Sustainability – the total package
Professor Priya Kurian says sustainability is too important an issue to dismiss or ignore. It might be complicated, but
she says it cannot be abandoned.
“I’m talking about sustainability in its entirety, not just environmental protection, but social justice, cultural
diversity, economic viability and democratic governance – a ‘total’ concept necessary for creating a good society,” she
says.
Professor Kurian is a political scientist at the University of Waikato’s Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and will
give her inaugural professorial lecture ‘Reclaiming Sustainability’ on Tuesday 8 December.
Career beginnings in India
When she was a journalist for the Times of India in Mumbai, Professor Kurian, fresh out of university, began to cover
what was then a fledgling movement to protest against a mega-dam. “The government was proposing to build a dam that
would flood a lot of villages and displace over 200,000 people. That opened my eyes to the impacts that government
decisions can have in the name of development, particularly on the poor.”
From Mumbai, she went to the US and completed her Masters and PhD degrees at Purdue University in Indiana, before being
appointed to a position at Waikato in 1996.
Her PhD thesis focused on a feminist gender analysis of the World Bank’s environmental and social policies and was
published as a book. Since then her work in development studies has continued its focus on the role of women. “Women and
culture are central to any conception of transformative social change,” she says.
Exploring sustainability through many lenses
Professor Kurian’s lecture will weave the strands of environmental action, gender, and cultural diversity with the ideas
of deliberative democracy and the governance of science to explore sustainability.
Most recently, Professor Kurian and Professor Debashish Munshi from Waikato Management School have worked on the idea of
sustainable citizenship. A key focus of this project was to find creative ways for public engagement on issues around
controversial new technologies. They are now using this concept to address the most pressing issue of our time – climate
change.
Earlier this year, the duo was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Grant to host a Climate Futures Symposium in Bellagio,
Italy, with a central focus on social justice. The participants at that symposium now plan to make a submission to the
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, ahead of the big climate change conference taking place in Paris
later this month, involving 190 countries. “We have to ensure that any treaty governments sign at COP21 takes into
account the most vulnerable.”
Community involvement
Professor Kurian is not just an academic, she’s actively involved in the community. She is a founding member and trustee
of Shama Hamilton Ethnic Women’s Centre Trust, an organisation set up to support ethnic women and their families.
Professor Kurian’s inaugural professorial lecture takes place on Tuesday 8 December, 6pm in the Academy of Performing
Arts. The lecture is free and open to the public.
ENDS