Global Environmental Sustainability

Now that 'Summer' is officially over, I'm resuming my duties as your unofficially official tour guide in the process of Growing a Perspective. Getting back into the swing of things with my Masters took a bit , but I can already feel that my perspective is already evolving. Today, might seem a little different, in the sense that this time I have just been getting exposed to some new ideas and thought processes, but lets see where it goes.

Global Environmental Politics

This is a subject that I am taking this semester, and was a subject I was super excited about. This course is exposing me to a side of policy making that I have not had the chance to explore in detail until now. Even though the course has just started, there are a few things that piqued my interest and am curious to know how the perspective will evolve as the course progresses.

The class is filled with students from so many different fields of study - International Politics, Anthropology, Bioscience, etc. - and is super interactive. The chance to get to hear everyone else's view on the same topic really has already started to change the way I think about certain things. Now that the premise has been set, let's look into a topic that has caught my eye.

The 3 Pillars of Sustainability

I have mentioned this in earlier articles, but a here's a quick refresher - Sustainability is not just about the environment, its also about economic and social sustainability.

The awareness of these pillars itself has changed my life, but this class has now made me realize that when it comes to International Treaties regarding issues such as Climate Change, each of the 3 pillars gets considered and more often than not seamlessly intertwine. So far I was under the impression that policy making is easy and kept wondering why people cant just agree to certain policies and move on. Let's look at a very basic example:

Carbon Offsetting

One of the more well known cases of this is wherein a big organization makes up for their carbon emissions by paying money for the upkeep and/or expansion of a carbon sink (either a forest or any other biodiverse ecosystem). Now when it comes to agreements like this, there needs to be a lot of discussions to ensure that both parties are in agreement regarding proper compensation to ensure that the agreement can be sustainable.

It struck me that an agreement like this works with all the 3 pillars in mind.

Environmental - The forest or biodiverse ecosystem is taken care of, and in some cases even improved.

Economic - There is a source of income for the people taking care of the resource. This also creates an incentive for them to continue what they are doing

Social - The people have sustenance and the probability of them staying in that area for a longer time increases since their needs are being met, and could continue to be met moving forward.

Obviously, this all holds true only if the agreements are properly fleshed out and the party taking care of the resource are fairly treated and not exploited. Furthermore, the big organization should also be transparent regarding their own carbon footprint and accordingly be willing to partner even if that costs the organization a little bit more. Now social rationale behind such decisions and intrinsic motivations is a whole different conversation, but one I might delve into a at a later time.

Conclusion

I know that this article might have been all over the place and slightly shorter, but I really just wanted to get back into the rhythm of article writing. Furthermore, I have just started the course and am currently writing on some very raw impressions that I had. However, I hope that this article gave you a small insight that you may or may not have had. And as always, I hope your perspective was able to evolve with me