Lesson Learnt: 2

I got back to my room the first night and found comfort in this scripture:

Don’t let anyone think less of you because you are young. Be an example to all believers in what you teach, the way you live, in your love, your faith and your purity.

1 Timothy 4:12

I walked into the meeting the next day a lot more confident. A change in mindset… amazing, I felt different.

The next few days were filled with open forums, field visits to community biogas and bio-fuel projects, and displays of green materials, goods and services, an exquisite yet enlightening experience on sustainability in the Pacific region. And as the meet drew to a close I pondered on the main lesson I would take away from Apia.

The Lesson Of Climate Change

Climate change is a real phenomenon here in the Pacific. We’ve seen how coastlines have receded, how the weather has changed and how ecosystems are slowly fading away.

During one of the forums, someone had posed the question of whether we were under the assumption that by ‘greening the economy’ we would be able to fish as much as we wanted, cut down as many trees as we wanted and do whatever we wanted as long as it was sustainable.

He later went on to say that there needed to be a change of behaviour, in mindset and consumption, I completely agree with him.

Many may view climate change as an enemy, a disaster, a consequence for humanities’ ignorance but I believe there is a lesson to be learnt here. Maybe climate change is trying to teach us to be more appreciative of what we have, to treasure the surroundings and ecosystems that we’ve been blessed with. To be grateful.

Sustainable development is not only about the relationship between the social, economic and environmental but about the people and their social, economic and environmental hopes.

Richard Louv coined the term Nature Deficit Disorder and it refers to the alleged trend that children spend less time outdoors resulting in a wide range of behavioural problems. Our legacy for the generation to come should be to make them aware of what they have and help them be a lot more appreciative toward it.

The lesson of climate change is to be grateful, to be content with what you have, to appreciate the ones around you and take care of what you’ve been entrusted with.