On 21 August 2013 earth surpassed the sustainable mark for the year 2013 – World overshoot day has become an annual much talked about day; it means we are currently borrowing resources of generations to come.  

CUT launched a Sustainable Development focus as part of the 2020 Vision of the institution. Numerous projects are undertaken each year on campus by students and staff which include clean-up campaigns, awareness campaigns, as well as various community engagement projects. For more information visit: http://www.cut.ac.za/sustainable-development/. This year, Faculty of Management Sciences hosted the first Sustainable Development Debate on campus on 15 August 2013. 

The purpose was to provide platforms where students from the faculty could present and exchange their ideas with a wide audience.   A number of topics were covered; ranging from as carbon foot print, waste management, go green:  saving electricity (energy renewal), stop water pollution and go green:  stop the culture of littering. The theme of the inaugural debates was “The Future We Want:  Sustainable Development Challenges”, and each department in the faculty chose a group of students (maximum five in each group) to represent them. 

The chairperson of the Sustainable Development Committee, Prof. Tryna van Niekerk and her team were congratulated for the lively debate on sustainable development.  “Thank you for putting the faculty on the forefront with this strategic topic”, said Prof Albert Strydom, Dean of Faculty of Management Sciences. Prof. Jorrie Jordaan, Director of Technology and Innovation at CUT also spoke on the importance of this initiative for students as future generation of leaders, the need to raise awareness of the challenges facing the world, as well as to sustain our environment; particularly in view of negative effect of human abuse. This initiative by the faculty helped CUT students on how to make use of these debates to deal effectively with all challenges that were presented by various speakers.   

The winning team was the team from the Department of Government Management, with the debate topic Water pollution: JL Skosana, K Dikgomo M Maphiri, GM Lebusa and MP Mokwaqatsa.