Introduction

Journeys in space and time are alluded to a number of times throughout this book and we begin with the journey the author has taken to be teaching and writing introductory courses on sustainability. As I came to the end of my term as Director of RMIT University’s Globalism Research Centre in 2011, I was invited by the head of the Sustainability and Urban Planning teaching team, Professor Jean Hillier, to assume responsibility for an introductory course on sustainability that is offered to students in a wide range of degree programmes within the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. It was a very long time since I had taught at undergraduate level and the course is offered to some cohorts of students who did not expect to be undertaking a course in environmental studies at university level. However, a lot of work had gone into establishing and running the course over a period of more than ten years and I welcomed the opportunity to bring my own expertise and experience to this particular teaching role. My own career – inside and outside universities – had taken many twists and turns since I completed an honours degree in animal ecology at the University of Sydney in the early 1970s. This course gave me a rare opportunity to draw on much of that diverse experience. After completing my first degree I had decided that life as a scientist was not for me and I left university to become a community development worker in several different Australian cities. I returned to university in the early 1990s to complete a Ph.D. in development studies – with a thesis focusing on environment and development in Latin America. From there I was able to win a position in the very innovative Social Ecology teaching and research programme at the University of Western Sydney. Ten years later I returned to RMIT University, where I had undertaken my Ph.D., to help build the Globalism Research Centre. For another ten years my research focused on challenges facing local communities in Australia and Sri Lanka in the context of global change. My career path might be called opportunistic rather than premeditated and yet it seemed that I had been preparing myself to teach in the area of environmental and social sustainability. In introducing first-year undergraduate students to the concept of sustainability I argue that we can draw hope from the fact that we humans only really began to think about it as a global challenge in the 1970s. The 1987 report

prepared by a special United Nations commission headed by then Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland made it clear that global environmental sustainability cannot be achieved without improving the conditions of life for the global majority living with entrenched poverty. The Brundtland Report gave birth to the notion of environmentally sustainable development and it triggered a series of global gatherings and negotiations aimed at giving substance to this commendable aim. In the context of human history, 25-30 years is a relatively short time to have been grappling with the challenges of global sustainability. We know much more about the challenges we face than ever before and yet this book will make it clear that the challenges are continuing to escalate rather than abate. This is a rather challenging message to present to first-year university students as they embark on the professional development course they have selected. For that reason, the RMIT course consciously works with the belief that there are reasons for feeling hopeful about the future of humanity. This book does not shy away from the extent and complexity of the global challenges we face; indeed it seeks to counteract all tendencies towards denial or retreat. However, it sets out to present arguments for hope and strategies for personal and professional action. In the first week the students are asked to read an essay I wrote (Mulligan 2008) after an eventual journey (see box for summary).