My bicycle has carried me through five years of Leuven’s cobblestones, rain showers, and early lectures. Just two wheels that have become an extension of how I move through the world. When I imagine my exchange semester in Aberdeen, I picture that same bicycle, or one very much like it, leaning against a different doorway, ready for the same daily routine: pedal to class, pedal to the library, pedal home.
A sustainable world can only be achieved in cooperation. As a law student, I have chosen a minor in public law, specifically because I want to work on the policy side of things. The SDGs are ambitious and comprehensive. In practice, though, I keep noticing the same gap: the technology and the objectives exist, but implementation lags behind. Renewable energy is a clear example here, which is precisely why I chose to take Energy and Environmental law in Aberdeen. Scotland’s experience with off-shore wind energy and their overall progressive energy policies are very much worth studying and taking back to Belgium.
Another way how I try to contribute to a more sustainable world is quieter, but it’s been growing for a while. My girlfriend has been vegetarian for five years, and over time her choices have rubbed off on mine, not as a strict rule, but as a habit of paying attention. Meat consumption, very much so in Belgium, is far higher than what’s sustainable, necessary or healthy, and cutting back has become part of how I try to align SDG 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production) with my everyday life, including during my time abroad.
These might sound like small details the development of a sustainable world, but I think small, repeated choices are exactly where change lives, not just in summit declarations, but in the thousand daily decisions of people deciding how to get from A to B, what food they eat etc…
Lastly, there’s one sustainability goal that I think quietly holds up all the others; namely peace, justice and strong institutions. We talk about clean energy, sustainable cities, responsible consumption, but none of these targets mean much if there’s no one to answer for them when they’re ignored. A sustainability goal without enforcement is just a wish list. Strong institutions and genuine access to justice are what turn promises into obligations they’re the difference between a government or a factory saying it will cut emissions and a citizen actually being able to hold it to that word in court.
None of these things, a bike, a course, a plate with less meat on it, will fix these greater issues on their own. But I’d rather treat my exchange as a small, honest test of how sustainability can actually be lived rather than just discussed and bring whatever I learn from Aberdeen back to Leuven.
