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.