Alexander Lautensach | University of Northern British Columbia (original) (raw)
Books by Alexander Lautensach
Schoeningh Verlag, Paderborn, Germany, 2020
This impassioned call for reforming education at all levels takes into account the inevitable tra... more This impassioned call for reforming education at all levels takes into account the inevitable transition to a sustainable future of some sort. If that future includes humans, diverse composite scenarios are possible for us and the biosphere. With the help of appropriately reformed education, the coming generations can sway their fate towards the more secure scenarios. This will require Deep Adaptation, ecocentric ethics and a new view on ‘progress’, as well as ‘cultural learning’ at the collective level.
A summary is given here: Lautensach, A.K. 2020. Educating Teachers as if Sustainability Mattered. International Portal of Teacher Education. The MOFET Institute. http://education.eng.macam.ac.il/article/5031
Human security has been endorsed by the UN since 1994 as a comprehensive goal for development at ... more Human security has been endorsed by the UN since 1994 as a comprehensive goal for development at all levels. It rests on the four pillars of socio-political security, health security, economic security and environmental security.
What distinguishes this open-access university textbook on human security?
• This is still the only textbook of human security of its kind, to our knowledge. Its themes are relevant for a wide range of academic areas.
• Its 22 chapter authors include academics and activists from all over the world.
• It is accessible entirely online, free of charge, including free downloading, at a time when online course delivery is being prioritized and students are less able than ever to afford costly hardcopy texts. Nevertheless, hardcopies can be ordered from the website.
• It addresses diverse aspects of human security, especially health security, that are at the forefront of current world affairs in the COVID context and the Anthropocene predicament.
One decade in to the 21st century, most of humanity is coming to the realisation that there is so... more One decade in to the 21st century, most of humanity is coming to the realisation that there is something fundamentally wrong and dangerous about the way we are making our existence on this planet. The well-documented manifestations of the current global environmental crisis include increasing rates of resource depletion, continuing out-of-control growth of the global human population, and continuing pollution with its consequences on climate, habitat quality and public health. Unprecedented rates of species extinctions are caused by the worldwide modification of ecosystems through habitat depletion, modification of landscapes and climate, and through species displacement. Since the crisis in its terrifying extent is caused largely by human activities, any serious effort to address it must take into account the causes for human behaviour at the collective and individual levels. Educationists tend to believe that a good deal of human behaviour is influenced by formal education but in this case abundant evidence shows that education not only fails in its obligation to make a difference, it often actually contributes to the problem. If this is to be changed, and the potential benefits make the effort seem thoroughly worthwhile, curriculum and educational practice need to be fundamentally re-thought and revised.
This book is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation completed at the University of Otago, New Zealand in 2003. It consists of three roughly equal parts on environmental science, environmental ethics, and education. It bridges two significant gaps in the literature that were wide open around the turn of the millennium but that have not been filled sufficiently even today. The first gap is the one between descriptive accounts of the global environmental crisis and prescriptive suggestions what humanity could or should do about it. Both areas have seen abundant recent publications, which have narrowed the gap but not eliminated it.
The second gap exists between those prescriptive suggestions, including numerous works about ethics, policy, and life styles, and pedagogical strategies that might allow educators to enlist the considerable potential of formal education in our efforts to address the global environmental crisis. A number of published works over the past few years have addressed the area of education for sustainability but few are based on a solid assessment of the crisis in all its manifestations or a satisfactory discussion of alternative ethical frameworks that might inform such pedagogies.
The potential readership for this book will be anyone interested in the current predicament that humanity finds itself in; educators who are searching for ways to address the problems in their daily practice; people who feel an affiliation and kinship with the natural world; and those of us who raise children with a concern about their future well-being and that of the generations to come.
Papers by Alexander Lautensach
Routledge Handbook of Global Environmental Politics, 2013
Brill | Schöningh eBooks, Oct 13, 2020
Brill | Schöningh eBooks, Oct 13, 2020
Knowledge For The Anthropocene, 2021
Proceedings of The 1st World Sustainability Forum, 2011
Abstract: In the the present global environmental crisis people who contribute most to its causes... more Abstract: In the the present global environmental crisis people who contribute most to its causes are not the people who reap most of the resulting harms. The former tend to be well educated and hold positions of power or at least high levels of personal consumption. This ...
Microbios, 1984
High molecular weight DNA was extracted from a malo-lactic fermenting strain of Leuconostoc oenos... more High molecular weight DNA was extracted from a malo-lactic fermenting strain of Leuconostoc oenos by a specifically designed lysis procedure, restricted, and ligated into Escherichia coli cloning vector pTR 262, which allows for positive selection for inserts. Malic acid assimilating activity was directly selected for using a host blocked in malic acid utilization. Transformants grew on malate minimal medium but were genetically unstable and contained plasmid DNA that was altered through recA independent events. Analogous results were obtained from a test system using prototrophic transformants of a proline auxotrophic host.
Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology Journal, 1983
ABSTRACT
Green Ethics and Philosophy: An A-to-Z Guide
Environmental Values, 2005
The popular stereotype of ecologists appears somewhat at odds with the ideal of the objective, de... more The popular stereotype of ecologists appears somewhat at odds with the ideal of the objective, detached, morally disinterested researcher. Ecologists tend to subscribe to this ideal, as do most natural scientists. This puts the stereotype into question. To what extent and in what respects can ecologists be regarded as motivated by environmentalist values? What other values might contribute to their motivations? The answers to those questions have bearing on how policy makers perceive the input they receive from ecologists and it has long-term implications for the funding of ecological research. To obtain some answers I analysed over fifty randomly selected publications of ecologists for explicit and implicit value statements. The analysis revealed an abundance of value statements. However, no bias was evident towards a conservationist or ecocentric environmental ethic such as suggested by the stereotype. I will suggest some explanations and ramifications of these results that take i...
Canadian Journal of Microbiology, 1982
Microbial colonies capable of fermenting L-malic acid to L-lactic acid were identified by means o... more Microbial colonies capable of fermenting L-malic acid to L-lactic acid were identified by means of a dark blue halo which formed after the colonies had been grown on medium containing malic acid and then covered with a soft agar overlay containing L-lactic acid dehydrogenase, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, phenazine methosulfate, and nitro blue tetrazolium. The system is stereospecific and discriminates between the production of D-lactic and L-lactic acid. Chromatographic analysis of the medium adjacent to the colony distinguishes between those colonies producing L-lactate from L-malate and those producing DL-lactate from glucose. The system may be used to identify wine microbes capable of performing a malo-lactic fermentation, comparing two bacterial strains for their ability to perform a malo-lactic fermentation, and for the identification of clones of an organism carrying a recombinant DNA vector with the genetic material necessary for malo-lactic fermentation.
Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of …, 2010
Global trends suggest that our species is impaired by an inherent inability to follow the imperat... more Global trends suggest that our species is impaired by an inherent inability to follow the imperatives of sustainability and to address the challenges of its ecological overshoot. The ecological footprint concept has shown considerable promise to help mitigate this impairment by providing a ...
ICERI2018 Proceedings
Many examples of mainstream curricula at all levels, as well as observations of common behaviour ... more Many examples of mainstream curricula at all levels, as well as observations of common behaviour and discourse indicate that education has largely failed to prepare the necessary groundwork to make a ‘Great Transition’ possible, to give humanity a chance to achieve a sustainable future of acceptable quality [1]. The consequences of this failure in terms of human and non-human costs seldom inform actual policy making or official curriculum development. Beyond the shortcomings in curricula themselves, a multiplicity of causes for this failure include structural constraints and perceptual blind spots in the political, social, economic and cultural realms as well as certain intrinsic impediments in the learner that have been connected to ‘human nature’. Because those causes are so deep-seated, an effective reform of education that could address the failure seems both daunting as an undertaking and more urgently needed than ever. This paper outlines the major agenda points that such a reform effort will need to engage with at the levels of curriculum and educational practice. The first part deals with educational failure by commission and how it could be mitigated. The second part focuses on failure by omission and underlying socio-cultural contingencies, which leads into a discussion of new educational aims that would enable learners to actively contribute toward the Transition. This includes broad requirements for curriculum reform, for socio-cultural empowerment, and for the praxis of teaching and learning. Some pioneering efforts that have been made by avant-garde educators in those directions indicate that such educational achievements are realistically possible. The goal is to provide a blueprint for transformative education in the context of the sustainability imperative, beyond the inadequacies of ‘education as usual’. I shall argue that the following special focus areas deserve particular attention in the design of an effective curriculum for sustainability: human security, ecocentrist ethics, specific cognitive and affective skills, visioning change at the global and local levels, and empowerment.
Schoeningh Verlag, Paderborn, Germany, 2020
This impassioned call for reforming education at all levels takes into account the inevitable tra... more This impassioned call for reforming education at all levels takes into account the inevitable transition to a sustainable future of some sort. If that future includes humans, diverse composite scenarios are possible for us and the biosphere. With the help of appropriately reformed education, the coming generations can sway their fate towards the more secure scenarios. This will require Deep Adaptation, ecocentric ethics and a new view on ‘progress’, as well as ‘cultural learning’ at the collective level.
A summary is given here: Lautensach, A.K. 2020. Educating Teachers as if Sustainability Mattered. International Portal of Teacher Education. The MOFET Institute. http://education.eng.macam.ac.il/article/5031
Human security has been endorsed by the UN since 1994 as a comprehensive goal for development at ... more Human security has been endorsed by the UN since 1994 as a comprehensive goal for development at all levels. It rests on the four pillars of socio-political security, health security, economic security and environmental security.
What distinguishes this open-access university textbook on human security?
• This is still the only textbook of human security of its kind, to our knowledge. Its themes are relevant for a wide range of academic areas.
• Its 22 chapter authors include academics and activists from all over the world.
• It is accessible entirely online, free of charge, including free downloading, at a time when online course delivery is being prioritized and students are less able than ever to afford costly hardcopy texts. Nevertheless, hardcopies can be ordered from the website.
• It addresses diverse aspects of human security, especially health security, that are at the forefront of current world affairs in the COVID context and the Anthropocene predicament.
One decade in to the 21st century, most of humanity is coming to the realisation that there is so... more One decade in to the 21st century, most of humanity is coming to the realisation that there is something fundamentally wrong and dangerous about the way we are making our existence on this planet. The well-documented manifestations of the current global environmental crisis include increasing rates of resource depletion, continuing out-of-control growth of the global human population, and continuing pollution with its consequences on climate, habitat quality and public health. Unprecedented rates of species extinctions are caused by the worldwide modification of ecosystems through habitat depletion, modification of landscapes and climate, and through species displacement. Since the crisis in its terrifying extent is caused largely by human activities, any serious effort to address it must take into account the causes for human behaviour at the collective and individual levels. Educationists tend to believe that a good deal of human behaviour is influenced by formal education but in this case abundant evidence shows that education not only fails in its obligation to make a difference, it often actually contributes to the problem. If this is to be changed, and the potential benefits make the effort seem thoroughly worthwhile, curriculum and educational practice need to be fundamentally re-thought and revised.
This book is based on the author’s doctoral dissertation completed at the University of Otago, New Zealand in 2003. It consists of three roughly equal parts on environmental science, environmental ethics, and education. It bridges two significant gaps in the literature that were wide open around the turn of the millennium but that have not been filled sufficiently even today. The first gap is the one between descriptive accounts of the global environmental crisis and prescriptive suggestions what humanity could or should do about it. Both areas have seen abundant recent publications, which have narrowed the gap but not eliminated it.
The second gap exists between those prescriptive suggestions, including numerous works about ethics, policy, and life styles, and pedagogical strategies that might allow educators to enlist the considerable potential of formal education in our efforts to address the global environmental crisis. A number of published works over the past few years have addressed the area of education for sustainability but few are based on a solid assessment of the crisis in all its manifestations or a satisfactory discussion of alternative ethical frameworks that might inform such pedagogies.
The potential readership for this book will be anyone interested in the current predicament that humanity finds itself in; educators who are searching for ways to address the problems in their daily practice; people who feel an affiliation and kinship with the natural world; and those of us who raise children with a concern about their future well-being and that of the generations to come.
Routledge Handbook of Global Environmental Politics, 2013
Brill | Schöningh eBooks, Oct 13, 2020
Brill | Schöningh eBooks, Oct 13, 2020
Knowledge For The Anthropocene, 2021
Proceedings of The 1st World Sustainability Forum, 2011
Abstract: In the the present global environmental crisis people who contribute most to its causes... more Abstract: In the the present global environmental crisis people who contribute most to its causes are not the people who reap most of the resulting harms. The former tend to be well educated and hold positions of power or at least high levels of personal consumption. This ...
Microbios, 1984
High molecular weight DNA was extracted from a malo-lactic fermenting strain of Leuconostoc oenos... more High molecular weight DNA was extracted from a malo-lactic fermenting strain of Leuconostoc oenos by a specifically designed lysis procedure, restricted, and ligated into Escherichia coli cloning vector pTR 262, which allows for positive selection for inserts. Malic acid assimilating activity was directly selected for using a host blocked in malic acid utilization. Transformants grew on malate minimal medium but were genetically unstable and contained plasmid DNA that was altered through recA independent events. Analogous results were obtained from a test system using prototrophic transformants of a proline auxotrophic host.
Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology Journal, 1983
ABSTRACT
Green Ethics and Philosophy: An A-to-Z Guide
Environmental Values, 2005
The popular stereotype of ecologists appears somewhat at odds with the ideal of the objective, de... more The popular stereotype of ecologists appears somewhat at odds with the ideal of the objective, detached, morally disinterested researcher. Ecologists tend to subscribe to this ideal, as do most natural scientists. This puts the stereotype into question. To what extent and in what respects can ecologists be regarded as motivated by environmentalist values? What other values might contribute to their motivations? The answers to those questions have bearing on how policy makers perceive the input they receive from ecologists and it has long-term implications for the funding of ecological research. To obtain some answers I analysed over fifty randomly selected publications of ecologists for explicit and implicit value statements. The analysis revealed an abundance of value statements. However, no bias was evident towards a conservationist or ecocentric environmental ethic such as suggested by the stereotype. I will suggest some explanations and ramifications of these results that take i...
Canadian Journal of Microbiology, 1982
Microbial colonies capable of fermenting L-malic acid to L-lactic acid were identified by means o... more Microbial colonies capable of fermenting L-malic acid to L-lactic acid were identified by means of a dark blue halo which formed after the colonies had been grown on medium containing malic acid and then covered with a soft agar overlay containing L-lactic acid dehydrogenase, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide, phenazine methosulfate, and nitro blue tetrazolium. The system is stereospecific and discriminates between the production of D-lactic and L-lactic acid. Chromatographic analysis of the medium adjacent to the colony distinguishes between those colonies producing L-lactate from L-malate and those producing DL-lactate from glucose. The system may be used to identify wine microbes capable of performing a malo-lactic fermentation, comparing two bacterial strains for their ability to perform a malo-lactic fermentation, and for the identification of clones of an organism carrying a recombinant DNA vector with the genetic material necessary for malo-lactic fermentation.
Green Theory & Praxis: The Journal of …, 2010
Global trends suggest that our species is impaired by an inherent inability to follow the imperat... more Global trends suggest that our species is impaired by an inherent inability to follow the imperatives of sustainability and to address the challenges of its ecological overshoot. The ecological footprint concept has shown considerable promise to help mitigate this impairment by providing a ...
ICERI2018 Proceedings
Many examples of mainstream curricula at all levels, as well as observations of common behaviour ... more Many examples of mainstream curricula at all levels, as well as observations of common behaviour and discourse indicate that education has largely failed to prepare the necessary groundwork to make a ‘Great Transition’ possible, to give humanity a chance to achieve a sustainable future of acceptable quality [1]. The consequences of this failure in terms of human and non-human costs seldom inform actual policy making or official curriculum development. Beyond the shortcomings in curricula themselves, a multiplicity of causes for this failure include structural constraints and perceptual blind spots in the political, social, economic and cultural realms as well as certain intrinsic impediments in the learner that have been connected to ‘human nature’. Because those causes are so deep-seated, an effective reform of education that could address the failure seems both daunting as an undertaking and more urgently needed than ever. This paper outlines the major agenda points that such a reform effort will need to engage with at the levels of curriculum and educational practice. The first part deals with educational failure by commission and how it could be mitigated. The second part focuses on failure by omission and underlying socio-cultural contingencies, which leads into a discussion of new educational aims that would enable learners to actively contribute toward the Transition. This includes broad requirements for curriculum reform, for socio-cultural empowerment, and for the praxis of teaching and learning. Some pioneering efforts that have been made by avant-garde educators in those directions indicate that such educational achievements are realistically possible. The goal is to provide a blueprint for transformative education in the context of the sustainability imperative, beyond the inadequacies of ‘education as usual’. I shall argue that the following special focus areas deserve particular attention in the design of an effective curriculum for sustainability: human security, ecocentrist ethics, specific cognitive and affective skills, visioning change at the global and local levels, and empowerment.
Human security is usually framed as a multidimensional concept that depends on socio-political, e... more Human security is usually framed as a multidimensional concept that depends on socio-political, economic, health-related, and ecological 'pillars'. An assessment of human security requires an analysis of the nested relationships between those variables. Focusing on South-East Asian countries we illustrate how those relationships can be used to prioritise determinants of human security. Such priorities are important because policies directed at promoting human security require definite starting points and targets. What emerges is a collage of nested systems in which global and regional environmental patterns exert the dominant influence. We assess the long-term human security prospects of South-East Asian countries by comparing their ecological footprints. South-East Asia's major ecosystems have not yet been overly incapacitated by the impact of its human populations. Human security policies could be much improved by addressing the growing inequities in ecological footpri...
Great Transition Forum, 2021
The continuing failures of international initiatives to halt the disruption of the global environ... more The continuing failures of international initiatives to halt the disruption of the global environment indicates a failure of education that extends deeply into people's world views. Generations of students were placated into a false confidence that the economic prosperity of the late twentieth century would continue indefinitely. No matter how severe the crisis, public discourse abounds with prospects of a “return to normal” that reflects little vision beyond a glorified status quo ante. Much of the failure can be traced beyond individualized teaching and learning to a collective, more culturally contingent learning process that has not kept pace with the challenges of the Anthropocene. Humanity's 'war against nature' is a collective phenomenon through which we ultimately harm ourselves.
Great Transition Network, 2021
To accomplish a Great Transition of any kind would require an unprecedented measure of solidarity... more To accomplish a Great Transition of any kind would require an unprecedented measure of solidarity among countries, regions, cultures, communities, and individuals. But even that requirement would not be sufficient, because an anthropocentric ethic, no matter how radical, is in principle not capable of supporting policies that avoid further destruction of the environment. The argument rests on internal contradictions and consequential failings of anthropocentrism.
Great Transition Network, 2021
The much discussed 'Great Transition' to a sustainable, secure future for humanity would require ... more The much discussed 'Great Transition' to a sustainable, secure future for humanity would require a considerable amount of governance, for which an effective 'Earth Constitution' has been proposed. However, this raises questions not only about the feasibility of world government but also about the ethical platform that such a government would require. The agenda are too radical, and becoming more radical every year, for a liberal democratic constitution to accomplish. In fact, the agenda of lifeboat ethics would require a kind of world government that would be anything but popular.
Great Transition Forum, 2022
The dilemma between the imperative to reduce the environmental impact of humanity on the biospher... more The dilemma between the imperative to reduce the environmental impact of humanity on the biosphere and the safeguarding of human rights and dignity has given rise to heated discussions about the ethics of population dynamics. This essay suggests how the dilemma between ends and means might be negotiated.
Great Transition Forum, 2022
Current trends in human security suggest that human history in the Anthropocene is likely to deve... more Current trends in human security suggest that human history in the Anthropocene is likely to develop into the direction of fragmented scenarios of the 'Fortress World' and 'Eco-Communities' types.
Great Transition Forum: Technology and the Future, 2022
Costs and benefits of new technologies are seldom assessed accurately in time. The extent to whic... more Costs and benefits of new technologies are seldom assessed accurately in time. The extent to which technologies might be able to help humanity in their transition of a sustainable and secure future will be determined by the direction into which the size of our global population develops: increase, decrease or neither. Three scenarios are described.
ICERI 2018 Proceedings, 2018
Many examples of mainstream curricula at all levels, as well as observations of common behaviour ... more Many examples of mainstream curricula at all levels, as well as observations of common behaviour and discourse indicate that education has largely failed to prepare the necessary groundwork to make a ‘Great Transition’ possible, to give humanity a chance to achieve a sustainable future of acceptable quality [1]. The consequences of this failure in terms of human and non-human costs seldom inform actual policy making or official curriculum development.
Beyond the shortcomings in curricula themselves, a multiplicity of causes for this failure include structural constraints and perceptual blind spots in the political, social, economic and cultural realms as well as certain intrinsic impediments in the learner that have been connected to ‘human nature’. Because those causes are so deep-seated, an effective reform of education that could address the failure seems both daunting as an undertaking and more urgently needed than ever.
This paper outlines the major agenda points that such a reform effort will need to engage with at the levels of curriculum and educational practice. The first part deals with educational failure by commission and how it could be mitigated. The second part focuses on failure by omission and underlying socio-cultural contingencies, which leads into a discussion of new educational aims that would enable learners to actively contribute toward the Transition. This includes broad requirements for curriculum reform, for socio-cultural empowerment, and for the praxis of teaching and learning. Some pioneering efforts that have been made by avant-garde educators in those directions indicate that such educational achievements are realistically possible. The goal is to provide a blueprint for transformative education in the context of the sustainability imperative, beyond the inadequacies of ‘education as usual’.
I shall argue that the following special focus areas deserve particular attention in the design of an effective curriculum for sustainability: human security, ecocentrist ethics, specific cognitive and affective skills, visioning change at the global and local levels, and empowerment.
We propose that one essential requirement for the Great Transition to sustainability is the wides... more We propose that one essential requirement for the Great Transition to sustainability is the widespread reduction of carnivory in favour of plant-based diets. Even though this endeavour runs counter to present worldwide trends in consumer behaviour, we argue that it will be vital for the Transition if one wishes to maximise the human population that the biosphere can sustain as well as their ecohealth. In contrast to previous appeals of this kind, we synthesise five distinct lines of moral arguments presented from different disciplines into a coherent case. They are based on environmental toxicology, personal well-being, global justice, animal welfare and ecosystem conservation, respectively. They derive from the reality of a rapidly changing global environment in the Anthropocene, a still increasing global human population and its demands, and declining resources.
Journal of Human Security, 2018
Review of 'The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam' by Douglas Murray.