Students:Michaela Trávníčková

Hello! My name is Michaela and I come from Brno, CR. I am in the second semester of my Master studies at Mendel University in Brno (study programme Business Economics and Management in English language).

I was participating on several seminars where we discussed topics related to sustainability (Global governance, Corporate Social responsibility, etc.) with Czech students/teachers as well as with the foreigners.

I look forward to meet with you in April!

In Brno there is an educational institute called Lipka which contributes to sustainability by educating the pupils, students, teachers as well as the public. They organize courses and lectures with environmental topics, cultural and educational events. Further they are offering professional advice: from conservation through waste management to the management of nonprofit organizations and writing projects. Lipka has 5 working places in/around Brno. For more information visit http://www.lipka.cz/lipka-en (unfortunately most of the information is in Czech, but do not hesitate to ask me for translation..)

DECOUPLING (final assignment)

We were asked to write an assignment on the topic we found interesting during the spring school in Týnec nad Sázavou. Well, I was personally impressed by the topic of decoupling.

I am from the field of economics (European studies in business economics and management), and honestly, we do not really speak about sustainability (and side effects some projects might bring) a lot. However, I think it is very important, as the economics and sustainable development must go hand in hand in order to make the project effective an efficient. Therefore I really wonder that such topics are not discussed much at economic faculties.

I have never heard about the decoupling before and it impressed me a lot, because I find it very important in terms of measuring the dependence of two contra-factors in terms of sustainability. In my opinion, increasing the total world product (GDP) is inevitable as the population in the world increases. The question is how it influences the environment and our surroundings. With decoupling we might compare such effect in the time series which I, as an economist, see as really helpful indicator in analysing some area for the project design and predicting of the effects one indicator can have on another one. Well, on the other hand, we must consider whether we should keep increasing one country´s GPD or not if the population of given country stagnates of even decreases. We must also pay high attention on which data we use for calculating the results. First of all, the nominal/real value of the money should be taken into consideration (inflation) as well as amount of people living in the country (GDP/capita), etc.

In my opinion, the regional, national and global governance should pay more attention to decoupling of crucial indicators which influence us and achieve absolute decoupling if possible. Of course, nothing can be changed in a year; therefore long-run plans must be stated and followed by all the actors.