The Age of Stupid

During the Geen Week in Brussels we had a great opportunity to see the new documentary called The Age of Stupid. Its a move directed and written by Franny Armstrong, a nice lady who after the movie also gave a small talk.
For me it was the best documentary I have ever seen. Documentaries tend to be just a bit boring movies that aim to pass on the message in a very neutral way. So did this movie, but in a whole new way. The narrotor, Pete Postlethwaite was the last human being on the world (year 2050) and he just wondered, what happened that it all ended up like that.....
Its not the Greenpeace wale saving mission kind of movie, its a movie that makes every single person realise that jeopardising our whole planet because of a "ruined view" is just not worth it. (Theres a very interesting part in the movie about the wind turbines in some northern English village I believe, where the local people fight against sustainable ways of producing energy because the wind turbines are diminishing the values of their view. Really!!).
I really do recommend to see the movie!!
But even better, take your sceptic friend with you and show them the movie! I think its a great movie with which we can illustrate our point.

See the trailer at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZjsJdokC0s&feature=fvst

Universities going green around the world

Last week I had the luck to be present in 3rd international sustainable univeristies' conference, taking place in Lausanne, Switzerland, organised by International Sustainable Campus Network. It was amazing to know that so prestigious universities like Yale, Harvard, Cambridge, etc are also taking direction towards becoming more sustainable. It was also nice to see that there were universities present in the conference from almost all the continents.
Unversities seem to be seeking sustainability in mainly 2 directions:
1) reducing the negative environmental impact of their buldings through energy efficiency, reducing water use, amount of waste, CO2 emissions, etc;
2) creating environmental awareness, involving students, scientists, management and local communities into common actions towards sustainability.

Listening to different presentations, taking part in workshops and just discussing with different university leaders, there was one clear message: students are seen as key part towards change. Universities are looking for different ways how to involve students more, as in that way it's also easier to convice other parties to contribute to changes. Also, this year, first 2 awards for sustainable universities (construction and impact award) were given out, but there is plan to create more categories, one of them being award for student initiatives. And btw, representative from Higher Education Environmental Performance Improvement in UK seemed to be quite interested in cooperation with AEGEE ;)

So I think that there is much that we as students and AEGEE memebrs could do to spread the idea of sustainable universities in Europe, to make our own universities more sustainable. There are so many good examples to show already in the world, we just need to make our voices heard. After all, universities as education and research centres can play so important role in turning whole society towards sustainability.

Let's get "Sustainability" in the Spanish Dictionary!

I want to share something with all of you... I found out an iniciative that links to some prevoius post fo Kadri, and it is quite interesting idea: someone found out that in the Royal Academy of Spanish Language Dictionary there is not a definition of Sustainability.

They used the technologies that are now available and created a website to promote the inclusion of the word with a proper definition; but not only that, they are also asking people to propose definitions, to arrive to a common place for such an important word nowadays. Because, if lacking a definition is bad, a bad definition would be much worse.

Here is the webiste just for you to look at (if you understand Spanish would be much better):

http://www.sostenibilidadaldiccionario.com/index.php

In the Galeria link, you can find other kind of definitions: videos , pictures... people is quite creative on definitions!

But I want to see that AEGEE people is also creative, so you can send definitions here or you can even send videos there to that website. I will translate the best ones and send them to the website, so we gain also visibility for our project!

EDE competition!

We are glad to let you know some news for European Day of Environment!

Join a photo/video competition "Renewable energy" from May 25th till June 12th!

"Sustaining our Future" team has formed a partnership with the connect2earth initative, run by WWF and IUCN, and powered by Nokia!

1) Make a short video or photo series in the topic of renewable energy - how it could fit to our everyday life, what good can it bring, what is the future of renewable energy, etc.

2) From May 25th to June 12th, upload it to www.connect2earth.org site and remember to put your antenna name and "EDE" in the description of your post. Details how to upload your photos/videos, can be found here.

3) On June 19th, a jury composed of one member from WWF, IUCN and the SuFu team will select the winner, who will be awarded an environmental mobile phone solar charger and get a special highlight on the connect2earth site!

4) All the uploaded videos and photos will also compete in the overall connect2earth competition lasting throughout the year, with the final prize of participation in the UN Climate Change Negotiations in Copenhagen in December.

You can already check out the site now: www.connect2earth.org

makeITfair Amsterdam Youth Roundtable ‘09

I have recently represented SuFu and AEGEE at the makeITfair Youth Round Table in Amsterdam, an event organized by SOMO Netherlands, Dutch National Youth Council and “ Morgen” (the national student network of the Netherlands on Sustainable Development).

One general focus of the round table was to actively involve youth organizations in spreading the word on better working conditions & sustainable environmental impact of electronic industry.

As a campaign, makeITfair lobbies among big brand companies through meetings, round tables, policy statements and issues papers commenting on their current activities. On the other hand, use is made of support of international trade unions federations and local trade unions, consumers organizations or civil society organizations in many countries. More info on makeITfair you can find here: http://makeitfair.org/

Over the 3 days of round table we became familiar with the issues within the electronic industry, especially mobile phone manufacturing, and worked together on finding specific solutions to ensure the sustainability of IT.

The round table discussions focused on the economic, social and environmental problems of the electronics supply chain. Further plans of collaboration between makeITfair and the youth organizations were discussed.

We were also given the opportunity to engage in a dialogue with the industry, workers organizations from the South as well as with lobby organizations.

We were thirty youth representatives from organizations all around Europe, from countries like Germany, Finland, Denmark, Slovakia, Latvia, Czech Republic, the Netherlands, Sweden, UK, Poland.

Despite the somewhat limited time dedicated to networking (since the round table discussions were really intense) I managed to spend a lot of time promoting AEGEE and SuFu and I established contacts which I am sure could bevaluable for our next events. I was really happy to meet among the participants people who were already familiar with AEGEE,and who were even members of AEGEE too.

Already some people have expressed interest to promote AEGEE and cooperate with us in future events! Not so bad for such a short time alotted to knowing the fellow associations, really!

You can find some nice videos taken during the event here and here

Enjoy!

Barcelona congress - networking, and more networking

So what did me and Miguel actually do in Barcelona besides breathing all the possible info connected to sustainable development?

Our big day was October 7th – this is when we had our knowledge cafe named „Sustaining our Future – shaping the role of youth in Europe“. It was 1,5 h long session in a big room (with around 10 similar sessions at the same time). It’s actually unbelievable, that we applied to hold this event more than a year ago – in July 2007. Finally we were there, and we could see that the effort had been worth it – all the interested people couldn’t fit behind the table and had to take extra chairs. Everyone was listening to us carefully and asking a lot of questions; not only about SuFu, but also generally about AEGEE – how we communicate in such a big organisation, what activities do we have, how do we get our new members etc. Also, of course, we were congratulated by the initiative of trying to tackle sustainable development. Young people are big interest for the nature conservation sector – that showed also from many other sessions that we attended. For example, International Institute for Sustainable Development was rather interested in cooperation with Youth NGO’s, especially in trainings, as they put big emphasis on empowering future sustainability leaders.

The congress organisers also made an effort to target youth especially: there was a specific section in the congress webpage, and also they arranged a nice gathering on a boat in Barcelona harbour. It was a nice opportunity to meet people who organised sessions for youth during the congress. It was quite charming to meet by the sea, under evening sun, sip some wine, eat chocolate and chat with people from World Business Council for Sustainable Development for example. This organisation was btw, one the biggest congress partners. Besides having big pavillion with a lot of information, and sevaral sessions on concrete topics, they also organised Business Night Schools, where business and nature conservation representatives could meet and learn how they can cooperate together. It was there where we had the chance to talk a bit with representatives of some quite known companies. Who knows, we just might become partners as well - you will hear more about it then ;)

Of course, I also had small meeting with the representative of Countdown 2010 initiative, with whom AEGEE is an official partner since June 2008 – it’s a global action to stop the loss of biodiversity. We had nice evening chat about concrete ways to cooperate – I can just say that future European Day of Environment organisers can be happy ;)

All in all, the congress was just a perfect place to connect ourselves into the world of sustainable development and make ourselves seen. If you are interested to know more, read our congress report and/or summary of the knowledge cafe or just contact me or Miguel by mail. And please leave a comment here on the blog to INTERACT!!!

SuFu in IUCN congress in Barcelona

From 5th to 9th of October, me and Miguel spent in 4th World Conservation Congress in Barcelona. The main organiser was IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature), who is also SuFu's partner. Just like IUCN is one of the oldest and most important conservation networks in the world, is the congress one of the most important gathering in nature conservation and sustainability issues. It is held in every 4 years and offers the place for people from NGOs, businesses, academia from all the continents to network, share ideas, build partnerships, learn new things, etc.
The event was simply huge! 5 days, 7800 participants, over 800 different events - how many agorae would that make :P? And the diversity among these participants, types of events, tackled topics was also huge. I had the chance for example to meet with people from Costa Rica, India, South Africa, Japan - and they were all very interested in AEGEE as well actually :P I attended sessions about urban biodiversity, business tools for ecosystem assessment, the state of world's languages, youth's role in building sustainable future etc.
More info what contacts we made for SuFu and AEGEE, will follow soon. But here's few pictures from the event, as appetiser :)