KARACHI: The distinguished academicians of Pakistan, Russia, USA and UK have shown their concerns on decreasing natural resources and increasing consumption of natural resources including natural gas, water and growing population.
Speaking at a session on ‘Integrating Sustainability into Higher Education: Challenges and Opportunities from the Perspective of Academicians’ at Sindh Madressatul Islam University (SMIU), they said the sustainability was much needed at all levels in for development.
They suggested that each and every one should contribute in sustainability in his/her field individually and collectively and sustainability must be made a part of curriculum of higher education also.
Former Vice Chancellor and present Pro-Vice chancellor of Mehran University of Engineering and Technology, Jamshoro Dr. Muhammad Aslam Uqaili said that the resources we are using are no more sustainable and using these on the cast of our future generation. He said development has the cast to pay, as developing our count
ries we are not considering how we can provide sustainability to our resources.
He further said that we are looking to reuse and recycle the waste materials, but Germany has now gone to the zero waste. Dr. Uqaili further said they believe that universities are agents of change, and these are producing human resources to the society, therefore, for sustainability capacity building trainings needed to youth for sustainability.
Dr. Manzoor Hussain Soomro, ECO Science Foundation said people need to be educated about sustainability and they need to know what are the factors affecting our environment and what the skills and technologies are required to achieve the sustainability without going into SDGs and targets.
He said education as well as SDGs 4 and 5 emphasized that education should be across the board and for all. Therefore, there is a need to transform the society according to the way we think and the way we are groomed. He said to achieve the targets we should go back to early child education, then buil
ding the building of tertiary education and then higher education.
He suggested that in this respect we have to engage the HEC to bring school children, university students, faculty, industry, media and all the stake holders at one platform to play their major role. Dr. Soomro said they were working in isolation, but everyone must be resilient at these issues and in this respect science education is most important.
Dr. Keith Casey Barton, Professor at Indiana University, USA said that in American universities everything is centralized. The American government cannot say anyone to concentrate on these goals. Even chancellor or pro-chancellor cannot say to do that. He was of the view that the sustainability is a long and slow process, but we should do focus on the sustainability for our secure future.
Dr. Fateh Mohammad Marri, Vice Chancellor of the Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam talked on the food sustainability and said that our natural resources, land, water and forest reservoirs are limited, on t
he contrary population is growing, therefore demand for food has increased. He said because of change in consumption pattern and urbanization there is a huge pressure on natural resources.
Higher education also needs sustainability. ‘Around 03 percent of our illegible cohort gets in higher education and 90 percent is still out of higher education,’ Dr Marri said and added that we have to make education sustainable for all children.
Dr. Jawad Syed, Professor at the Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS) said that it was important at the university level that we should revisit our priorities, because for these all things students are not responsible, they are our product, hence we have to look at our KPIs (key performance indicators) that how many courses are carrying sustainability.
Ms. Shajara Ul Durar, Associate Professor at the University of Sunderland, UK said that there was a need to empower students by giving them projects and the education leadership has to take responsibility of all things.
She said presently more than 50 percent female students are studying in UK’s universities, despite that fact all universities are trying to have more number of female students. At the same time, they are working on gender equality. She suggested that educational institutions should take responsibility to publish social impact reports and that should be made a part of the academia.
Dr. Solnyshkina Marina Ivanovna, Professor of Linguistics at the Kazan University of Russia narrated her success story and social and educational conditions in the period of Soviet Union and at present.
Dean Faculty of Management, Business Administration and Commerce of SMIU Dr. Jamshed Adil Halepoto moderate the session.
The session was attended by Chairman Sindh HEC Dr. Tariq Rafi, Vice Chancellor of SMIU Dr. Mujeeb Sahrai, national and international scholars, SMIU’s faculty, heads of different academic and administrative departments and students. In the end of the session Dr. Mujeeb Sahrai gave away souvenirs to the guests.