What does 'sustainability' mean? It means being able to continue
to do something without causing damage. "Meeting the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their own needs" is another definition. As you can see below there are
three basic
dimensions, social, environmental, and economic, but there are endless
possibilities for what you might
consider to be an issue of sustainability. In order to decide what is
sustainable, it
might be easier to think of what isn't sustainable, for example
something that seems like a small problem now but will cause a big
problem someday in the future.
In a country like Kenya creating sustainability would mean
something like what Wangari Maathai's group GBM does by planting trees
and empowering women. In the Middle East, finding a solution to the
Palestinian problem may be the key to making sustainable peace not only
in the region, but also around the globe. No one could deny that what
the Millennium Development Goals aim for is sustainability and goal
number 7, 'environmental stability', is probably what most people
understand by the word 'sustainability'. 'Sustainable development'
cannot be achieved if globalization and economic growth end up
destroying nature and increasing poverty, and of course global warming
and the goals of the Kyoto Protocol are linked to this unsustainable
growth. As you can see, issues of sustainability are connected and we
have studied
many such issues in our two years together in the international course.
For
your final report, define sustainability and introduce an idea or thing
that you think has promise for creating a sustainable future.
(170 words for
the test, 1 or 2 A4 pages submitted in 罘)
Your essay structure might look something
like this:
Present situation (蟐鞆ﾅj
|
Problem areas (�ﾋ�_ﾅj
|
Solutions (笊裄釖ﾅj
|
