Blog Prompt 4- UN debate

When researching about South Korea sustainable development strategies were hard to come by at first. South Korea’s government website does not supply any information about such strategies and information that was found about these policies came from non government organisations.
When first thinking about what strategies the country had in place I actually had no idea what they potential could be as I did not know about the country’s economy, population or climate. The first main strategy that was found was about sustainable communities in the country and trying to education the population about the need to sustainable development. Korean houses are mainly made out of wood traditionally unless they were in the city areas then they would be high rise buildings. This is arguably not sustainable as wood, although trees can be replanted is not a sustainable way to build houses.

The other main point was the amount of public transport the country has available to the population and how much It does in fact promote people to use it. This of course encourages people to use public transport instead of their cars to get to either work, school or when going on holiday. Tourists are also encouraged to use these transport systems rather than renting a car.

The main point that we tried to get across was about the ‘hydrogen economy’ that South Korea and the company Hyundai had come up with. The idea is that by 2040 South Koreas high carbon emissions are to be reduced substantially because of this new, more environmentally friendly ‘hydrogen economy’.
Other than these three points there was not much to find about Koreas sustainable development policies. For example I was expecting to find information about recycling when researching about these policies.

I think the approaches of all 14 countries were very good, however, like our presentation, some of the countries should have maybe focused on the main points about sustainable development issues and strategies rather than supplying non-relevant information. I came to the conclusion that less developed countries had more ideas about sustainable development strategies than developed countries that are in fact causing the problems. Is this because less developed countries are affected more by the impacts of climate change and developed countries are affected by having to cut back on things they have previously never needed to and therefore they do not want to?

For example the USA (has the highest carbon emissions in the world) does not seem at all concerned about reducing these emissions because of course its economy relies on polluting the world. Similarly, although China is not officially a developed country its emissions are still the second highest in the world and again the country did not seem concerned about reducing these anytime soon. They were however concerned about preserving their panda population, which of course is a national treasure in China and results in millions of dollars from the tourism industry- just a noted point. Continuing on, Beijing had to clean up its air, but it is questionable would China have reduced its emissions and done this if it were not for the Olympics? These views of course are not at all related to the people presenting these findings.

Completely opposite is the Solomon Islands which currently has no sustainable development plan in place at all due to financial restrictions. However the country does seem to have numbers of ideas that it would be willing to put into place should they have the financial resources. It is a shame to see that the richest countries in the world- including South Korea, do not seem to have any practical plan in place (with the exception of Denmark) that do in fact have the money to make a difference, whereas those countries willing to opt for sustainable development strategies cannot afford to do so.

I think our presentation overall, went well with the exception of ‘umming’ and ‘ahhing’. On our handout there could have been more information elaborating in the idea of a ‘hydrogen economy’ so people understood what it was but other than that I think the information that was supplied was all relevant.

I did previously know quite a lot about the idea of sustainability, but by doing this assignment it made me realise that sustainability in practise is quite different from sustainability ideas as a country’s social, economic and environmental issues all need to be taken into account before putting any strategy into place.

Working as a pair did not seem to work as communication was a problem so I did end up doing most of the work, which in this case I did not seem to mind so much as it enabled me to thoroughly understand our country’s policies. However presenting the findings of our country was fine.

On the up, I did enjoy the assignment as it gave us all an opportunity to learn about sustainable strategies in a different way and to gave us experience of standing up in front of a group and speaking, which some, if not all, including myself find it a bit nerve racking.