A matrix for assessing mutual impacts of human rights education and religious education

To address the societal challenges of global solidarity and sustainable societies there is clearly a need for human rights education (HRE). The question arises as to which school subject is capable of contributing to HRE in which way – and how different disciplines may ideally collaborate. The situation is particularly challenging for religious education in public schools. Here there is an inherent potential for HRE, but there are specific didactic issues related to civil rights and liberties. This article presents a ‘matrix for human rights awareness’ that is based on a systematic and multi-perspective analysis. The matrix can be used to categorise current HRE approaches. It can also serve the self-assessment of the various reference disciplines for HRE, while promoting and supporting mutual communication and collaboration among them. Furthermore, it may serve as a reference framework to map the field of different models of public religious education, establishing their specific potentials for HRE.

Framing the concept design literacy for a general public

Educating the general public to be design literate can be a catalyst for both environmental protection and degradation, human aid and human-made disasters depending on how the scope of design is framed – and how ‘design literacy’ is defined. This paper explores how to cultivate design literacy that supports critical innovation and a transition towards more sustainable societies. The research approach is a literature review of key texts that promote and conceptualize design literacy as part of general edu­cation. Four narratives are identified as vital: a) ‘Awareness through making’, b) ‘Empower for change and citizen participation’, c) ‘Address complexity of real-world problems’, and d) ‘Participate in design processes’. Moving towards more sustainable modes of consumption and production, a design literate general public provides a critical mass of users empowered to question how a new innovation sup­ports the well-being of people and the planet and to voice their own ideas.

No Net Loss: A Cultural Reading of Environmental Assessment

Global environmental quality decline builds up through innumerable decisions at many scales that cause damage to ecological and social values. Environmental assessment (EA) is a relevant decision-making framework in this sense. Besides its technical role, EA has a cultural side we should consider in the pursuit of sustainable societies. Despite its limited reach, EA exemplifies and confronts some cultural implicit stances that may unwittingly favor the overall decline of environmental quality, and limit the advancement and efficiency of EA. Many of these cultural traits are well known and easier to point to than to reverse, namely: (1) too tolerant-to-damage standards of environmental protection and equality; (2) inadequate criteria to assess environmental performance; (3) tolerance of the net loss of environmental quality; (4) confrontation between ecological and social values in decision-making; and (5) neglect of full, in-kind compensation of environmental impacts. EA may have not only a technical or procedural, but also a cultural role to play in confronting these sources of unsustainability. A lack of attention to the cultural causes of environmental impacts neglects the deepest roots of environmental damage. This commentary addresses the topics above and brings attention to their disregard for environmental values, which should guide EA towards increased levels of sustainability.

O desamparo da ciência na transição para sociedades sustentáveis

Esse trabalho se constrói diante a conjuntura da virada ontológica das ciências humanas e ambientais. Período em que as crises da sociedade contemporânea exigem da ciência o reconhecimento da potência agentiva de humanos e não humanos na transição para sociedades sustentáveis. Assim, reconhecendo a necessidade da corporificação política para a transição, o destaque e desafio do trabalho é buscar novos caminhos para a corporificação política da ciência através do desamparo como afeto político central, aproximando o campo psicanalítico do reconhecimento das dimensões multiespécie da antropologia contemporânea. Para isso me apoio principalmente nos trabalhos de Vladimir Safatle, Sigmund Freud e Anna Tsing.Palavras-chave: Afetos. Antropoceno. Contingência. Multiespécie. Sustentabilidade. The science helplessness in sustainable societies transitionAbstractThis work is constructed in the conjuncture of the ontological turn of human and environmental sciences. A period when the crisis of contemporary society requires science to recognize the active potential of humans and non-humans in the face of the transition to sustainable societies. Thus, recognizing the need for political embodiment in the transition, the highlight, and challenge of the work is to seek new paths for the political embodiment of science through helplessness as a central political affection, bringing the psychoanalytic field closer to the recognition of the multispecies dimensions of contemporary anthropology. For that, I supported the works by Vladimir Safatle, Sigmund Freud, and Anna Tsing.Keywords: Affect. Anthropocene. Contingency. Multispecies. Sustainability.

Making Knowledge Management Research more Scientific, Relevant, and Engaged: A Comparative Study of Academic ECKM Papers

The purpose is to analyse and compare all the academic papers in the proceedings of the European Conference on Knowledge Management (ECKM) in 2017 (Barcelona), 2018 (Padua), 2019 (Lisbon), and the digital conference in 2020 (Coventry). The methodology is to code and classify 440 papers and use five contemporary science frameworks to describe and analyse the papers. The theoretical implication of contemporary KM is a research field without common paradigms, domains, and perspectives without accumulating knowledge. The KM researchers do not understand the nature of knowledge management as a field where the research cannot be replicated, synthesized, or theorized. Knowledge management needs to move along from the empirical research paradigm to a clarified subjectivity and action-basedresearch. The criticism implying acceptable/unacceptable solutions and constructed adequate/inadequate solutions for corporations and societies have strengthened their place, offering new paradigms and perspectives. The way to do this is to let in controversial, greener, and sustainable studies, whatever objectivity or subjectivity the studies have. We need more actual problem focused and less knowledge and instrument focused studies. KM will have a higher responsibility for sustainability and greener corporations and the possibility of accumulating knowledge into replication and synthesizing for general knowledge. The rate of tested and replicated studies is for the four conferences zero. The tested part, but not replicated, is 80%. The rate of untheorized untheorizable concepts is zero, the rate of theorized but not synthesized studies is zero, while the number of synthesized, theorized, and conceptual studies is around 20%. To become a discipline or research domain KM needs to replicate both empirical and conceptual studies. The only way to accumulate knowledge is through replication giving paradigms for verification and falsification. To move ahead for better quality in the research, we must break free from the empirical and materialistic paradigms and move into the clarified subjectivity and action paradigm. Paradigmatic ecumenism will tend to a fiercer but idea-generating debate. This pluralistic approach will give more engaged practical research representing more sustainable societies and businesses. ECKM is on the road to include more pluralistic perspectives upon sustainability, value creation, gender issues, and the design of future knowledge work. There is a critical openness toward these issues making ECKM 2020 a more relevant conference than the ECKM conferences in 2017, 2018, and 2019. The 2020 conference more open up for reflections, dialogues, and criticism upon existing problems and knowledge asking about what is the adequate actual KM solutions.

Gender Inequality in Latin America: A Multidimensional Analysis Based on ECLAC Indicators

This article analyzes the behavior of gender indicators on the economic, physical, and decision-making autonomy of Latin-American women, based on data compiled and published in 2020 by the Gender Equality Observatory of the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), for 17 countries. Using the HJ-Biplot multivariate technique, it is concluded that the three evaluated areas interact with each other, in such a way that they cannot be interpreted in isolation because their relationships and interdependencies explain the differences in the participation of men and women in the socioeconomic and political environment of the nations in the region. Additionally, it is concluded that in countries such as Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Bolivia, and Ecuador, greater public policy actions are required to seek the economic empowerment of women; while in Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia, laws are necessary to regulate violence against women. It is necessary to continue promoting gender equality in the region as a determinant factor in methodological frameworks and transformational policies to enable moving towards the construction of sustainable societies and economies.

Framework Proposal for Achieving Smart and Sustainable Societies (S3)

This article introduces a Smart and Sustainable Societies (S3) framework, based on what is necessary to achieve the UN agenda by 2030. The proposed model is based on the integration of three smart strategies: (1) water provision that consists of the use of greywater and rainwater; (2) sanitation provision that comprises the nutrients recovery from excreta and organic solid waste and; (3) resource-oriented agriculture that conceives the use of the water provision system for the production of food with the use of nutrients recovered from the sanitation system. The S3 framework has the potential to increase the well-being, human development, water availability, food safety, poverty alleviation, and healthy environments of societies through the provision of safely managed basic services as well as the recycling of nutrients and water to achieve sustainability at household and community levels.

Work Without Jobs

Technology has always had an impact on the world of work. This chapter compares the transformation of our societies during the Industrial Revolution with potential transformations that digitalization may bring about today. If digitalization is truly disruptive, more may be at stake than job losses in some sectors and job gains in others. Identifying several key features of digitalization, this chapter sketches a future of work in which not jobs but work itself stands in the center of economic activity. Such a development could open a pathway to more humanistic, more democratic, and more sustainable societies but would require rethinking entirely how we organize and reward work on a societal level.

Optimizing the Potential Impact of Energy Recovery and Pipe Replacement on Leakage Reduction in a Medium Sized District Metered Area

The drive for sustainable societies with more resilient infrastructure networks has catalyzed interest in leakage reduction as a subsequent benefit to energy recovery in water distribution systems. Several researchers have conducted studies and piloted successful energy recovery installations in water distribution systems globally. Challenges remain in the determination of the number, location, and optimal control setting of energy recovery devices. The PERRL 2.0 procedure was developed, employing a genetic algorithm through extended period simulations, to identify and optimize the location and size of hydro-turbine installations for energy recovery. This procedure was applied to the water supply system of the town of Stellenbosch, South Africa. Several suitable locations for pressure reduction, with energy recovery installations between 600 and 800 kWh/day were identified, with the potential to also reduce leakage in the system by 2 to 4%. Coupling the energy recovery installations with a pipe replacement model showed a further reduction in leakage up to a total of above 6% when replacing 10% of the aged pipes within the network. Several solutions were identified on the main supply line and the addition of a basic water balance, to the analysis, was found valuable in preliminarily evaluation and identification of the more sustainable solutions.