Students:Agnieszka Buchtová

Something little about me
I'm 21 years old and I'm from the border town of Český Těšín. I've lived in Brno for 16 years. I attended the Matyáš Lerch French high school where I graduated and now I study at Masaryk University in Brno - the Faculty of Social Studies. My departments are Environmental Studies and International Relations. I like reading poems, eating raspberries, walking in the woods and singing. In future, I'd like to have a useful job in the environmental sector, lead a modest life, have a family and I'd love to travel.

Me and sustainability
Well, I don't think that the standard of life we have today in "developed countries" could be ever sustainable. We're exploiting the Third World, nature and each other. If we want to make our lives sustainable, we have to cut down on our living standards. I'm a kind of idealist, but I doubt that all our western culture could ever start to act altruistically. And all kinds of other efforts that we think could lead to sustainability are useless without a change in our thinking and our values. My current opinion is that the sustainability process could only slow the fall of our civilisation. Mabye there's no place for sustainable development. There's only a place for "sustainable retreat".

Day 0 (9th June)
Trip to Luneburg, accomodating, dinner. After the dinner we played some introducing games and we talkt about our point of view on the whole sustainability concept. The evening was very nice.

Day 1 (10th June)
We explored the city of Luneburg, then we were introduced to the concept of sustainability by PD Dr. Maik Adomßent. After a break we had a workshop with two members of the student organisation Oikos, which is attempting to make the university more sustainable.

Day 2 (11th June)
- We started with a presentation by Dr. Alexa Lutzenberger on sustainability projects in Germany. Her presentation was for me the most important event of the day. It made me think (and doubt) about the big business of renewable energies in this country. Obviously Germany wants to have a monopoly on sustainability know-how and wants other countries to follow. But if every European country starts to buy PV panels, wind turbines, and starts to import biomass and starts to plant and import fuel plants, the impact on the Third world will be catastrophic. There will be new ways to exploit poor countries, new conflicts, new environmental catastrophes and new wars... I´m still not persuaded about the nature of German good intentions. We continued with a guided campus tour and we saw some interesting student projects. We spent a lovely afternoon in Hamburg.

Day 3 (12th June)
This was very inspiring day of our stay. We saw Saxon heaths and had a guided tour. The history of the heaths was a great example of how a non-sustainable economy can destroy the whole regional community and cause emigration. Afterwards, we moved to the first biodynamic farm in Lower Saxony and had a great guided tour around the property. I appreciated all the information we received and the experience of farm life.

Day 4 (13th June)
Today we spent the morning having a lesson with a young politician from local Green Party. In Lower Saxony, the Green Party has about 30% of the power [Andrew: that's the share on the Luneburg city council]. In whole Germany it´s about 10 to 13%. Another thing that was very interesting was the new "sustainable" quarter in Hamburg that we visited in the afternoon. We got to know the whole project, visited modern and green houses and discussed their advantages and disadvantages.

Day 5 (14th June)
The last day was spent on listening to experts and PhD students describing their projects. In the end we had a group brain storming and we created our own projects on improving the sustainability situation in Czech republic. I really enjoyed this part of the day.

The way home was long but safe and comfortable thanks to our grat driver Pepa.

Summary
The two most inspiring things I´ve learnt during this amazing field trip was the idea of reusing landfills to make energy of the gas that they produce and involving students in agriculture. I´d like to speak about the second one. The Baukhof farm we visited on the third day was an amazing place that engages the whole community in its system of production. They are open to the help of local people and every year they welcome students from allied schools to spend two weeks on the farm and work with the soil and animals.

I feel that today´s youth in the Czech republic are slowly losing their connection to agriculture. Young people have no experience with farming, they don´t know where meat and milk comes from and they do not care about the quality of food and welfare of animals. There used to be obligatory part-time jobs in agriculture during the communism era when students, children and even adults had to help with harvesting or collecting leef beetles. Many of them hated this obligatory work but there´s no doubt that they at least got an experience of hard work and the agricultural system. That´s why I think that we should try to involve Czech students in the process of producing food and encourage schools to start similar projects to the one they have in Baukhof. If young people get to know biodynamic agriculture as well as wildlife, they will probably make efforts to lead a more sustainable life. And that´s what we need. We need new technologies and zero energy houses and green energies, but the thing we need most are people who want to use it and who will support green politics and modest living.

I´d like to say a big thanks to Dana and Andrew for organising this trip, for being so good and patient with us and helping to create such a good bunch. The trip was very well organised and the only thing I missed a bit was a repeat of the first evening when we all gathered after the dinner and had a semi-serious semi-friendly talk about our opinions and ideas.