March 22 9:00 - 11:50
Closing Session
Reporter: A. Tokuda
1. Outline
In this closing session, after the opening remarks from Prof. Clay from MIT, reports from each parallel session (Energy, Food and Water, Risk Governance, Education) were presented.
2. Report from Education sessions
Prof. Perrusquia from Chalmers summarized the Education sessions i.e. workshop session using International Negotiation on Climate Change and discussion session on Sustainability Education. In the education sessions, it was repeatedly emphasized the importance of recruiting people to actually work on Sustainability Education, not just saying the importance. Even in the AGS annual meeting, a “talk-the-walk” phenomenon has existed; most participants talked on the importance of education toward the global sustainability, but in fact most of them walked into other sessions which are directly related to their research fields. Although such research-oriented activity cannot be blamed, the organizing committee can help tackle such “talk-the-walk” phenomenon and bring “walk-the-talk” phenomenon, by arranging the structure of session program, e.g. making the education session non-parallel.
Also, Prof. Perrusquia introduced the projects for Sustainability Education held at Asian Institute of Technology (Thailand), Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), and Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden). The IPOS (Intensive Program on Sustainability) held at AIT, for instance, is an AIT-UT joint venture, where students come from AIT, UT, ETH, MIT and Chalmers. The themes include Food Security, Safety and Energy, aiming to understand the diverse and complex nature of Sustainable Development, to improve communication skills, and to develop strong networking. At MIT, Project-based Education (PBE) for Sustainability has been conducted. This program is characterized by the keywords such as learner-centered (learning by doing), and teacher as facilitator (shared process). Projects on Energy and Climate in Cambridge, and Campus sustainability are the examples of the projects conducted at PBE at MIT. At Chalmers, Centre for Environment and Sustainability is the institutional core of its sustainability educational program. It holds international workshops on learning for sustainability development and web-based course, and continues to Goeteborg’s Conference in 2007. In conclusion, Prof. Perrusquia re-insisted the importance of researchers’ involvement and proposed creating the database on Sustainability Education. .
IPOS:http://www.asdu.ait.ac.th/NewsAndEvents/newsletterData/HTMLFormat/iss3no16/developments.htm
MIT PBE: http://lfee.mit.edu/
Chalmers CES: http://www.miljo.chalmers.se/english/
3. Best poster awards
After the session reports, best poster awards were given to the four posters.
Sustainable Building Design: The MIT Design Advisor
B. J. Urban et al.
http://designadvisor.mit.edu/design/
A Broader Impact and Life Cycle Assessment of Biomass-Based Transportation Fuels
T. Groode et al.
http://lfee.mit.edu/metadot/index.pl?id=3584&isa=Category&op=show#Groode
Air Pollution in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal
A. Panday et al.
http://eapsweb.mit.edu/people/person.asp?position=Student&who=panday
Research on effect of improvement of Inhaled Air Quality by Personal Air-conditioning
M. Matsuda et al.
http://venus.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/index-e.html
4. AGS 2007 in Barcelona
After the poster awards, the introduction of the AGS 2007 meeting in Barcelona was presented. Tentative keynote speakers include former EU commissioner Walstrom, sustainable architect McDonough, Spanish Prime Minister Rodriquez-Zapatero, and Corporate CEOs. Sustainable events under consideration are carbon-emissions free event, sustainable accommodation and food, and sustainable parallel activities.
