Rethinking infrastructures with a sustainable and critical vision

Coming to the end of the LERU Bright Student Conference, one feels overwhelmed by such an experience. This year, Lund University proved to be an excellent organizer. Students had the opportunity to discover the city of Helsingborg, H+, a local solution on the issue of the conference and to take part in delightful brainstorming moments with students coming from all around Europe. Europe is a wealthy spot in the world but then sustainability is not a key issue in political agendas.

Our menu was complete and interesting, consisting of three conferences, workshops and to finish a live case work. The goal during these three days was to rethink infrastructures with a sustainable and critical vision. This was mainly carried out by an interdisciplinary approach. Thanks to students coming from such a different panel of programs, this created an active discussion on the main topic of the conference. The conference dealt with a variety of different topics and issues: some broad and other very technical.

The first lecture was a discussion mainly on water resource. This issue was discussed as a possibility to achieve the Eight Millennium Goals: water access could be an important issue to manage those goals, according to Kenneth M. Persson. Water questions dealing with corruption as such as incompetence, waste greed, ignorance or unclear ownership. And how could the EU help? Three main priorities are  : “(1) Universal access to safe drinking water and adequate sanitation to reduce poverty, improve public health and increase livelihood opportunities; (2) Establishing and strengthening organisation and infrastructure for the sustainable and equitable management of trans boundary rivers, lakes, and groundwater; (3) Coordinating fair, sustainable and appropriate distribution of water between different users”. A plenary debate finished our first day of the conference: students were looking into incentives: education or taxation.

The second lecture resumed the two principal issues of the three-day conference: sustainability and equality and the topic of our Friday urban case study: H+. Leaving the water problems, our lecturer, Stefan Gössling, pulled our attention on the issue of urban space which is as central in our lives as water is: urban problems are exponentially increased and interlinked: housing, reproduction, emissions, mobility, gender issues or poverty cannot be solved without considering the consequences on other subjects. Furthermore, cities are also a lab to find efficient solutions: technology or behaviour changes?

The third lecture, as its title describes, is “Closing the loop”. It gives the opportunity to understand that waste management is also a question of reuse and efficient recycling. Anne Stringfellow, research fellow at the University of Southampton, UK, presented different possibilities in order to reduce waste. The main possibility goes through consumption reduction and the implementation of minimize packaging, a sort of generic packaging leading to waste efficiency. Therefore she called for waste management policies including funding for waste management facilities as well as implementation of recycled materials’ markets. Beyond those practical issues and solutions, A. Stringfellow touched also upon social impacts of waste management such as nuisances, neighbourhood deterioration, but also benefits with low cost energy and employment.

A group’s configuration at the live case exhibition

These three interventions and discussions led to fruitful and dynamic exchanges between students. Equal and Sustainable Infrastructures are a vast subject. This conference focused on the environmental axiom without excluding social and economic sides of the problem. These three days have been an opportunity to address different solutions, concerning waste management and the possibility or we could say necessity to reduce food waste; the issue of re-thinking, re-newing our cities and urban areas to avoid waste of water and heat resources; therefore, electricity and energy resources. Our objective is therefore to change our way of living, of thinking, in order to give the opportunity and the possibility for every citizen to have access to basic environmental and structural needs, in accordance with natural resources.

This article was written with Louis Lepioufle.

Credit photo : Tobias Vemmenby