A future to look forward to youth and students campaign for a sustainable future.

• Author: Mantl, Josef

The Sustainable Future Campaign is a programme designed by an international team, in coordination with the United Nations Youth and Student Association of Austria, to provide educational platforms to engage global youth and encourage environmental development efforts. The Campaign is planning a series of debates and panel discussions with scientists from diverse backgrounds, leading industrialists and representatives from the education and environment sectors.

As Governments and major institutions work to improve environmental conditions and ensure sustainability, the Campaign will lead a year-long effort to introduce tangible steps young people can take to support the achievement of ensuring environmental sustainability, one of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

A history of poorly managed and irresponsible development practices has amounted to a great loss of vital natural resources, like freshwater and lumber. The economically and socially disadvantaged in global societies are fundamentally affected by this loss. Millions of people face slumlike living conditions, as well as a scarcity of secure access to safe drinking water.

In September 2000, the world's leading development institutions and 191 Member States of the United Nations adopted the UN Millennium Declaration, committing their nations in tackling mankind's greatest problems and achieving the time-bound MDG targets. This collective commitment to establish "a more peaceful, prosperous and just world" addresses specific environmental development objectives. The number of people living without sustainable access to safe drinking water is to be cut by half by 2015 and living conditions of at least 100 million slum dwellers are to be improved significantly by 2020.

Every nation or institution that signed the Millennium Declaration is equally charged with the responsibility of addressing this escalating problem. Environmental sustainability through sustainable development practices must be integrated increasingly into the political and programmatic efforts of Governments, clear benchmarks must be established to assess and encourage the progress of such efforts, and today's youth must be actively engaged in the entire process.

In a recently published joint study by Yale University and Columbia University, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum, in Geneva, Switzerland, and the Joint Research Center of the European Commission, in Ispra, Italy, a first real attempt was made...