The world is facing several challenges caused by human activities, such as global warming and depletion of key resources. The most widespread and well-known initiative to meet these challenges is the United Nations Agenda 2030 and the sustainable development goals (SDGs). SDG 4 on education has a particular objective to support the other SDGs through education for sustainable development (ESD), with the goal to ensure “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” and, that “all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development” (UN, 2021). These ambitions - honourable as they may be - raise questions if it is possible to address “all learners” inclusively and equitably in a world marked with abysmal inequality. Is ESD implemented in an equitable way or is it rather appoints different responsibilities and lifestyles to rich and poor populations? These concerns, with global implementation of ESD in relation to inequality, are explored through an ongoing study of the world’s largest sustainable school program, Eco-Schools, currently organizing close to 60 000 schools in 70 countries (Eco-schools, 2020). The study is part of a larger research project and aims to explore the global implementation of the Eco-School programme in relation to rich and poor populations and what conceptions of ‘green’ skills and sustainable lifestyles that the programme aims to produce.

In order to meet the aim, Foucauldian theory of biopolitics is employed (e.g. Foucault, 1998; 2008; Lemke, 2011) and the study involves empirical studies of how the Eco-schools programme is unpacked and implemented in different geographical and socio-economic settings, within one high-income country (Sweden), one middle-income country (South Africa) and one low-income country (Uganda). The study relates to other critically oriented research on Eco-Schools (e.g. Huckle, 2013; Lyysgaard et al., 2015; Ryan & Ferreira, 2019), but adds to it a comparative perspective placing inequality in the foreground. Although this perspective has been previously explored by Knutsson (2020) in a study of how rich and poor populations are biopolitically separated within South African Eco-Schools, the present study extends the comparison to include diverse socio-economic contexts within and between different countries. Hence, the novelty of the study is that it compares how ESD unfolds globally to uncover potential signs of global patterns of inequality within the implementation of the Eco-Schools programme. The research questions of the study are:

RQ 1. How do national operators, schools and teachers construct different populations as appropriate for particular forms of ESD within the Eco-schools programme? i.e. what kind of knowledge do these actors (claim to) have, and what assumptions do they make, about the lives, lifestyles and skills needs of particular populations in relation to sustainable development?

RQ 2. How is the Eco-School programme rendered practically operable in relation to different populations in different contexts? i.e. what pedagogical techniques are used to promote ‘green’ skills and sustainable lifestyles amongst different populations?

Initial findings from interviews with representatives from Eco-Schools global office and national Eco-School operators, as well as interviews with teachers in Eco-Schools in Sweden and Uganda, indicates that the programme largely adapts to local conditions and student’s life circumstances. By taking the point of departure in (more or less solid) knowledge of student’s lifestyles and local contexts, ESD is adjusted to fit the (perceived) future needs of the students, with the risk of educating some parts of the population for a future life as “green” consumers, whilst others are educated for a life primarily as self-subsistent farmers. Hence, by differentiating education to adapt to, and acknowledge, local realities and needs, there is a risk that patterns of global inequality are reproduced.

The study employs Foucauldian theory of biopolitics (e.g. Foucault, 1998; 2008), which refers to the governing of life at the aggregated level of populations. A biopolitical perspective enables inquiries into how different populations are constructed according to some typical characteristics and how these populations are governed and separated (Lemke, 2011). The study further builds on Hellberg’s and Knutsson’s (2018a; 2018b) methodological framework for exploring biopolitical separation of different populations within ESD, emphasizing the importance of exploring the rationalities and techniques of governing at play, when different student populations are addressed through ESD in various geographical settings. The rationalities represent the knowledge governing institution (claim to) have and what assumptions are made about the lives and lifestyles of students. The techniques on the other hand, includes how knowledge is structured and recontextualized to fit particular populations and how rationalities are rendered operable through governing tools such as curricula, educational policies, learning material and assessment criteria (Hellberg & Knutsson, 2018a; 2018b; see also, Dean, 1999; Miller & Rose, 2008). The Eco-School programme was chosen due to its impact and range. The programme has the advantage of a common core, which is adapted to local conditions all around the globe. This enables the possibility to explore how the implementation of a specific ESD-programme plays out in very different and socio-economically diverse contexts in the three countries. Following the methodological framework, referred to above, two methods are used in the study. First, interviews are conducted with representatives from: the global Eco-schools office; the national operators in each country; partnership NGOs; and teachers or other staff at local schools. The interviews focus on the rationalities and techniques used at different level of the Eco-School programme, i.e. how different actors describe the student’s lifestyles and skills needs and how ESD-content, curricula and pedagogical activities are adjusted to suit the targeted student populations. Second, documents, such as different learning materials, curricula, evaluation forms etc. are analysed to see how different governing techniques influence the program and how it is adapted to local circumstances. In sum, approximately 50 interviews are to be conducted. The interviews are semi-structured and the respondents have the option of receiving the interview guide in advance, as well as the opportunity to read the transcribed interview before publication (when technically possible due to possibilities to send e-mail). Further, respondents always have the alternative to withdraw from the study and decline to participate.

The Eco-school programme is focused on enhancing and investing in life, since it aims to “have a lifelong impact of the lives of young people” and to “produce” generations of environmentally friendly people by changing their “behavioural patterns” (Eco-Schools, 2020). Hence, the programme, with the aim of producing environmental subjects, combined with their pedagogic approach – that all schools enrolled in the programme independently select their projects and how they go about implementing them – also reflects a liberal biopolitics. Being a global programme, it has to handle the diversity among enrolled students and take into consideration different local contexts in the governing of the programme. As becomes evident in the interview with a global officer at Eco-Schools, the programme is “only focused on how, not on what”, which leaves the question of what to include as relevant content to the individual schools. This enables differentiation within the programme, which could be understood as a way to handle difference and diversity and make the education locally relevant, but it could also be seen to feed into patterns of inequality by educating students in conformity to the existing local circumstances within rich and poor contexts (see Bylund & Knutsson, 2020). The argument in this study is that education within the Eco-School programme risks to lean towards the latter by failing to challenge such patterns. One reason for this may be that a pedagogy focused on the local and contextual often fails to see the relations between the own context and other contexts and takes the local as something given rather than relational and produced (see Knutsson, 2020). In this way, patterns of inequality are perceived as something fixed rather than abolishable and something that the education simply must adapt to. However, these findings are preliminary and more empirical work is needed.

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