NGO Roles in Environmental Sustainability
NGOs have executed various projects in the past to promote environmental sustainability. First, they carry out advocacy campaigns to promote good environmental practices. For example, Oxfam International launched a global campaign calling on world leaders to solve the issue of climate change. Additionally, Oxfam’s Climate Hearings project allows those most affected by the devastating impacts of climate change to communicate directly to politicians. Additionally, after the Cyclone Aila in Bangladesh and India, Oxfam led environmental clean-up campaigns by paying and mobilizing teams of campaigners to hold them.
NGO workers often carry out environmental cleanup projects, especially after natural disasters. After Cyclone Aila in both Bangladesh and India, Oxfam volunteers worked to empty and clean out contaminated ponds by raising tube-wells above water levels.
NGOs also support sustainable environmental practices. Green Net Foundation promotes organic agricultural practices to farmers in the Yasothorn Province in Thailand. The organic agricultural practices, compared with conventional chemical-based farming, are less dependent on external input, require less energy, and are more environmentally friendly.
This topic would be interesting for delegates because environmental sustainability is a pertinent issue in world affairs since it is incorporated as one of the ten Millennium Development Goals, and NGOs are crucial actors in carrying out these goals. Many NGOs have done both advocacy and humanitarian work to resolve this issue, and thus this topic would encourage delegates to discuss their NGOs’ past projects and to think of new solutions to plan for how NGOs can promote greater environmental sustainability. Lastly, many of NHSMUN’s topics this year are about promoting good environmental practices, such as United Nations Environment Programme and United Nations Forum on Forests. NGOs can thus use their research knowledge from their topic to help delegates in these committees carry out their solutions.
