.org/facing-the-climate-change-catastrophe-education-as-solution-or-cause-by-iveta-silova-hikaru-komatsu-and-jeremy-rappleye/ >,
then this

<https://www.norrag.org/education-and-climate-change-is-blaming-western-modernity-the-answer-by-edward-vickers/ >
.)

Kyoto, the Mecca of this brand of Japanese cultural/ethical exceptionalism,
is of course the city that brought us the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. It was then
at Japanese instigation that UNESCO launched the 'Decade of Education for
Sustainable Development' (2004-2014). But none of this has translated into
concerted efforts to raise public awareness of the challenge posed by the
climate crisis.

At a more 'micro' level, my own university is building its 'brand' around a
research agenda focusing on 'carbon neutral' technologies, energy
efficiency, etc. However, this seems aimed primarily at securing positional
advantage for the institution in the competition for attention from the
Ministry in Tokyo, or from the apparatchiks of the global 'rankings' bodies
internationally. There are hardly any solar panels on campus, and no
effective policy to encourage sustainable transport to and from the campus.
And when we recently shifted our entire campus from a location near the
city centre to a pristine, forested mountainside outside (uprooting /
dislocating trees, boars, bears, etc. in the process), voices of protest
were muted - amongst faculty, students and the local community.

Rather than reaching for explanations of all this in Japan's supposedly
'non-axial' culture, etc., I am inclined to agree with those who stress
politics: the entrenched institutions of 'illiberal democracy' (from skewed
electoral arrangements to the controlled media); the hyper-competitive
labour market, still rigidly structured around seniority, which forces
youngsters to focus on securing jobs immediately on graduation from
college... All of this strongly disincentives dissent from the established
way of doing things. Culture is certainly relevant - including classroom
culture, which, as others have pointed out, typically (but certainly not
universally) discourages open-ended, critical debate, while fostering a
somewhat suffocating 'group' ethos. But culture does not exist as some
immutable essence apart from politics (though that is often how it is seen
here - as elsewhere). Stereotypes about 'our' identity and essential
cultural attributes are continually reinforced by powerful vested interests



Dr Peter Matanle
Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies,
National Institute of Japanese Studies and School of East Asian Studies
University of Sheffield, UK, Tel: +44 (0)114 222 8407
General Editor, electronic journal of contemporary japanese studies
Website: www.japanesestudies.org.uk
e-mail: editor@japanesestudies.org.uk