The public would like to see the government and other official bodies leading by
example. By setting an example the public will be encouraged to follow, and this will
also signify the importance for
everyone to act sustainably.
Information should be provided along with facilities, alternatives, education and capacity.
It is important to mix information with education, economic incentives and current
policy. Raising awareness through supplying information alone will not change
behaviour. Information should be of a high standard, consistent and easily understood
by the target group. Caution should be used when using fear messages as these tend
to make people apathetic, using guilt also has limited success.
Influencing behavioural change can be achieved using positive and inspirational
messages. Concepts and language should be easy for the public to grasp, as
sustainable development can be a confusing subject due to its broadness and its
complexity. Messages should be personal and practical, making the issue relevant
and possible action achievable.
Successful initiatives and examples of good practice should be recognised. Celebrating
and showcasing examples of good practice will provide participants with a sense of
achievement, and others with inspiration. If the public can see what is already
happening in their neighbourhood and in their region, they will realise what is
achievable and how they can act more sustainably.
People are more likely to change their behaviour if they can see it that it will lead to an
immediate, positive impact on their quality of life. Issues regarding the environment
are not seen to affect day-to-day life and are less pressing. It is not necessary to
communicate the whole concept of sustainability; linking sustainable development to
other issues will make it more relevant to people’s lives.
Removing barriers will increase the likelihood of people adopting different behaviours.
For sustainable development to appeal to the public they must feel a sense of
urgency, sustainable development issues should seem relevant, and the public need
to believe that their actions will make a difference. Local initiatives which provide
opportunities for community involvement have proved that combined individual action
can make a difference. Community groups can also help set the norm and influence
behaviour. Behaving sustainably needs to be seen as the social norm, and people will
then be willing to break their bad habits and conform to the rest of society.
Adequate infrastructure needs to be in place before a change in behaviour can occur.
Infrastructure will reduce the inconvenience to act sustainably (this should be
organised before any communication is initiated so that action can occur
immediately).
It is crucial to target an audience and to identify and understand their main concerns,
priorities, barriers and drivers. Different groups will have different abilities to connect
with and deliver sustainable development. Understanding the target group will lay the
foundations for the format and type of information provided, campaign or project.
In addition to learning to do a job of work, it should, more generally, entail the
acquisition of a competence that enables people to deal with a variety of
situations, often unforeseeable, and to work in teams, a feature to which
educational methods do not at present pay enough attention. In many cases, such
competence and skills are more readily acquired if pupils and students have the
opportunity to try out and develop their abilities, by becoming involved in work
experience schemes or social work while they are still in education. Whence the
increased importance that should be attached to all methods of alternating study
with work.
This question is closely associated with the issue of occupational training: how do
we adapt education so that it can equip people to do the types of work needed in
the future? Here we should draw a distinction between industrial economies,
where most people are wage- earners, and other economies where self-
employment or casual work are still the norm.
In societies where most people are in paid employment, which have developed
throughout the twentieth century based on the industrial model, automation is
making this model increasingly "intangible". It emphasizes the knowledge of
component tasks, even in industry, as well as the importance of services in the
economy. The future of these economies hinges on their ability to turn advances in
knowledge into innovations, that will generate new businesses and new jobs.
"Learning to do" can no longer mean what it did when people were trained to
perform a very specific physical task in a manufacturing process. Skill training
therefore has to evolve and become more than just a means of imparting the
knowledge needed to do a more or less routine job.
The part played by knowledge and information in manufacturing industry, renders
obsolete the notion of specialist skills on the part of the workforce. The key
concept now is one of "personal competence". Technological progress inevitably
changes the job skills required by the new production processes. Purely physical
tasks are being replaced by tasks with a greater intellectual or cerebral content,
such as the operation, maintenance and monitoring of machines and design and
organizational tasks, as the machines themselves become more intelligent.
There are several reasons for this increase in skill requirements at all levels.
Instead of being organized to perform specified tasks in juxtaposition in
accordance with Taylor's principles of scientific labour organization, manufacturing
workers are often divided into work teams or project groups on the Japanese
model. This approach represents a departure from the idea of dividing labour into
similar physical tasks, which are essentially learned by repetition. Furthermore, the
idea of personalized tasks is taking over from that of employee interchangeability.
There is a growing trend among employers to evaluate potential employees in
terms of their personal competence, rather than certified skills which they see as
merely demonstrating the ability to perform specific physical tasks. This personal
competence is assessed by looking at a mix of skills and talents, combining
certified skills acquired through technical and vocational training, social behaviour,
personal initiative and a willingness to take risks.
If we add a demand for personal commitment on the part of employees in their role
as change agents, it is clear that this kind of personal competence involves highly
subjective innate or acquired qualities, often referred to as "people skills" or
"interpersonal skills" by employers, combined with knowledge and other job skills.
Of these qualities, communication, team and problem- solving skills are assuming
greater importance. The growth of the service industries has resulted in an
increase in this trend.
In advanced economies there is a shift away from physical work. The implications
of this trend for education are even clearer if we look at the development of the
service industries in both quantitative and qualitative terms. Most of the active
population (60 - 80 per cent) of the industrialized countries is employed in the
service sector. The main defining characteristic of this extremely broad category,
is that it covers activities which are neither industrial nor agricultural and which,
despite their diversity, do not involve any tangible product.
Many services are defined primarily in terms of the interpersonal relationship
involved. Examples of this are found both in the rapidly expanding private service
sector, which is benefiting from the growing complexity of economies (every kind
of expertise imaginable, security services or high-tech consultancy services,
financial, accounting and management services) and in the more traditional public
sector (social services, health and education services, etc.). In both these cases,
information and communication play a vital role. The key aspect here is the
personalized acquisition and processing of specific data for a clearly defined
project. In this type of service, both the provider and the user influence the quality
of the relationship between them. Clearly, people can no longer be trained for this
sort of work in the same way as they learned how to plough the land or make a
sheet of steel. These new jobs are about interpersonal relationships; workers'
relationships with the materials and processes they are using are secondary. The
growing service sector needs people with good social and communication skills -
skills that are not necessarily taught at school or university.
Lastly, in the ultra high-tech organizations of the future, where relational
inadequacies might cause serious dysfunctions, new types of skills will be
required, with an interpersonal rather than intellectual basis. This may provide an
opportunity for people with few or no formal educational qualifications. Intuition,
common sense, judgement and leadership skills are not confined to highly
qualified people. How and where are these more or less innate skills to be taught?
The problem is akin to that raised by the idea of vocational training in developing
countries. Educational content simply cannot be inferred from a statement of the
skills or abilities required for specific tasks.
The nature of work is very different in the economies of developing countries where
most people are not wage- earners. In many sub-Saharan African countries and
some Latin American and Asian countries, only a small proportion of the
population is in paid employment. The vast majority works in the traditional
subsistence economy, where specific job qualifications are not required, and
where know-how is the fruit of tacit knowledge. For this reason, education cannot
simply be modelled on the types of education that seem to fit the bill in post-
industrial societies. Besides, the function of learning is not confined to work; it
should meet the wider aim of achieving formal or informal participation in
development. This often involves social skills as much as occupational skills.
In other developing countries, a thriving unofficial modern economy based on trade
and finance may exist, alongside a small official economic sector and agriculture.
This parallel economy indicates the existence of business communities capable
of meeting local requirements.
In both these cases, there is no point in providing the population with high-cost
training (since the teachers and the educational resources have to come from
abroad) either in conventional industrial skills or in advanced technology. On the
contrary, education should be brought into endogenous development by
strengthening local potential and the spirit of empowerment.
We then have to address a question that applies to both developed and developing
countries: how do people learn to act appropriately in an uncertain situation, how
do they become involved in shaping the future?
This question is being asked in developing and developed countries. It basically
comes down to knowing how to develop personal initiative. Paradoxically, the
richest countries are sometimes restrained in this respect by the excessively
coded and formal way they are organized, particularly as regards their educational
systems, and by a certain fear of risk- taking which may be engendered by the
rationalization of their economic model. Undoubtedly, sport, club membership and
artistic and cultural activities are more successful than the traditional school
systems at providing this kind of training. The discovery of other societies through
study and travel may encourage such behaviour. From this point of view in
particular, a great deal may be learned by observing the economies of
developing countries.
Lastly, In all countries, the growing importance of small groups, networking and
partnerships, highlights the likelihood that excellent interpersonal skills will be an
essential job requirement from now on. What is more, the new working patterns,
whether in industry or in the service sector, will call for the intensive application of
information, knowledge and creativity. All things considered, the new forms of
personal competence are based on a body of theoretical and practical
knowledge, combined with personal dynamism and good problem- solving,
decision- making, innovative and team skills.
