By Andrew Mendler
Loyalist College Nick Swan considers himself an environmentalist.
He and fellow students found it extremely eye-opening to learn just how many countries around the world are affected by water scarcity.
“Overall the whole process woke me up and made me realize how little that people actually have in the world, said Swan, a second-year student. “Two percent of the global population has easy access to water, I wasn’t aware of that before.”
Swan was among a group of 20 students representing 10 different nations, who spent the day Thursday participating in the colleges first ever mock United Nations debate.
All of the nations represented were considered countries where water management and water-induced conflicts are a high priority.
“People are representing different cultures, countries that they normally wouldn’t even think about being and walking in their shoes,” said Nick Swan, a second year environmental student.
Many of the students involved found the process allowed them to gain more knowledge about many of the world’s lesser-known countries.
“Educating myself with Sudan, alone was very invigorating,” said Katie-Ann Milton, a third-year student. “Learning about other countries as they spoke kind of opened my eyes a bit more about the water scarcity in the world itself.”
Students started researching their countries back in September and had eight weeks to prepare themselves for the event.
Matthew Promhouse, a third-year student, felt it allowed him to see the bigger picture.
“I guess I sort of came into this with this romantic environmentalist idea thinking we can sort of change the world; bring in wind farms, solar panels all those sort of things,” said Promhouse. “This experience is more of the way the rest of the world looks at the environment and it’s a lot deeper than that.
The overall reactions from students was quite positive. Most of them enjoyed the day and were able to take a lot out of the event.
“I didn’t sign up for this at all but I am kind of glad we went through it,” said Milton. “Now I have more of an opinion about other countries, looking into what interactions other countries have with other countries and where countries stand with different problems.”
Bioscience teacher and co-organizer Eric Bauer felt that the day was a huge success. He said the students were able to finish the day with a couple draft resolutions that were agreed and voted on.
He hopes to hold the event again next year but with a larger group of students.
“The one thing that we would like to see is wider representation from the school,” said Bauer. “We had a couple of our colleagues here from other colleges, they came as observing participants this year and hopefully next year we can agree on an interesting issue and we could start to have an inter-college debate.”