Week 1: Introduction to Sustainable Development

On this afternoon, right at 2p.m., I joined my first online meeting for my 6^th course for this first semester. I was really impatient before joining it as it was my first time hearing such a course name. The course was namely Sustainable Development: Issues, Principles, and Practices. To be honest, it was such an interesting course name that made me really want to join it really bad.

So, what is this course all about?

The purpose of this course is to increase the knowledge of students on the concept of sustainability, the importance of sustainable development and Islamic perspective on sustainable development.

Throughout my first class of this course, there were many new things that I have learned. For the first one, my lecturer had taught us that there are 2 ways of thinking which are traditional thinking and systems thinking. The difference between both of them is that traditional thinking is linear whereby system thinking is complex. In short, system thinking has various factors that are led to the other factor whereby traditional only have one cause and one solution. Thus, system thinking is better than traditional thinking.

What is the relationship between this system thinking and sustainable development?

This system of thinking is crucial towards society as it has 6 fundamental concepts which are interconnectedness, synthesis, emergence, the feedback loop, causality, and system mapping that allow them to understand what are the causes and the effects in nowadays development. For more information about these 6 fundamental concepts, you can read it here.

What is sustainable development?

From the International Union for Conservation Union-1991, it is defined as improving the quality of life while living within the carrying capacity of the ecosystem. Meanwhile, it is quoted from Allen Prescott that sustainability is just another way of the good life as a combination of a high level of human well-being and the high level of ecosystem well-being that supports it.

To achieve a complete sustainable development, there are 3 pillars that needed to be balanced which are environmental (planet), social (people), and economic (profit) as shown in the picture below.

Surprisingly, the United Nations has adopted sustainability development since 2015 to all of its members and I do not have any idea of this thing. Thanks to this course, I have newly acknowledged this. There are 17 goals of sustainable development (SDGs) that the UN has listed which mostly derived from 3 pillars that are mentioned before.

There are also 5 dimensions of SDGs which are people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership in order to achieve sustainable development.

In my opinion, everyone should play their roles in order to achieve 17 SDGs by 2030. It is very important to do for our future generations to have a better life and live happily ever after. They can also focus on other things such as new technology to improve the world better as sustainable development is already achieved.

Do not forget to keep updated with my blog as I will write a new thing every week.