The point that stands out to me the most is one that Professor Culhane made during the video about how food, water, or energy issues have historically been approached with each issue being viewed as it’s own entity—separate from everything else. The coolest part is where he points out that not only is this way of seeing our planet’s issues flawed, but is actually damaging, because a lot of times making an improvement in one area will actually degrade another area. For example, one way to increase crop yields might be to use more fertilizer and pesticides to successfully address food shortages, but if the chemicals pollute the water then are we really making a positive difference? Over all, we are not. We are just improving Food while damaging Water.
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| Nature's natural cycles: waves rushing the coast of El Salvador. |
I think the reason that this concept of individuality and incohesiveness resonates so deeply with me is because I feel like I was very involved in it but first saw it from a different angle. You see, I started traveling a lot along time ago and wanted to do something to make a difference in all of the issues that I was seeing related to poverty and suffering in the world. I started raising money until it became too much to do legally, so I started a nonprofit with a group of friends as a legal way to funnel money directly to where it was needed. During that process I was pushed and pushed to put my nonprofit in a category: Should it be health? Education? Hunger? Immigration? Human rights? Emergency relief? In the end we settled on water and ways for more people to access clean water.
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| I thought a lot in Haiti. And the curiosity goes both ways. |
That choice turned out to be one of the biggest lessons of my life so far. Things were going well on the surface: the donors were lining up and money was coming in, the pictures looked good in the stories were happy. But I kept asking questions. Am I on the right track? Am I doing the most good that I can with what I have? Am I even doing more good than harm? Something was missing. I read books, books with titles like “when helping hurts” and “toxic charity”. While in Haiti I learned that there were literally over 10,000 other registered NPOs working on that island alone! How was I any different? Why so many groups and so many causes but still so many problems all over the world? I decided that people are not really working together collaboratively to bring people and the planet out of suffering. Instead, our current approach to change, charity and philanthropy is to pick a cause and promote it like it’s the most important and worthy of attention of all the causes (competition). Once I allowed myself to leave this train of thought and think freely I changed so many things about how I was approaching issues. It was then that I began to THINK about sustainably before I knew it was a degree major or even a subject. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy my school so much: it’s wonderful to make changes in the world without it feeling like it’s in competition with others or like you have to define your cause until it fits someone else’s definition of what the world needs.
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| Unsustainable agriculture hurts the most vulnerable first. |
We need to all put or energy into pushing forward towards solutions and innovative ideas. It should NOT be “pick a cause”. All our issues are related and they are all worthy. The right solutions have no negative repercussions! These are big, important issues requiring skills that only come from diversity and creativity that only comes from a unified passion for sustainable change. I’m here, braced for this class...intimidated and yet excited to face the biggest issues of our time with my eyes opening ever more to the complex nature of the food, water energy nexus.
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