Reflective statement on personal growth and learning

¶ … Environmental sustainability

Throughout the stretch of this period of tackling environmental sustainability and the challenges that come alongside it, much has come to light and my perspective has been significantly shifted from the structured perspective that I had on how to handle environmental challenges. This structured perspective was equally based and founded on reading material on environmental changes and how to handle them, but had missed out on crucial people related aspects as will be highlighted below.

One of the outstanding change as well as a challenge I have got from this study and presentations is the cultural value of environmental sustainability. It is not enough to have the technical know-how on environmental sustainability but it is of help to give it an interdisciplinary approach such that every available angle is taken care of, from the professional to the predominant culture and practices of the people concerned in the environmental conservation effort. This is the only sure way of ensuring sustainable environmental care.

It was also a significant lesson to know that getting to know the environmental challenge is not enough, but knowing the cause of the environmental challenge is more significant in setting up a program that is sustainable and in support of environmental conservation. Here there is need to focus on the people, the production trends, the consumption trend, the balance in the supply and demand, political ecology as well as the geopolitics and how these could be possible reasons for a given environmental challenge (Monash University, 2013).

This section of my interaction with environmental material also opened up my perspective on how food that we eat on a daily basis can be a root cause to our vast environmental challenges. The concept of the 'slow foods' and the complex foodscape as presented by Adeline Tay (2013) significantly illuminated on the negative effects that the fast foods and the changing food culture has on our environment. Initially this was not a clear concept to me as I only viewed it from the food production angle and not at the consumer levels.

The most significant challenge was however on the sustainability and transition. It was made clear how the sustainability concept cannot be treated as a goal and that it has no end point. It is a way of life in the long-term that we may choose to follow. It was also clarified that there is need to find the limits of the planet and hence live within these limits in order to perpetuate the process of environmental sustainability. This approach to environmental conservation is prompted by the vast transitions in structures, cultures as well as practices over the last few decades. Due to the numerous transitions, I learnt that it becomes very difficult to command and control transitions bearing the numerous uncertainties with the changing times, however, it is possible to influence the pace and the direction of the transition. The transition management is a model that has been successfully used in cities like Melbourne from the early 2000 with positive results and this indicated to me that it can be done elsewhere in the spirit of environmental conservation (Briony F., 2013).