This review symposium issue brings together scholars to engage with the findings presented in our recent book Education for Sustainable Development in an Unequal World: Biopolitics, Differentiation and Affirmative Alternatives. Adopting a comparative biopolitical approach, the book explores how Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) is enacted in different socio-economic and geographical contexts around the world and how inequality is managed in these processes. In this opening piece, we first introduce the book and its central arguments. We then highlight several themes that, while addressed in the book, we believe merit further scholarly attention. These include the complex interplay of different inequalities; subtle articulations of coloniality and the 'Malthus effect'; the potential for a democratic biopolitics; and alternative attributions of community - all considered within the broader context of the global ESD enterprise and its peculiar combination of biopolitical inclusion and separation.

In this empirical study we examine the characteristics of energy systems change for Rwanda envisioned by actors seeking to drive transitions who are based both within and outside the country. We rely on empirical data from interviews (N = 62) and observations. We focus on electricity and cooking services as domains which actors including the Rwandan government are seeking to transform. Our study proposes two sociotechnical imaginaries of change. The first envisions rapid, large-scale and private sector-led adoption of externally developed technologies and priorities, aligning with global sustainability agendas. The second envisions a more gradual pathway co-produced by local actors. The first imaginary's dominance has material implications. It frames Rwanda as a recipient of technology from transnational actors, who co-produce the imaginary along with the government. From a critical standpoint, the first imaginary assigns a passive role to users and rural actors while prioritizing transnational actors in urban areas, reproducing coloniality. The second imaginary similarly adheres to modernist ideals of technoscientific advance and economic catch up. Nonetheless, making room for the second imaginary and actors who challenge the first imaginary may avoid transitions in Rwanda inevitably favouring externally developed technologies and knowledges. Promisingly, certain alternative perspectives imagine transitions with characteristics which disturb the coloniality and adherence to modernity perceptible in the two imaginaries. We invite transnational actors to reflect over their participation in the stabilisation and destabilisation of place-specific energy systems change imaginaries. From a policy perspective, we highlight tensions between ambitions to implement rapid energy transformations and to innovate technologies domestically.

This final chapter concludes the book. The first part of the chapter summarizes and discusses the main findings and themes of the book. Contributions to previous research and missing pieces are also brought to the fore. The second part of the chapter seeks to intervene in the world of ESD policy and practice by raising issues around what affirmative alternatives there might be to current modes of biopolitical differentiation in global ESD implementation – that is, alternatives that take seriously UNESCO’s vision of a more just and sustainable world.

If we are to achieve climate change targets, transport systems need to transform. This article is concerned with the prospects of challenging the regime of automobility in urban areas. It employs a governmentality framework, alongside theories of automobility, in order to analyse mobility governmentalities in Gothenburg, Sweden. Gothenburg is an interesting case in the context of reducing car use given its identity as a ‘car city.’ Despite this, Gothenburg has high ambitions in terms of reducing car traffic. Reaching these goals are however associated with challenges: prognoses predict a continued increase in car traffic, and political acceptance is viewed as an obstacle. The article’s findings are based on semi-structured interviews with public officials and stakeholders, zooming in on (1) conflicting spatialities and temporalities (2) competing logics of circulation and pace and (3) mobility imaginaries of the (im)possible. We argue that while there are new logics entering urban mobility governmentalities as an effect of the climate transition, their possibilities to affect material change are confined because the movement and circulation of ‘people and things,’ ultimately represented by the private car, are closely tied to the way that freedom is exercised, understood and manifested in contemporary liberal societies.

Chapter 5 explored the (neo)liberal rationalities and techniques through which Eco-Schools is made governable globally. The present Chapter 6 closes in on local eco-schools and offers a comparative biopolitical analysis – between and across sites – of how the programme is unpacked in different socio-economic and geographical contexts. The chapter begins with a short introduction to the local eco-school settings in Sweden, South Africa, Rwanda and Uganda, where fieldwork was conducted. The subsequent analysis demonstrates how conceptions of local living conditions and sustainability problems affect implementation, and how globally standardized Eco-Schools themes are unpacked very differently in situ. The chapter further brings attention to the different roles that individuals and communities, as governmental categories, assume in discrete socio-economic and geographical contexts. Penultimately, the chapter engages with the elephant in the room – inequality – and how it is (or is not) handled in Eco-Schools implementation. What emerges from the overall analysis is an evident biopolitical pattern of distinctions between rich and poor populations which goes far beyond local variation.

Education for sustainable development (ESD) has become recognized as a key instrument to achieve the global sustainable development goals. ESD is also recurrently depicted as a global enterprise that unites humanity in a common pursuit of a more just and sustainable world. But how is this enterprise pursued in a world marked by enormous inequality? Drawing on biopolitical theory, and rich empirical data from different countries around the world, this book explores how populations in different socio-economic and geographical settings are approached under the banner of ESD and how inequality is managed in these processes. Inspired by Foucauldian theory of biopolitics and comparative case study methodology, the book develops a biopolitical comparative approach to the study of global ESD implementation, focusing on rationalities, techniques and ‘effects’. The book demonstrates how ESD interventions are locally adapted to fit the lifestyles of populations in discrete socio-economic and geographical contexts. The implication of this ostensible and depoliticized sensitivity to local ‘realities’, the book argues, is that that inequality becomes presupposed, normalized, and arguably even (re)produced. The cohesion of the global ESD enterprise is thus maintained by accommodating inequality and by assigning different roles and responsibilities to rich and poor in the worldwide educational quest for sustainable development. Ultimately, the book seeks to intervene in the world of ESD policy and practice by considering affirmative alternatives to current modes of biopolitical differentiation.

This chapter and the next explore the world’s largest ESD programme – Eco-Schools – through comparative biopolitical analysis across sites and scales. Combined, the two chapters probe how the programme is governed globally, and how it is unpacked in different local contexts in a world marked by deep inequality. The present chapter focuses on the rationalities and techniques through which the programme is rendered governable globally. The chapter begins with a short introduction to Eco-Schools and to the programme’s national operators in Sweden, South Africa, Rwanda and Uganda. Thereafter, the chapter proceeds with an analysis of how Eco-Schools is governed across scales. Through this analysis, the (neo)liberal biopolitical elements that pervade the programme are laid bare. These include: the programme’s efforts to target and transform everyday life through education; techniques of self-management and performativity; decentred power structures; and the overall logic of global inclusion. A biopolitical understanding of these modalities of government will prove important as it will pave the way for the subsequent chapter’s findings from different local Eco-School settings.

This chapter offers a comparative biopolitical analysis of the prestigious UNESCO-Japan Prize on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), which honours outstanding ESD initiatives around the world. The chapter demonstrates how awarded initiatives unfold in different socio-economic contexts across the globe. Starting with a short introduction to the prize and our means of exploring it, the chapter proceeds with short analytical accounts of all awarded ESD initiatives, located in different regions around the world, in the period 2015 to 2021. The analysis brings attention to: the target beneficiaries and their assorted living conditions; the addressed sustainability problems; the overall rationalities and the educational techniques used; and the (alleged) outcomes of each awarded initiative. The chapter then zooms out to draw comparisons between and trace across the awarded ESD initiatives, whereby a global biopolitical pattern of distinctions emerges. While this biopolitical pattern is laid bare, the chapter also brings attention to other rationalities at play that disrupt, or at least complicate, the general picture. Ultimately, the chapter points to the peculiar combination of unity and separation, and the commensurate inability to challenge inequality, that is characteristic of the global ESD enterprise.

This chapter sets the stage by introducing the problem and the aim, the theoretical and empirical focus, the scholarly contributions, and the outline of the book. The book’s starting point is a concern with how the idea of ESD as an enterprise that unites humanity in a common pursuit of a more just and sustainable word is reconciled with the fact that the world is enormously unequal. This leads up to the book’s aim, which is to explore how ESD is implemented in different socio-economic and geographical contexts around the globe, and how inequality is managed in these processes. The chapter briefly introduces why a biopolitical comparative perspective is relevant and how it can add to our understanding of ESD. The book’s conception of inequality is also introduced and the significance of distinguishing conceptually between inequality and difference is underscored. The chapter further introduces the book’s comparative case study approach and offers a brief overview of the empirical material and the various contexts and levels of scale where the research was conducted. Ultimately, the chapter discusses the limitations of our approach as well as the contributions of the book in relation to previous research.

This chapter explores the biopolitical ‘effects’ of ESD interventions in terms of the subjectivities and conceptions of sustainable lifestyles that they produce in different socio-economic and geographical contexts. The chapter begins with a brief introduction to the empirical material alongside some reflections on methodological challenges involved in studying biopolitical ‘effects’. The chapter then proceeds with a comparative biopolitical analysis of such effects in discrete socio-economic and geographical ESD settings. This analysis brings attention to the different conceptions of sustainable lifestyles that are produced among students and how they understand their everyday lives, and constitute themselves as agents, in relation to sustainable development. Attention is further drawn to the notions of responsibility that are produced and where responsibility for sustainable development is located. Thereafter, the analysis closes in on the students’ engagement with democratic decision-making within ESD activities, and how they think about themselves as shapers of sustainable development through these initiatives. Finally, attention is drawn to how students situate themselves geographically in relation to sustainable development and how they engage with the key rationale of ESD suggesting that the local community is the most promising arena for transformative action.

This chapter provides a short history of global ESD policy initiatives as coordinated by UNESCO, alongside a biopolitical analysis of the current framework, ESD for 2030. The chapter begins by revisiting the contested concept of ESD and introducing UNESCO as its leading global promoter. Thereafter, the chapter provides a short history of the three consecutive UNESCO initiatives: the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (2005–14), the Global Action Programme on Education for Sustainable Development (GAP) (2015–19) and ESD for 2030 (2021–30). This short history contextualizes, and traces the trajectory between, the initiatives. The chapter then proceeds with a biopolitical analysis of ESD for 2030 which brings attention to the rationalities underpinning the framework, including the conception of life and how human populations are distinguished between on socio-economic grounds. The analysis further demonstrates how notions of transformative pedagogy, community, and the individual assume functions as biopolitical techniques. While the framework invites all of humanity to join the educational quest for sustainable development, the findings clearly demonstrate how, already at the global policy level, a form of biopolitical differentiation can be discerned whereby rich and poor populations are assumed to need different kinds of ESD interventions.

This chapter develops the book’s comparative biopolitical approach. The chapter begins by taking a step back and looking at Michel Foucault’s more general understanding of power as productive and his notion of government as the ‘conduct of conduct’. Thereafter, the chapter closes in on some of the central ideas and key concepts of the Foucauldian theory of biopolitics, which leads up to the book’s conceptualization of ‘neoliberal biopolitics’. The chapter then makes a quick turn to Georgio Agamben’s different approach to biopolitics and his concerns with the hierarchical separation of life. From there the chapter proceeds to the relationship between biopolitics and inequality, which paves the way for the book’s conception of the ‘biopolitics of inequality’. Ultimately, the chapter fleshes out the three dimensions of our comparative biopolitical approach – biopolitical rationalities, biopolitical techniques, and biopolitical effects – and the therewith associated sets of analytical questions that guide our exploration between and across sites of ESD implementation

In this conceptual review, we use the concept of "framing" to explore how scholars work with innovation. Using a thematically and geographically diverse sample of 88 articles, we focus on sustainability transitions as research domain, energy as sector and literature review as method. Framings of innovation differ by themes such as agency, directionality and location, as well as onto-epistemological categories such as envisioned academic contribution and geographic sit-uatedness of knowledge making. The implications of some framings are concerning, such as that econometric analysis of firm-level innovation in higher income countries can proxy for innovation globally, or that donors are the principal stimuli of innovation in lower income countries. This research shows how groups, places or outcomes are included or excluded in different domains of innovation research. We propose a heuristic tool which seeks to render explicit the boundaries for innovation drawn in any article, to aid reflexivity and epistemic humility.

This article explores the question of what constitutes the "social" in (social) sustainability. It applies a governmentality perspective and focuses especially on how social sustainability is understood in relation to the concepts of society and community. Furthermore, it investigates what social sustainability means, or could mean, in the specific context of water governance in South Africa - one of the most unequal countries in the world. This case study is based on original fieldwork in the country, conducted between 2017 and 2018. The theoretical exploration, together with the empirical study, demonstrate that there are two interrelated tensions between understandings of social sustainability, between approaches that place society/social cohesion in focus and those that emphasise community and between approaches that focus on basic needs and those that emphasise equal access. At stake here, between these different understandings, is the role of equity and to what extent social sustainability takes into account the situation of individuals and groups in relation to one another. Ultimately, the article raises the question of the (South African) elephant in the room: to what extent can large inequities between individuals and groups be accepted in a society considered to be (socially) sustainable?

Gothenburg city has bold ambitions of becoming carbon neutral. School commuting is one piece of the puzzle in reducing emissions. While the literature on school transportation is extensive, the issue of climate change has been overlooked. This article explores how parents in the district of Majorna understand mundane choices of school transportation in a context of increasing recognition of climate change. The article shows that school transport is a contentious issue, entangled with subjectivity, emotions, and notions of responsibility. The findings also highlight some complexities: (1) Although most parents are concerned with climate change it is not a significant factor in daily transportation. (2) There is a discourse in favour of active transportation where climate change is explicitly downplayed, on the other hand regular car use merges with deep climate concerns. (3) Informants’ anticipations of future urban traffic conflict with their hopes, yet it seems difficult to imagine something otherwise.

Recently, the new global policy framework for implementing education for sustainable development (ESD) - ESD for 2030 - was launched officially. Drawing on Foucauldian theory, this paper explores biopolitical elements in ESD for 2030. The paper contributes to previous research on ESD policy by employing a biopolitical perspective, and by highlighting problematic aspects of the framework's will to include and to adapt to different contexts. The analysis brings attention to the framework's notions of life and to how different human populations are separated. Furthermore, the analysis of the framework demonstrates how notions of transformative pedagogy, community, and the individual, assume the functions of biopolitical techniques. The findings point to a biopolitical differentiation where rich and poor populations are assumed to need different educational interventions, adapted to their socio-economic contexts, in the global educational policy quest for sustainable development. Ultimately, we consider the potential of Foucauldian ethics as an affirmative alternative to the current mode of biopolitical differentiation in global ESD policy

This article investigates the role of scarcity in water governance with a particular focus on South Africa. It applies a (green) governmentality perspective and argues that in neoliberal hydromentality scarcity is used as a regulatory device that governs people's water access. In South Africa, water governance and water scarcity have for a long time been central to the construction of a particular state with particular social purposes. While scarcity in the post-apartheid period has mainly been used as a means of governing the poor, the role of scarcity has in the recent water crisis been transformed; scarcity has increasingly become a material concern for all of society. Notwithstanding that the crisis is due not only to the lack of rain but also to political and institutional factors, it has, in media and policy circles, involved a preoccupation with scarcity as a physical phenomenon. Such a preoccupation risks obscuring the reasons why poorer populations have long suffered from the lack of water. At the same time, the article contends, the current crisis presents South Africa with an opportunity for revisiting water scarcity as a technology of governing in creating a more sustainable and equitable water allocation.