The last one

Will we reach our sustainable goals? What do we need to do?

“Creating Sustainable Communities means putting sustainable development into practice. Sustainable Communities must combine social inclusion, homes, jobs, services, infrastructure and respect for the environment to create places where people will want to live and work now and in the future.”

Rt. Hon. John Prescott MP,
Deputy Prime Minister, February 2005 [online] http://www.defra.gov.uk/sustainable/government/publications/uk-strategy/documents/Chap6.pdf (1999)

So i gues what Prescott was trying to say was, we all have to come together and work together in order to have a longer and hopefully happier future. But what must be achieved by us in order for our world to become more sustainable. More imporatantly, why might we not reach our goals?

The summary in chapter 6 of DEFRA, states that at a local level, the government is trying to improve neighbourhoods, creating healthier communites and getting everyone involved in helping to improve our own homes/areas. Firstly, ecologically, where will the resources be aquired from? But also, economically, where doe the governement think they will get the money from to improve each individual local area across the UK. Furthermore, how do they expect to bring whole communities together to be more sustainable, if the people in the communities don't get along?

Also, with space in the UK seeming to run low (for building purposes) how are neighbourhoods going to be improved when there is no spacve to expand into. More people want a healthier looking environment, and with that means that their homes will need to be improved, so they can last in the furture.

DEFRA (1999) states that priorities for sustainability in the future for local communites include:
create attractive and welcoming parks, play areas and public spaces

• engage and empower local people and communities
• improve the physical infrastructure of places
• make places cleaner and maintain them better
• make places safer and tackle anti-social behaviour
• improve health by encouraging and supporting healthy lifestyles, and
• tackle inequalities and support the needs of children and young people.

Engaging people and communities may be quitre difficult, with many people afraid of going out thier front door for the fear of crime awaiting them may prevent quite few people socailising with their neighbours. To make their home safer though, it is believed that anti-socail behaviour can be dealt with when communities work together to produce solutions to criminal behaviour (The Online Journal, 2009) [online] http://www.journalonline.co.uk/News/1006375.aspx

At a national level, the government focuses on equal opportunities for all, which means everyone has the right to improve and reach their full potential in life. But some people do not have the facilities avaiable to them in order for them to reach their potential. Either because public services are too far away, or the price of living has just become too great.

At a global level, the Millenium Development Goal was established to abolish inequalites throughtout the world by 2015 (http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/pdf/The%20Millennium%20Development%20Goals%20Report%202008.pdf)

In the report, it explains how the goals are not being met due to adverse affects from not focusing onsufficient matters from the past (MDG, 2008), explaining that lack of funding to agriculture and rural development in LEDC's means that hunger is now an increased threat. It goes on then about climate change,

"Climate change would be a less immediate threat
if we had kept pace with commitments to sustainable
development enunciated again and again over
the years."

(MDG, 2008)

We have been very unsustainable throughout history, and have caused major damage to our climatic system; our world is heating up, even more problems have risen. Goals are not being met, prolonging the time it will take to save it by being more sustainable.
Sustaniablity can be a very hard thing to accomplish and understand. We all need to try and work together not only to save the environment for the future, and by future i mean for whe WE are older, not just future generations. But we also need to save ourselves, work together in communities, help each other, by doing this, economically, ecologically and socially, we will eventually become more equal than we are today, and so can sustain our world and enjoy it just that little bit longer.

Lumbertubs...sustainable?

I've lived in Northampton for as long as i can remember, and in Lumbertubs since i was about 3. Though i can't wait until August to move out, i'll always have good and bad memories of this area. The community spirit developed between me and my neighbours over the years, the unfortunate cutting down of trees throughout my neighbourhood, the many many council houses.

I researched into some statistics for my area, to try and understand the population which live here. Depending on what the people are like e.g. employed, qulifications, can help to exlplain whether or not my community if sustainable or not.

Using the National Office of Statistics i was able to find out some useful information about Lumbertubs. [online] http://www.neighbourhood.statistics.gov.uk/dissemination/LeadHome.do;jessionid=ac1f930c30d7e14947527f424ebc91268339c3727cf0?m=0&s=1235561163626&enc=1&nsjs=true&nsck=true&nssvg=false&nswid=1003

Currently, there are 1527 residents in the area which occupy 660 houses. 256 of these residents live on their own, and 21 of the houses in the area are currently vacant. 186 houses are classed as council houses, which i found quite weird, ever since i was a kid i always thought that most of the people in my area lived in council houses. But this is probably due to the stereotypical view i developed of people in my neighbourhood and so assumed as a child that people like this were from poorer areas within my community.
Shockingly, 406 have no qualifications at all, but somehow 719 are employed. With a lot of the community having eother low or no qualifications, i can guess that it would be rather hard for people to change the way they live in order to be more sustainable.

However, most of the people around my street and the street down from me seem to all do their bit and recycle, well its a start right? But i can honestly say that i do not believe the community is close knit, or has a community spirit. There is no place for everyone to conjugate and discuss matters involing the area. However, i do not socialize a lot with the people in my community so i can not be sure on this.
A good point is that there are lots of green areas in Lumbertubs, also with a wood right next to it and a local doctors surgery. The number 16 bus is the local transport (unless you have a car or walk) and it comes almost every 10 minutes, so the public transport is pretty good.

But do i think my community is sustainable? No, no i don't. It is part of the reason i can't wait to escape from here. Sometimes it can be scary just walking out of my front door. The economy is not very good in my area, so even having a little money of your own can be dangerous, who knows who might steal from you? They have cut down almost all the trees, which just creates an eye sore, now i HAVE to look at the old, dingy council houses that i have grown up hating, plus i grew up playing outside around these trees.

I don't know my community that well, but from all the fights i can hear, and the ASBO teenagers wandering around the streets, i can't help but not feel like a have a sense of place here.

I'm a little slow, teach us what to do...exaclty

Ok so i will admit that im not the person in class raising their hand with the answers all the time. I'm also not the most sustainable student on campus, and i dont show as much enthusiasm or motivation as i probably should. However, this does not mean that i think we should at least all try and be a tad more sustainable.

I don't know much on how to be resourceful for myself, how to be more enviro-friendly; but this does not mean i don't want to be. Being more sustainable would greatly benefit us all, but i think we actually need to be taught HOW we can be more sustainable instead of being told to just do it, otherwise it makes us resent the cause. Public awareness is only just starting to focus on sustainable development with the help of the UN's proposal of introducing it to "all aspects of education and learning"
(http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=27234&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html)

One way in which the UN is bringing awareness was by releasing a media kit to the public headlining the socail and economical effects.
http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=56365&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

Whilst researching this topic, i came across the world awareness website, which specified that the main part of "education for sustainable development" is in fact the "for". It is implaying we need to be taught how to live more economically and, as they quote

"enables people to develop the knowledge, values and skills to participate in decisions about the way we do things, individually and collectively, locally and globally, that will improve the quality of life now without damaging the planet of the future"

http://www.worldaware.org.uk/education/sustain.html

Educateing young people who to think for themselves enables them to learn how to think outside the box and see that they are responsible for their own actions; logically develop their own opinions, and therefore take action.

Although i havent been able to acess the Haigh (2005) article from home (i'll hopefully add more later once read at the library), i do agree with the title, that Geoegraphy is probably the best place to learn about sustainable development, afterall, you do learn about the world in geography...at least last time i checked we did.

Feelings for the module? It gets me thinking at times (and i stress AT) i have to be in the mood to think, and therefore write, but when i do i find it a very interesting topic to discuss, though learning depths about it isnt a strong point in me.

deepest aplogies for being so late...again