Reflection on the International Summer School at Free University of Berlin in 2010

 

Keuntae Kim

201048007

 

  It was my great opportunity to study in Free University of Berlin, taking a summer international course 'Sustainability Law and Governance' in 2010.

 

  Professor Klaus Bosselman, the professor in a law and founding Director of the New Zealand Center for Environment Law at Auckland University, showed a strong field oriented knowledge of the law and governance. He had provided consultancy for establishing environmental law in EU and New Zealand (ongoing as of the moment), as well as for the OECD, and UNEP therefore, comparison the one of Korea (or some other developing countries) to his works, relatively from developed hemisphere, were pretty interesting and brought a heated but constructive controversy.

 

  Also another remarkable point of his class is the characteristics of those laws and governance. His idea is that governance has to provide alternatives or platforms for sustainable lifestyle, though mostly current Environmental law or sustainable codes in many countries are only binding people's behaviors or actions, because it is the inevitable attribute of the law.

 

  The class consisted of 11 students from all different countries(Brazil, Taiwan, US, Ireland, Iran, New Zealand, Germany and so on) having shown wide range of diversity in ideas and concepts of sustainability and governance. As mentioned above, some different concepts of sustainability between students from developing and developed countries led sometimes interesting debates. Especially the concepts of governance were notably divergent by their origin. A Persian student represented strong leadership based on a religion is the key of maintenance of the country while the German student insisted on importance of harmony and peaceful means.

 

  However, lack of the concept of civil society and community in sustainability during the class was inconvenient to my expectation. Among three major pillars of sustainability, environmental perspectives were too much focused; therefore, slipping the opportunities to discuss other pillars left me feeling something missing. In spite of my feeling, this international class brought me amazing inspiring moments, especially on considering environment.

 

  I believe that this was truly helpful my study on sustainable development, strongly recommend international summer school to my colleagues to deepen our understanding and to broaden human networks.

 

Thank you.