GREEN POLITICS | Our Collective Future

Azlan Adnan

Founder of the Green Party of Malaysia

http://www.facebook.com/AzlanGreenParty

will speak on "Our Collective Future" at The Teak Pavilion, 38 Jalan Perak, Gergetown, 10150 Penang at 11am on Sunday, Feb 19, 2012. Its somewhere in the heritage heart of old Penang. http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Teak-Pavilion-Penang/342033635822517?sk=info

For directions, call 04-226 3551

OUR COLLECTIVE FUTURE 

Our Collective Future is an initiative by the Green Party of Malaysia to prepare for our future by engaging our entire prospective membership in the creation of an expanded vision of who we are individually and collectively from the perspective of our current strengths and who we wish to become as a members of the human race and co-inhabitors of this planet together with other plant and animal species. Your participation is essential.

Our Collective Future will comprise of four phases: Discovery, Dream, Design and Destiny. 

• Discovery-1: Foundation for our Future: An informal inquiry into how we feel we are now. It is the foundation of the discovery process meant to capture many positive aspects of our collective skill set and establish a baseline of information about our knowledge of the state of the environment to assist in our journey forward. This is not intended to be a voting/representation mechanism, but information gathering and sharing. At this stage we will seek, vet and accept volunteers willing to serve as pro tem committee members who will eventually become founding members when we register the Party.

• Discovery-2: We’ll then invite our pro tem committee members and prospective members to further explore and find our core skill sets and strengths. We need as broad an attendance as possible for this experience. The output of this session will identify the critical success factors that will form the basis for our future growth. Having identified the critical success factors that we need, we will then assess whether we individually need to gain core skill sets such as public speaking, Citizenship Empowerment School, knowledge on environmentalism, social justice, leadership, fund-raising skills, and etc.

• Dream and Design: Later, we will host a nationwide endeavour leading to a shared positive vision of our collective future and a plan for taking action. We will design our action plan to bring our vision to reality. Having done so, and not until then, we will register and launch the Party. 

• Destiny: We will implement our action plan until our vision of a Green Collective Future becomes a reality.

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There is a Native American saying that goes: 

"Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our Ancestors, we borrow it from our Children."

This pretty much sums up the concept of sustainable development, which is defined by the Brundtland Commission as development that "meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

Sustainability is the long-term maintenance of responsibility, which has environmental, economic, and social dimensions, and encompasses the concept of stewardship, the responsible management of resource use. In ecology, sustainability describes how biological systems remain diverse and productive over time, a necessary precondition for human well-being. 

In his 2-hour talk and discussion, Azlan will give concrete, pragmatic and practical examples on how we can modify, adapt or otherwise change our lifestyle in order to ensure our collective future. By "our future," he is not referring to the future of any particular race or ethnic group, or even Malaysians in general; not even merely the collective future of merely the human race, but the future of all living things on the planet. For the human species to survive, we need also preserve all species ~ from both the plant and animal kingdoms ~ with which we have biotic associations. Adopting LOHAS ~ Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability ~ is one way forward.

SPEAKER'S BIODATA

Azlan Adnan, 53, is an entrepreneur and activist. Professionally, he wears many hats as he is the Managing Partner of a business development and marketing consultancy specializing in the health sector, as well as the owner of a number of small businesses, namely, property investment and development, international business management consulting and general insurance.

Azlan began his career in 1983, as a journalist with the Malay Mail and New Straits Times but soon moved onto marketing communications, which exposed him to advertising, public relations and media relations.

In 1994, Azlan pursued postgraduate studies in the United Kingdom, graduating the following year from the University of Westminster, London with an MA in International Business and Management with distinctions in Marketing Management, The International Economy and Operations & Information Management. 

He then accepted a position as a Research Officer with the Malaysian Timber Council’s London Office where he helped develop strategies to counter the boycott of tropical timber that was prevailing in Europe at that time. He made a presentation to the European Parliament to put forward Malaysia’s case for Sustainable Forest Management. He had also concurrently enrolled as a doctoral candidate in Business Strategy and Environmental Management at the School of Management, Royal Holloway University of London where, as he a Teaching & Research Associate, he also taught Management Communications and Environmental Management courses to undergraduates. His research focused on “Business Strategy and The Rise of Environmentalism: A Case Study of the International Timber Trade.” Unfortunately, the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 forced him to abandon his doctoral research and return to Malaysia.

However, his interest in environmental issues continued to be a driving force in his life, even as he strove to re-establish his career. Today, his activism has expanded to embrace political, social justice as well as environmental issues, for example, corruption, education, sustainability, green architecture and green technology and entomophagy, among others. He plans to make these issues his platform with the long-term view to establishing a Green Party.

Azlan is a divorced father of two children – a son aged 21 who’s studying for an Airline Transport Pilot's Licence (ATPL) in Malacca and a 19-year-old daughter who’s studying dentistry at Universiti Teknologi MARA.

Copyright 2003-2018 Azlan Adnan Legal Notice Copyright 2003-2011 Azlan Adnan. This blog post is sponsored by The Green Party of Malaysia