Students:Kateřina Racková

Personal info

Name and surname: Kateřina Racková

Age: 24

Education: International development studies, Department of development, Faculty of science, Palacký University in Olomouc... (half completed, only diploma thesis needs to be done)

Interests: advanturous travelling around developing countries, technology, nature

Experience: ERASMUS at Sheffield Hallam in the UK: Environmental studies; voluntary projects in Morocco in 2010 and in Ghana in 2012; teaching English and Geography to students of all age groups ranging from nursery to high school

My view of sustainability

Sustainability is an ambiguous concept starting with the basic definition of sustainable development invented by Gro Harlem Bruntland in 1987 in the document "Our common future". According to this document sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future generations to meet their needs. This definition is very anthropocentric therefore I prefer definitions which contain also environmental aspect.

In my view all the aspects need to be harmonised. Development should be socially equitable, economically viable and environmentally friendly. Fundamental changes are necessary in order to prevent human race from extinction as our current development is definitelly not sustainable. Both renewable and non-renewable exhaustible resources are being depleted, our industry and agriculture consume more energy than they produce and together with households they produce enormous amount of waste and pollution therefore overload ecosystem services.

Humans need to learn how to live within the Earth`s carrying capacity. The best way how to do that is to let us be inspired by nature. The most perfect and sustainable technologies we try to invent already exist! In addition to technological aspects we also need to change our values and lifestyle from consumer culture to non-materialistic one.

Personally I at least try to recycle, save energy, buy ecologically produced food and use thigs until they break. I am always happy to learn about new sustainable iniciatives therefore I am looking forward to our sustainability field trip to Germany where I hope I can get further inspiration for my efforts to live sustainably.

The best solution is to combine this bottom-up approach with top-down approach. What the world needs most in the present is political will, posibilly widely respected international organisation or a charismatic leader who will desighn and guide us through transition from consumer capitalistic system to sustainability. However, it may be painful process and many people and corporations will fight against the transition...

Day 1 Sunday

"What a beautiful day!" This was the first day of sustainability field trip to Luneburg in Germany. Very diverse mix of non-Prague students from different universities across the Czech Republic led by Andrew and Dana from Environmental Center of the Charles University decided to visit friendly neighbors to get inspired by their best practices regarding sustainable development. The goal of the field trip was to educate future "leaders" of the Czech Republic! Around 11 AM these future leaders met above Prague train main station and jumped on a minibus which took them to Germany. Their journey was almost eight hours long with a stop in Usti na Labem and a few gas stops in Germany. Students chatted lively during first hours but then they slowly fell asleep and there was a silence...and hot! In the evening group finally arrived, thanks to the skilled driver, to Luneburg Sportspark, their new home for the upcomming week. Such an interesting place! Our group was going to live on a stadium :) After delicious dinner some of them went to sleep and some...coud not fall asleep due to snoring roommates...

Day 2 Monday

"Day with mixed results." To summarize, second day brought charming German type men, delicious and healthy lunch at Leuphana University mensa, participative workshop at the university but also boring lecture about sustainability in sub-coma state of mind after lunch when at least half of the students almost fell asleep and second half dedicated all the energy on trying not to fall asleep :D Unfortunatelly for the students of International Development Studies there was no new information about sustainability which contributed largely to sub-coma!