ABSTRACT
In this book, energy has been used as a lens to focus on the sustainability debate. The critical element of change analysed in the Arctic was energy production/use and energy transition in sensitive areas impacting human and natural systems as well as the capacity to understand rapid and complex geographical changes, and benefit from a multicultural dimension through HE. The complexity around sustainability serves as an educational impulse for the improvement of learning processes and the continuous search for sustainability presents an opportunity to develop education and pedagogies. SD is a controversial concept even when non-indigenous stakeholders from different energy backgrounds (oil and gas, and renewable energy systems) are considered, and this lack of convergence is even more emphasized when indigenous and non-indigenous staff and students’ perspectives are under analysis. ESD is thus also essentially contested territory and open to various interpretations following the same controversies of the SD concept and not an educational mainstream because of the same difficulty of providing the practical balance between economic, environmental, and human aspects. ESD is a vision of education based on important premises of compatibility of the human needs to the natural capacity of the planet and solidarity inspiring the notion of citizenship, but these are premises that vary according to the cultural and economic backgrounds. The findings demonstrated that the knowledge, skills, and competences required to live and operate in the Arctic require a more comprehensive range of competences or intelligences aligned to a superior level of critical reflection oriented to long term (intergenerational) collective outcomes based on multicultural respect and responsibility. This is the genesis of the Arctic Citizenship Educational Model that goes beyond participation patterns of education to set the learners in the real-life geographical contexts and learning sets to resolve daily problems with impacts on daily lives.
