Bridging People: Monash Sustainability Institute
Few important topics such as sustainability need re-branding since people don’t listen anymore.
People utilize natural resources as a basis for social and economic growth. But since the mid 20th century, society started to face the challenges brought by climate change. This has drastically affected key natural systems and human living conditions making it harder to attain sustainable development. Climate change is now a critical and inevitable crisis brimming with long-term implications that threatens the sustainability of all countries.
Monash Sustainability Institute in Australia sees the entwined and significant relationship between climate change and sustainability. MSI established the Sustainable Places Program to have a clearer understanding of the climate change-related issues faced by modern cities and urban centers nowadays.1
This endeavor is done by gathering world-leading experts from Monash and expertise outside the institution and tackling the issue with a distinctly interdisciplinary approach. These individuals include scientists, lawyers, economists, psychologists, biologists, engineers, researchers, and educators who actually came from different disciplines but work together as a single unit to achieve a common goal.2
MSI engages in postgraduate research that results in bringing new studies related to economic and social sustainability and climate change. The institution also empowers indigenous communities to adapt to climate change and value their voices in creating national climate change responses that may affect their traditional lands. MSI also reaches out to the workers of the private and public sectors and trains them to make their workplace and their activities more environmentally sustainable. 1
South Asia and Southeast Asia also benefit from the program as MSI along with its international teams and multidisciplinary expertise assists the region in reducing poverty through sustainable development of its natural resources. Behavioral studies are also conducted in Australia unifying leading practitioners in government and business to devise behavioral approaches and influence people to make everyday decisions that are integral in attaining development. MSI also takes on soil carbon programs, systematic governance research, natural resources management, and sustainability education programs.1
Climate change has brought complex issues and implications to the world’s sustainability. But the society can positively revert that a hundredfold through unifying or acting like one. MSI successfully achieved this by bridging various sectors and by sharing their skills and knowledge with everyone. Multiple disciplines may speak different “languages” but the collaboration of these varying expertise is what the globe strictly needs to come up with a solution to this global issue. Now with these sectors and individuals collaborating despite their differences, sustainable development is not a far cry.
References:
1 “Monash Programs and Initiatives” https://www.monash.edu/msdi/initiatives