A United Nations Debate – A Lithuanian’s View

Looking at the board I saw the country I had to tackle. Not only was I not sure who my partner was, I also knew very little about Lithuania. In fact I knew two things, it was in Western Europe and my dad went there and said, it was pretty boring wasn’t much there.

Considering the worries at the start of my presentation, I was pretty pleased with our performance at the United Nations (UN) debate. Lithuania although in the European Union was not the easiest of countries to find information on. I have certainly learned a lot about Lithuania from this UN debate.

Lithuania’s sustainable development is certainly more advanced than I thought it would be at the start. The country only officially declared its independence from the Soviet Union in 1990, this halted much of the countries development and has left the country slightly unbalanced in the regions development. Lithuania certainly has bright ideas of how to tackle the countries problem, tackling unemployment instead of just poverty for me was a step forward, because this will help people to individually start building their own income and tackling poverty problems for themselves. Lithuania has also put together a good programme at tackling the sustainability of the countries forests.

The challenge was finding all of this from the research. We found that the problem for our country was firstly finding where to get the information from. Following this once the right sources were found there was extracting what we needed, most of the sources found were mainly full of text and went into every detail. This was good because it gave us a deep insight into the countries problems; however it also meant that extracting information was difficult. There were lots of different properties and although some of them were put into proprieties some of them clashed.

Lithuania did in fact surprise me, being from the former Soviet Union I didn’t expect the government to be organised and certainly didn’t think sustainability would have been on their agenda. However I was wrong, sustainable development was high up in a list of priorities and going into the debate I didn’t think we would get the money because I simply didn’t believe our country needed it, which was a huge surprise for me.

All of the countries had different approaches to sustainable development. Some that surprised me was the United States of America (USA). They said that they would give a proportion of their money to other African countries and help them develop. One of the most common approaches was to helping the poorest people in the country develop; this was shown better in some countries than others.

I felt that our presentation went well but it could have been improved a little. There was a lot of information on the handout but there was even more information which we could have given out, I think we tried to give out to much information when presenting our speech. The hand out could have been improved and more detail about the project put on it but overall I was pleased with our presentation.

If I could do the exercise I would have worked better in a group to organise our speech better. There was a problem with free time for both me and my partner; this meant most of our work had to be done communicating through e-mail. I would like to have had more time to produce a speech and organise the points it priorities. This also links in with something I learnt. I feel I have now improved in communicating skills through e-mails.

The UN debate went well for me, I felt I performed well and I was able to look into the different countries approaches to sustainable development. I felt that at the end the right decisions were made about who the money went to. I was surprised to see Australia getting a large sum of the money, following their past projects. I felt that it was important that the U.S.A got some of the money, being such a powerful world country if they can help turn themselves into a more sustainable nation it can act as a bench mark for other countries and also pass skills down to other nations like Africa.

Lithuania has proved to me and i hope many others, that it is a country that is developing well and has set good and ambitious targets for the future. Although some of it projects have not been totally successful and it still has problems in some areas, it conservation and its aims at tackling the poorer nations are proving successful. Lithuania now has a literacy rate of 99.6%. Lithuania is a country moving forward I just hope that it does not get lost in the endless problems with other nations and the world can keep this area developing well.

Conflict and the issues on sustainablity?

Checking through my e-mails I came across a letter from the WWF, telling me about the current situation in the Congo and how it could have an effect on the fragile Gorilla population in the Virunga National Park.

In the Democratic Republic of Congo and estimated 250,000 people have fled their homes following the latest outbreak of violence in the east of the country. Conflict has been taking part for years in the country and is mainly due to the vast mineral wealth in the country. In 2003 the war, which invovled other countries such as Angola, Uganda, Nambia and Rwanda ended, however unrest has continued throughout the country. Conflict has now broken out in the east again and many people are now being displaced from their homes by the violence.

Virunga National Park is in the east of the Congo, and covers an area of 790,000 ha. The national park is a vital and rare refuge for the endangered mountain Gorilla. The park consists of vast mountain ranges with snow covered peaks, and also has severn volcanoes to the south. As well as Gorilla the national park has a number of other animals including hippos, elephants, buffalo, and uganda kob.

Recently fighting broke out in the south of the park between the Congo government and rebels. Previous conflict has already reduce the Gorilla numbers to just 700. The conflict took place in the heart of the mountain Gorilla population. This could have a devisating effect on the Gorilla, many will be shot for 'protection' by the rebels and possibly the government army.

This is not the only problem for the national park and the Gorilla population. Many people have been forced to flee their villages and move to makeshift camps in areas around the national park. The people need to gathered wood and food and have no choice but to take it from the forests of the national park, which the Gorillas rely on.

The UN and the WWF are now trying to give the people feul to make fires and cook their food which will help to reduce the effect on the vunerable Gorilla population as well as helping the vunerable local people who have been displaced.

Sustainable development for the Congo and its surrounding nations would help not only the people to solve their conflicts but it would also help the vunerable Gorilla populations. Sustainable development would work with the local people and help them to use other ways to cook and gather other than using the valuable forests.



If you would like to find out more or help the people and gorillas in Congo then go to http://www.wwf.org.uk/