top-down or bottom-up?

It is a perennial question, whether to approach something from the top with decrees, laws and the like or allow something to self-organise from the bottom through shared interests and serendipitous collaborations. One can witness this in all manner of phenomena from nature to the most artificial of constructions. When it comes to Education for Sustainable Development (ESD or EfSD) my concern though is that as so much effort is being expounded from the top of the canopy, from International Organisations to nation states and colloquia, that the bottom could be starved of sunlight. That is, too heavy-handed a top-down approach, materialising in the form of laws or even obligations may result in the opposite of the desired effect at the grassroots.

I think people may become not only de-sensitised to matters concerning ESD but will ultimately revolt (obviously according to their nature) and decry all belief in SD and certainly ESD. And, of course, there is a multiplicity of reasons under-resourced, time-constrained or plain old cynical people could utilise to 'legitimise' their argument. I already have some anecdotal evidence of a potential backlash.

Of course, this would be catastrophic. To be too heavy-handed from the upper echelons of power will ultimately be counter-productive. I think this is worth bearing in mind as we all gather our own thoughts concerning Sustainable Development. Ultimately there will be a wide variety of approaches to approaching SD and ESD as this may prove to be the best solution to dealing with such a complex problem.

Let's not constrain nature but nurture it and allow it to propogate, to find its own way through the difficult years ahead. Supposed control may have been, after all, the cause of the problem in the first place.