The following is an essay on sustainable development by Anubha Momin, a Canadian student studying abroad in London who will be attending the Youth Encounter on Sustainability program in Braunwald, Switzerland. This two-week program "aims to sensitize participants to the complex issues of sustainable development in a global context, through course work, field trips, workshops, group work, discussions and practical learning experiences, combined with social and cultural activities".
I’ve been integrating climate conscious actions into my days for as long as I can remember: trying to view documents on screen instead of printing and printing double-sided if required to print, regarding plastic water bottles with disdain, and using cloth grocery bags even before I was being charged for plastic ones.
However, when my good friend Martina informed me that she was planning to traverse the 9306 km that make up Canada by bicycle in an effort to raise awareness about climate change, I began to reconsider my limited knowledge about the environmental issues my reducing, reusing, and recycling were to target. To that end, I decided to apply to the Youth Encounter on Sustainability program, a course run by ETH Zurich, which is being held this year in the car-free mountain village of Braunwald, Switzerland. I am seeking just the type of immersive, didactic environment YES offers in order to heighten my awareness of sustainable development, beyond the surface attention provided in blog posts, news programs, and school.
This article appears in Oct 22-28, 2009.