Prendersi cura dei luoghi. Educazione e sostenibilità

In December 2002 the United Nations General Assembly proclaimed the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) for the period 2005-2014, emphasizing education as a central element. We need a special kind of education to achieve sustainability: it must involve every learning context (formal, non formal, informal) and every age of life; it should enable us to understand ourselves, every other person and the complex links between natural and social environment; it should improve a sense of equity and responsibility, knowledge and dialogue; it should move us to adopt behaviours and practices which enable everybody to live a full life, aiming to respect, empathy, care and cooperation. A possible educational way to improve sustainability is caring for places. Learning this practice enables us to: construct our identities through interaction with places of life, which are keepers of memory and set of vivifying touch with difference; oppose the present distance between culture and life; defend environment, making clear the interdependence between human and natural communities; foster the feeling of community and active citizenship.