One of the most interesting questions about the lecture, “do we all walk on sustainable path?” “Are we sustainable?”Lots of discussion have involved to answer this question. However, in my opinion, the answer is NOT about quantity, wealthy, consumption. Neo Maltusian theory has proved that the quantity do not affect too much on sustainable environment. Some countries have a dense population still they have good environment condition. Therefore, it’s not about the number of people exists on a country. But it’s about the quality of each person that determine sustainable life. Our biggest homework to create sustainable life is not reducing people’s number, but improving people’s quality which consist of three aspects: 1. Education: I think sustainable education should be implemented in all school curriculum to inspire our generation to understand and live out sustainability lifestyle. With more people understand the concepts and action, more people will do action by creating technologies and innovation that make our world sustainable. The more educated people on sustainability, the more impact they could make on sustainability. 2. Healthy: Sustainable life require a healthy people who understand how to take care themselves and their own environment. If a lot of people healthy, they could model lifestyle that sustain our world. 3. Income: Sustainable life talks how people could fullfill their own needs and future generations. The educated and healthy people who have sustainable lifestyle require an assurance of how they could make a sustainable change by getting more income. Sustainable life does not talk about number of people, it talks about quality of people. We are all in this together, we might the variety quality of our world from poor to rich. Our biggest homework is all about improving all people quality life. Finally, I believe it’s our time to take this simple action by taking care for ourselves and people around us to have sustainable education, healthy, and income that empower their quality to create better world for today’s and tomorrow generation.
 Sustainable Life Comes from Life Quality
One of the biggest homework of our world is to empowering the spread of sustainabilty spirit among our youth because our future world will be affected greatly by our young generation action. Indonesia, as one of the populous country and the jewel of equator which has variety of natural resources and beautiful landscape need to think deeply on how they could educate their young generation to preserve this “green” country exist for thousand years.
In Indonesia, there are lots of actions that has been done to empower youth in building sustainable awareness such as seminar, workshop, training, conference on sustainability. In Indonesia, we have several youth event such as green business competition, green movement that preserve natural resources and doing 3R (Reuse, Reduce, Recycle) in schools and green seminar and workshop.
However, I think we still have limitations on our consistency to empower all of youth from all over Indonesia. In addition, not every youth get the same opportunities to join such event. There is a huge gap between people in different islands of knowing and applying the ideas of sustainability itself. In fact, I believe every youth all over Indonesia need to know how to sustain their own country. This is the foundation of life for countries like us who has rich natural resources.
Reflecting on that fact, I think we need stronger foundation to lay down our basic concept of sustainability to every young generation. We need more than just an organization who conduct seminar or workshop in big cities to reach the point when each youth in Indonesia know how to implement sustainability concept.
First, I think this awareness should change the way our education were done in Indonesia. Here, environmental concept are taught separately on each different subjects. In addition, too many theories are more emphasized than case study that require students to think and act. I think this the time where education in Indonesia should integrate sustainability concept as one of the main subject to learn and require students to take real action in their daily life
Second, I think Indonesian government and education system should give more freedom for local young people to develop their own local natural potential. This freedom means integrating relevant skills for the students to study and develop their local potential in their own school. I think it’s more important for the students to know how to manage their unique environment than just knowing matter of subjects at schools.
Third, I think all environmental organization should have their own network in every places on Indonesia. They should have delegations for each region on Indonesia to do real project that improving the local natural potential. Collaborating with government, I think environmental institution could train and support our young generation to make a sustainable changes in their local area.
Finally, I hope sustainability spirit is avalaible for all, especially for all young generation in my country. This is how my countries deal with sustainable spirit, how about your own countries?
At the end, this is interesting video about how we give value for our beautiful nature! Enjoy!
This is amazing invention in analyzing demographic of countries!
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Hans Rosling: Stats that reshape your worldview
Hans Rosling: Global population growth, box by box
St. Augustine had ever said that, “Our world is a book if we don’t travel, we just read only one page of the book.” Well. As a Geografphy teacher, I thinki our education system should be awakened by the facts that we could not live for our own sake. We should realize another part of our country. Education should start inspiring our generation to “travel” around the world seeing how “IPAT” law has spread out throughout countries and how big the gap between the “IPAT” of one countries and the other. But the most importantly, we have to awaken our students not just sitting down and learn the theories but start to make their own change for earth. Education should train global thinking and local action to start and do something. This is the time for our students to think globally about the uniqueness of our beloved world and act locally for their surroundings. Without thinking globally, the students are blind, and without acting locally, the students could not walk. As a teacher, I would like to implement this in my class. I am thinking to start our sustainable life by enabling my students to see the real world situation, and they wil analyze and evaluate our sustainable life. Then, we will learn more than just a theory but also implementing our creative ideas to start a sustainable living. By sharing their own ideas, they could see a lot of opportunities for them to “move” their feet in their local city. I believe the smallest action they sow, the greater sustainability they will reap in the future.
Finally, I think the answer of our sustainable earth should open our people’s global eyes and move their local feet. That’s how we sustain our sustainable generation to generation. This is my action as a teacher. How about your action?
@StevenSutantro