Ivy Geok Chin Tan

Guest Editorial Geography Education for Sustainable Development in Southeast Asia

As geography educators at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, we are delighted to have the opportunity to share some of the research works in Southeast Asia in this special issue of International Research in Geographical and Environmental Education (IRGEE). The articles selected for this regional special issue were presented at a threeday conference on ‘Sustainability and Southeast Asia’ that involved more than 300 geographers, geography educators and other social scientists in November 2006, in Singapore. A number of issues had been raised regarding how sustainability for Southeast Asia can be achieved. As a response to the issues raised, we posit that the future of sustainability lies in education for sustainability development (or ESD). Inherent in the concept of sustainability is the idea that development should be kept apace so that future generations’ development will not be compromised. Without education, an important process to pass on and disseminate ideas and to enculturate epistemologies about what constitutes sustainable practices to our future generations, there is little hope for sustainability. We therefore argue that geography education takes centre stage, as ESD is not present as a subject nor featured strongly in the core curriculum in many countries in Southeast Asia. In the editorial of the first issue of IRGEE in 2007 on ‘Sustainable Environments or Sustainable Cultures. Research Priorities’, Lidstone and Stoltman (2007) propose that there is a need to ‘conduct comparative research on how geography curricular in various countries′ is addressing sustainability issues. Indeed, this regional special issue of IRGEE will be devoted to responding to the aforesaid proposal by providing an outline of research areas in Southeast Asia in which such comparative research can be conducted. The idea for such a regional special issue that responds to the objective mentioned earlier came about in late June, 2006 when we both participated in the International Geographic Union (IGU) Commission on Geographic Education (CGE) meetings in Brisbane. We attended the conference in our capacity as a university faculty as well as representatives of the Southeast Asian Geography Association (SEAGA). While SEAGA has been an active organisation providing the platform for exchange of ideas between geographers and social scientists since 1990, it was only formally registered as an association with the Registry of Societies in Singapore in 2006. As office bearers in the newly registered SEAGA, we had special interest in how the proceedings of the CGE meetings could inform the direction of SEAGA and its activities. Our first article in this issue is titled ‘Networking for the Region and Beyond – Role of the Southeast Asian Geography Association (SEAGA)’. Giok Ling Ooi and Kim Chuan Goh, being present and past presidents of SEAGA respectively,