This was our very first week of sustainable development and for me was a very useful one. It began fairly conventionally but ended quite unconventionally. The idea of doing a large group activity was very good as it gave us all a chance to get thinking about not just the class but what the class actually meant.

Our sub group on thursday had the title of “DEVELOPING COUNTRIES”. This I felt was a nice topic to get as it can so easily be talked about. One of my firm beliefs is that developing countries can possibly leap-frog developed countries in the sense that they can create a completely fossil fuel free society. Because of the lack of infrastructure, they have immense potential to create a completely eco-friendly one, which they will be able to sustain themselves.

I read an article recently in a book written by Al Gore, called “Our choice”, in which he describes a boy “who harnessed the wind”. He talks about a young man from a remote village in Malawi who used scrap parts from around the village to create a working windmill. From here he went on to educate himself and create more windmills. He now also uses solar panels and a car battery to store energy. Not only does he collect enough electricity to power his households needs, but his whole village too. He has also been able to build wells with working water pumps and help irrigate the land. This man has now gone on to appear at conference’s around the world.  I could not help but feel great joy as i read it and only wished there were more like him. I also liked the fact that this young man was so much more than a think-er, but was a do-er.

In our groups it was very easy to see just how many connections developing countries had with the various other topics. Two I  felt were most important and they were food and Deforestation.

  • cattle ranching+deforestation on the amazon
  •  Thousands of acre’s of rain forest get destroyed, completely disregarding the well-being of natives and habitat’s so that large companies can come in and put cattle on it to graze. Not only does this help release more CO2 into the atmosphere but also methane.It can be 21 times more harmful. And even more than that, the food that gets produced in this example of deforestation, people in the surrounding areas never see because they are often too poor to buy it.

As you will hopefully have seen from this blog, the class has really begun to get me thinking, instead of the normal mumbo jumbo that college dishes out in lectures, information I receive in SD(sustainable development) is exactly why I chose to do this course in the first place. To make a difference. I hope that each week from here on in only gets better and better.

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