Understanding vs Action on Sustainable Development

The judges for sustainable community award of Petaling Jaya have finished their assessment on ground last week. It is such an refreshing experience to learn that many of the community groups including the newcomers have done so many initiatives, either one off or long term programmes over the last one year. We reckoned that perhaps the blossom of the initiatives is mainly due to the able leadership of the organisations. We witnessed how enthutiasme of the chairs in deliberating the programmes they have done and very few have actually mentioned about the difficulty they have encountered along the process. To me, it showed that while meeting obstacles are common, the most important thing for them is the process and outcome. They did not surrender to the pressue but continue to seek for success. I salute almost all of them for the persistence.

Having said this, many improvement are still required. For example, doing the wrong thing for right purpose. One of them suggested to utilise the open space for relocating the hawkers and to build a connecting road between two blocks of flat over the open space. Even some have shown their innocience for allowing car wash operation over the drain without any filtering of waste water measure and covering the drain without any manhole. Some have built the toilet on buffer zone. All these although with good intention of solving their problems and trying to bring community activities on board, do not augur well for the environmental sustainability. I presume many have focusing on social sustainability. On this, promotion on Local Agenda 21 with 3 developmental dimensions, namely social, economy and environment is critical.