By Tamara Connell

This day we finally made it to Melbourne, the last stop of our Hållbarhet2009 Learning Journey. We were greeted at CERES (the Centre for Education and Research in Environmental Strategies) by Philip Sutton of the Greenleap Strategic Institute. Philip is the co-author of a new book called Climate Code Red, where the climate crisis (and their view of the most appropriate response(s)) is discussed. For more information, you can read or listen to a recent interview with Philip here. For me, this was a poignant reminder that if we are serious about creating a sustainable society, we really need to start tackling the climate change issue as rapidly as possible - perhaps more rapidly that anything we can currently imagine. We shouldn’t lull ourselves to thinking that just because we understand sustainability and strategic planning, that we are simply doing our part. We need action, quite frankly, and on a massive scale. Again, I ask myself, is scaling up 10 times enough…

After lunch, we were provided a very informative site tour of the CERES garden/park/facilities. We learned much about the permaculture design, the composting toilets, the community food programmes, the alternative energy created on site, etc. It was inspiring to see what a dedicated group of volunteers can do, and it’s an amazing model for working with nature to satisfy many of our human needs. If only we could have one of these sites in every city, children would have the ability to learn and play within nature, and hopefully grow up with a better understanding of humans as one connected part of nature. The projects, research, education and training provided at CERES are extensive, and I highly recommend that you check out their website for more information.

With the usual 10 minutes to get ready, we dropped our bags at our last hostel and ‘freshened’ up. This evening we were to be hosted at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) by the kind folks at the Centre for Sustainability Leadership. They had invited an impressive array of like-minded networks to join us for an evening Dialogue Café. The Café was facilitated by the lively and humourous Jason Clarke. It was an interesting new take on the typical Dialogue/World Café that we are used to in MSLS - a bit like speed dating for networks interested to reach sustainability. We had a great time and met many new sustainability friends. There seems to be great momentum for sustainability action in Melbourne!