Feature

Student Summit for Sustainability 2009

IN our world today, we are being faced with a number of challenges, including the challenge of sustainable development. Sustainable Development refers to using resources without compromising the ability of future generations to use them and therefore combines ecology, economy and society. How we use our resources, how we behave as human beings when it comes to consumption, what we plan in the process of urbanization, and the politics concerning energy, and oil to be precise, are just a few questions that can be addressed if we are to think of our future generations. With interests in financial markets in particular, combined with the global financial meltdown, a chance to apply to a summit was the right platform at the right time that I managed to take a walk on!

The Student Summit for Sustainability (S3) 2009 took place in the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH in Zurich, Switzerland from January 25 to February 1 2009. It happened in collaboration with the AGS Annual Meeting. The AGS (the Alliance for Global Sustainability) is an alliance between MIT (US), Chalmers Univeristy (Sweden), Univeristy of Tokyo and The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.

A total of 88 participants from 29 countries around the world took part in the summit, not to mention the presence of numerous experts and academics throughout the conference. The theme of the summit was 'The Realistic Side of the World' and the subtopics were Geopolitics, Global Finance and Non-Monetary Incentives. Student participants presented and exhibited their work during the Poster Exhibition at the AGS Annual Meeting. Students also presented their papers and I was among those who did paper presentations. My paper was on “The Linkages between Financial Markets and Sustainable Development'.

This summit was organized by Project 21, one of the 13 student communities under the umbrella of the World Student Community for Sustainable Development, the WSC-SD and it was amazing how they put things together to make this summit possible.

The summit comprised of keynotes, open panel discussions and workshops and it was very inspiring to see how enthusiastic students were, in participating in these discussions throughout the summit.

We all got a chance to discuss about the problems, possibilities and pathways of some of the most pressing issues of our world today with people like Colin Campbell, Aaron Seigo, Prof. Peter Ulrich, Dr Andrea K. Riemer, Prof. Bernard A Lietaer and Edward Dommen. In particular, I found the discussions on Pro poor urban futures in developing countries, The Challenges for institutions and policy, and Complementary Currencies (options for today and tomorrow) very interesting.

Besides, there were adequate spaces that we could fill up with a lot of fun, including the Market of Ideas, in which students did presentations on their countries, combined with performances including songs, dances-you name it! In addition we had excursions and tours for example to a chocolate factory and also to the City of Konstanz, Germany.

(ESS Department , BRAC University)