United Nations Debate

I feel I learnt a lot from the United Nations style debate. The country I was allocated was Ghana so I felt sure there would be lots of information available to me. Before I carried out my research I knew very little about Ghana and next to nothing about any sustainable development policies they had in place, so I was quite excited to find out more about this country. As I had assumed there was masses of information about the country online. Much of it was of little use and I found myself reading through huge documents so that I could prize out the information I felt was most vital to use in the debate.

The main issues I found were desertification and drought, lack of sanitation and clean water and deforestation. I was not surprised to learn this though as from the previous knowledge I had of Ghana I had already considered issues like these being possible challenges for the country. I was however shocked by the number of small villages and towns who were still without clean, safe drinking water, something many of us take for granted every day. It is shocking to think that an issue so small, such as providing clean water, can be such a big challenge. But with little funding Ghana continues to struggle with such issues.

I really enjoyed the debate and was interested to see what issues other countries across the world faced. There was a good variety of approaches from all countries involved and I was quite surprised at just how many countries faced similar sustainable development issues to Ghana. America, China and South Korea faced very different issues to my country, so it was interesting to see what problems they had to overcome. Some of Americas Issues were gun crime, drugs and pollution and China was facing such issues as the loss of its Panda and severe pollution problems. After hearing some of the sustainable development problems from some of the MEDC I felt Ghana was still very deserving of the money, perhaps even more so than countries such as China.

Overall I feel my countries plea for the money was very successful. We had a clear introduction that followed through to our most important sustainable development issues at present and what we felt we most needed the money for. I feel there was sufficient information in our handout, just enough to let people know what we were going to be talking about and why we felt we deserved the money. It also gave them a brief insight into Ghana and hopefully grabbed people’s attention so that they would listen to our speech and take our plea seriously.

If we were to carry out the debate again I think I would shorten out introduction a bit and try to fit in more information about our present policies and how they are working for us and push the point that the money would have a huge beneficial impact on my country allowing us to carry on working towards a more sustainable future. I would also like to rehears my speech more so that I do not feel I need the sheets of paper to help me along.

However perhaps the biggest issue overall throughout the debate and the preparation was the lack of team work. I had very little support and was left to prepare the handout and speech by myself. I do not feel my partner pulled their weight; they did very little research and did not read the handout I had produced until the day of the debate. I feel this lack of team work let our country down and put pressure on me to carry out all the work in a short space of time. On this occasion team work was not beneficial and left me feeling disappointed.

On the bright side I do feel I learnt a lot more about Sustainable Development thanks to the debate. It was interesting to see how different countries faced multiple problems surrounding the issue. I liked finding out how they could use the money in their countries to improve various situations and what policies they had in place at present and what they were hoping for in the future.