Global Issues Club

Hello to all Global Issues Club members.and readers of this blog. As we come off the success of our visit from Claire and Bisrat, it is time to switch gears a bit and begin preparation for our Global Issues Network Conference in Düsseldorf this March.

They have asked that we research and learn as much as we can about the main theme this year, which is sustainability. Here is what they have sent us:

“Sustainable development” statement for GIN Conference

“It is people who do development, not governments, and therefore sustainable development is a local activity. All people, however poor, have some ability, however constrained, of changing what they do, in small ways.”
Source: Garrett Nagle, “Development”- Hodder Murray

Please research this BEFORE the event so that you can discuss this statement during the conference. Just bear in mind that this statement gives a starting point to the discussion and that there can be many ways to address the problems around sustainability at local or international level.

Please also remember that your objective is to find solutions to these problems and to include them in your school’s Action Plan as much as possible. The idea being that this plan will be implemented when you are back in your own school after the conference…

Definition of sustainable development:

Development that improves basic standards of living without compromising the needs of future generations. This takes in economic issues, ecological concepts, sociological principles and moral rights.
- Garrett Nagle (“Development”)

The four dimensions to sustainable development generally quoted are:

• social
• economic
• environmental
• institutional

Before we start researching and learning about what sustainability means, please leave a comment on this post about what you think the term means to you. In the coming weeks, we will work with you to arrive at a more polished and sophisticated response, but in the meantime- what do you think it means for something to be sustainable?