A decade of sustainable development?

So today I found out that it is the decade (2005-2014) for the 'United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development' and its goal’s is as follows;'...to integrate the principles, values, and practices of sustainable development into all aspects of education and learning. This educational effort will encourage changes in behaviour that will create a more sustainable future in terms of environmental integrity, economic viability, and a just society for present and future generations.'So to what extent do I believe that education for sustainable development is valuable? And also do I agree with Haigh (2005) that Geography is best placed to deliver this curriculum? Well my short answer would be that both points are very valid and I agree with each of them but there are always going to be others that wouldn’t agree with the statements. The picture above is the official emblem of this decade which was passed into official channels in 2002 and as part of this there are special topics for each year and this year is the year of the gorilla (I kid you not). So is it a good idea to try and get kids involved in all of this then? I think that it is of crucial importance that we hammer the message home to kids early what the world is becoming and what part they can play in its possible saving. I know some people would say that they are too young but you have to start early before negative media turns them against the idea in countries like America and others. It has been proven time and time again that education works best when they are as young as possible and education for sustainable development is a key issue for the future. Whether knowledge of geography or world events are more import than history and others is up to debate as of course Haigh is biased towards geography as a writer on the topic but I believe it will more likely a combination of several combining of ideas would work best and allow them the formulate the best ideas.

http://portal.unesco.org/education/en/ev.php-URL_ID=27234&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html
I have also been asked to write about my feelings about this module.
I believe that this module has been a very interesting one as actively searching for data has been a very interesting challenge. Having to produce blogs on the spot like some sort of entertainer has been a bit annoying but I have managed to make sure fury has not been vented in the blogs! I have found the topics covered very interesting as they are very diverse and different and writing about them has been a very interesting and rewarding experience.

So could this be a good recession?

So can there ever be a good recession for the people of the world when all we are being faced with is doom and gloom, depression and despair? Well even through all these headlines scream at us like the end is nigh there can be some positive aspects to a global recession but these are few and far between. The majority of a recession is a massive negative for all involved as it means that people stop trying to spend more and try to cut back on many things and this can end up will people losing their jobs (which has been headline news for many weeks now) which in turn leads to the loss of many people’s homes and business as the whole economy grinds to a halt and it takes an awful lot to try and get it moving again. One of the measures that has been taken by the government in trying to tackle these problems is the lowering of interest rates as this means people have to pay less back on their loans than they used to and this means that less money needs to be spend on paying off mortgages. This is supposed to help but even with the interest rates at an all time ,low of 1% there still has been no change and these measures seem not to been working but time will tell as these are fairly recent measures. The major positive is that even though many shops both small and large and closing down in droves there are still many that are open and these are creating huge savings that will benefit the British consumer or will they? The truth is that this falls well short of even a stop-gap situation and these measures are likely to lead to even more problems in the future as there are many issues these solutions create and these many become apparent in the future. An interesting article I stumbled across in the Times (where else?) is that there have been far fewer road traffic accidents and far fewer road deaths than ever before and the fall it larger than the previous five years combined. This is because fewer people can afford to drive to work now that it is so expensive and cars are now becoming so expensive to run. There is a flipside to this however as there have been far more cycling accidents over the same period as there have been more and more people trying to get to work by alternative and cheaper options but it seems that some people have ended up in a far worse situation. So in the end there are a lot of things that are bad about a recession and very few good things to come out of it so in conclusion a recession is very very bad unless you like to but houses, buy clothes or cycle into work which is a limited group off people.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1088566/SUZANNE-MOORE-At-stop-shopping-life.html
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/engineering/article5671789.ece

Our travel survey, my thoughts

So on the 22nd of January we carried out our travel survey in the university of Northampton Park campus and it was luckily a success and luckily none of us got run over! My group did the survey from 3:30 to 4:30 and I thought that it went very well as we managed to get our data in with relative ease and we managed to get all of our surveys taken unlike some groups! The data from the car count was also very good and was collected with speed and luckily a lot of people came through the gates. I think that the surveys where very well carried out as I was on the surveys and the people I spoke to were very helpful and were quite willing to talk to us as they walked past even though there were some people running for the bus! The methods that we used were okay as we had discussed them before in class so that we knew what we were doing so we were sure of what was to be done and we had no disasters or fatalities! There people at the gates to the uni were ok with the people there counting their cars as they went into the uni and some ever stopped for help in getting their cars into the car park when they hadn’t got cards or their cards failed. We managed to get a broad range of data out of our surveys and the car count was very productive and there was luckily a lot of car s that came through and a lot of the cars had more than one person in the so that was very helpful. There was very little that I think we could have added to the task at hand as all the things went very well and there were no accidents and there were only minor problems with the survey. Some people did complain of the weather conditions as some of the morning people had to face very heavy rain while the latter groups (including our own) were out there in biting cold and many of us by the ends where to cold to concentrate on our surveys but we pulled through. The end result was a very well conducted survey with only a few minor hiccups in our collection of our data and there was only a few minor hiccups in the planning process as there was quite a bit of arguing over when we should do the survey and how we should do the survey but this issues where sorted out in the end and it was a very interesting day for all concerned.

So do we care about climate change?

Well we have had a lovely term of sustainability and at the end of it all we have to pose the question that how many of us in the big wide world care about climate change? Well the answer would seem to be that we simply don’t care about the situation as the link that I have provided shows that many of the British public don’t care about climate change and this seems to be a growing trend which is very unfortunate. This is very troublesome as the issues of climate change will not go away on their own so they public needs to be confronted on these issues but it will most likely be just ignored again and again. I personally think that climate change is the most important issue in our lives and it ranks above war, famine and hate as it is a force that could destroy our way of live while people who dismiss it only make it worse. We are blighted by governments in the world who simply don’t care about climate change. These countries that include America and the rapidly developing nations of India and China (will populations of 300 million 1.1 and 1.3 billion respectively) and they are the worlds three biggest countries and they decision will have massive ramifications on the world over the next decade. In my lifetime we may be faced with a world in turmoil with countries and cities sinking beneath the now much larger ocean and the world will be plunging into a new ice age as the amount of fresh water from the melting ice caps will shut of the world’s gulf streams. These actions will most certainly be the result of the actions of these great countries in my early lifespan but in the future we will never blame them and will try to find scapegoats. The only way we will avoid this man-made Armageddon would be the recognition of climate change as an omnipresent and ultimately malicious force that must be combated and not ignored. The major problem is that people often are very bureaucratic when it comes to these issues and often try to hide away from their own mistakes and try to ignore the issue that is staring them in the face. There is a growing appreciation of this in the United Kingdom but we are only a small country in terms of world politics and in terms of population and our actions will only be a drop in the ocean and more needs to be done to recognise the threat. There are also a lot of problems from developing nations in Asia and South America that need to cause damage to their environment to develop and are unwilling to stop and they cite the destruction of woodlands in Europe over the past two millennia as reason to continue. These problems will be the major issues in the future as we have to become more and more aware of the possible outcomes of a global shift of climate and the major countries of the world (both political and in terms of population) need to be made aware or else all our actions in the United Kingdom will be fruitless.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1028425/Scientists-exaggerate-climate-change-fears-majority-Britons-believe.html
read the article not laugh at the photo!

Notes on our (totally uncorrupt) mini UN debate

So the time has come to discuss our geography debate which we held last week and I think in overall fairness we did very well even though some of the funding was clearly bias! I had to discuss the sustainability of South Korea and I found out that country to my own beliefs they are a very sustainable nation even though they are a rapidly developing nation. They have many policies in place which mean that they are becoming very sustainable will the country undergoes massive changes to their structure and the form of their economy. There a shining beacon to the world and many countries should make not of their example as they are doing very for themselves. They are set to become one of the world’s leading designers and producers of hydrogen fuel cells which will have to become the fuel in the future no matter what America has to say. They are designing many ways in which to make the world greener but they desperately need capital as many of the so called ‘developed nations’ are ignoring them as they don’t want to admit to their own mistakes which they have may and own up to the fact that this small countries ideas are the way forward. The debate itself was very well structured but I wish there were more structured comments like the ones a certain Andrew White made but nobody understood! The countries involved where from a vast plethora of places and I think some where poorly chosen as there was little information on what their policies on sustainable development was if they even had any. This made it difficult to create decent arguments as many people had little to compose their arguments with and was hampered by some people’s difficulty to talk in front of a large amount of people which held a lot of the debating back which was very annoying. The ideas presented were of very good standard however and the creative use of facts to expand some of the more unfortunately thin ideas by some groups was a very good decision. I do however totally disagree with the distribution of the funding to the countries as some of them were totally undeserving of the money. The main culprit of this was the United States of America which received 4 billion dollars of funding and even though they could only get it if they raised and equivalent amount I believe 4 million would have been too much. This is country dead set against sustainable development and many of their leading figures proudly display this fact when they talk to the globe. They have never wanted to try and help the world and would rather see it tipped into oblivion than raise themselves to do anything about their situation. This is my conclusion to this debate I am sorry for the rant but in blog you have to speak your feelings and this is my feelings.

Lets recycle!

So third blog and it just keeps getting easier and easier (no not really!) this blog will be on waste recycling in Northamptonshire and will focus the seven districts that make up Northamptonshire. These are South Northamptonshire council, Northampton itself, Daventry district council in the West, Kettering Borough council (also in the west), Corby borough council (in the North), East Northamptonshire council and the Borough council of Wellingborough (in the South-East). These Seven make up the political makeup of Northamptonshire but each one is very different in its characteristics as there are some that are rural and there are some that are very urban. These differences will make a difference in the manner that they collect and recycle their waste as different areas will have different ways of carrying out their waste recycling policies. The East Northamptonshire council has the lowest waste collection of the lot of them (26.8% compared to 39.2 average over the whole area of Northamptonshire). This could be due to the very rural nature of the area which borders East Cambridgeshire which is a very rural and agricultural area which may explain why there is not as much recycling. Many of these areas like the little villages are very hard to accesses from the major population centres and this means that there is little waste collection and so their percentages are lower. There is also the issue of the council actually wanting to recycle the waste as there is a charge for picking up recyclables which is in place nowhere else in the country and is a very rare thing to do in the whole of the country and is detrimental to the whole system of recycling. There are could also be other things such as people just couldn’t be bothered to recycle but we can’t tell that from the charts given and people would be unlikely to admit to it anyway so it is nearly an impossible thing to try and survey. So it seems after all this then that this business of recycling is a case of it takes two to tango as it is one thing to have a lot of people wanting to recycle but you need a reciprocal council to take up the scheme and actually want to do help the people in their district to recycle. This works in opposite as well because if you have a council that actively wants to recycle but doesn’t have the popular support they have to do a lot to make people want to recycle and this is the crux of the matter. This is an issue that will always be as difficult one as there will be many problems to overcome. There will always be people who don’t want to recycle and there will always be people over do a lot of recycling and believe that their respective council are not doing enough to help them ‘save the planet’. Trying to find a balance will always been a very difficult and thorny issue and it one that all councils will face but the outcome will be the decision of a lot of different people.

Don't panic!!!

Well here we go my second blog sorry for the delay but I don't come up with ideas on tap! This blog will follow the prompts this time and I will be talking about the image of global climate change and issues of the environment through different medias as I find the different slants on stories very interesting. There are many different newspapers in circulation in Britain today and they all have different slants on what is going on in the world and they often disagree on issues that are nearly exactly the same. This is due to the political ideas or parties that they follow and this is called media discourse (thanks Faith) which means that they may report the same article but in very different ways from each other. These traits can be seen across all papers in the United Kingdom and they each attract different groups of people who these papers are designed to approach and appeal to. This however is a major problem because they often different wildly on issues such as climate change where some there needs to be some co-operation as these issues could be sorted out a lot quicker if there was some sort of co-operation on the issues of climate change. This is a major issue and could be dealt with more effectively if there was some sense of co-operation between the different newspapers. In the UK there are many different papers but the leading one is the Sun (one of the most widely read papers in the English language) and no matter what people say about it this is an important paper as it shows the right-wing working class and as this is a very large and vocal group the Sun is an interesting paper to read if you what to get under the skin of a lot of people in this country. The Suns articles are often scare-mongering to appeal to a larger audience and this ok if you want to speak to the general public but if we are to analyse it there is greater difficulties as you have to look very deep down to find any grains or nuggets of hard fact but this can be a very fun process! There others major right wing paper is the Daily Mail but they are much more subdued and there articles are much more straight forward and there articles are often much less scare mongering. To swing in the totally opposite direction there are papers such as the Guardian which is a very left-wing paper and it is nearly as scaremongering as the Sun and in some aspects is even more so as they are more technically in their language due to who their readers are. There is also the Independent which is left leaning but is more gossipy than the Guardian and its appeal is to a slightly different audience. The last major British paper is the Times which is a very old and established paper which is supposed to be right-wing but has become much more central lover the last decade but it uses very complex language as it readers are the very affluent and they are the type that want straight forward news.
Here are a few examples of climate change from different newspapers
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/special_events/green_week/article1547947.ece
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1080945/Climate-change-causes-rare-swans-stay-warm-Siberia-instead-returning-UK.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/nov/05/climatechange-carboncapturestorage
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/climate-change-at-the-poles-is-manmade-980256.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article4957408.ece