Estidama: A model of sustainable urbanization

Try walking or cycling with your children to school when it is safe to do so.

Ask your children's teacher about starting a recycling program in school.

Organize a table to sale to enable unwanted items to be reused, with proceeds going to charity.

Borrow books from your school library rather than buying new ones.

Get a head start at school for a sustainable life style.

Small changes make a big difference.

Estidama, which means sustainability in Arabic, is the initiative which will transform AbuDhabi in to a model of sustainable urbanization. Its aim is to create more sustainable communities, cities and global enterprises and to balance the four pillars of Estidama: Environmental, Economic, Cultural and Social.

I was touched when I saw the above words in the website : http://estidama.org/

Sustainability is something every one of us should try to practice in daily life. There are several initiatives in the world today on sustainability, green technology etc. There are several agencies in different countries to promote sustainable technology, energy conservation etc.

Sustainable technology is a walking back, the way I see it. Our parents and grand parents were promoters of sustainability. 

Remember their life style?

- They used to walk a lot 

- They used to use sustainable materials wherever possible.

- They never practiced the use and throw culture

- They used to preserve soil erosion by controlling rain water flow during rainy season.

- They never filled paddy fields for construction purpose

- They used love planting trees and loved to have forest and wild life

- They never made our rivers polluted.

Now if you read the recommendations put forward by the modern sustainability promoting agencies like  USGBC (LEED), MGTC, IGBC etc. you will find many similarities to the life style our fore fathers practiced without knowing the word "sustainability"!

You may also visit:

http://www.igbc.in/site/igbc/index.jsp

http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CategoryID=19

http://www.ukgbc.org/

http://www.mgbc.org.my/
http://www.worldgbc.org/

Each one of us has a role to play in handing over a livable world to our children and grand children!