Adventure offers the first step in developing a motivation for sustainable practice through helping students to develop a connection with the natural world.  A sustainable practitioner in Adventure would have a local focus and a minimalist approach. A sustainable practitioner in Sport is being articulated through Staff and PEAC discussion.

Sustainability is inherent in outdoors ethos, and similarly in the systems approach to sport performance. Yet, adventure is primarily a transport intensive activity and sports focuses on human centred performance. This poses significant dilemmas in both areas.

There are many examples in the Diploma in Outdoor Leadership and Management including a full 2nd year paper - Environmental Science and Education. In this paper students investigate a current environmental issue and present it to the class, calculate the ecological footprint of either their own house or a course house, keep an 8 week diary on what they did to live lighter on the earth, run environmental education activities for another group of students, deliver an interpretive lesson on a local natural environment, learn about Tikanga and Te Reo Maori and a Maori view on the natural world, do some action for the environment. During the first year of this course students complete an environmental issues module within a paper that also includes some action for the environment.

Staff training has now been initiated to help staff understand their own actions. The aim is to continue internal discussions on how to instigate sustainable practices throughout our programmes and within the staff and students via individuals, department actions and curriculum. From this discussion a strategic plan is as follows for 2008:

The school has set a series of goals specific to the school and an action plan to realise these, with a theme of personal awareness, personal change, course development and curriculum development:

• For staff to become aware of what sustainable practice means to them individually on a personal and work level
• Continued meetings on the development and education of this. Sustainability to become a permanent agenda item at staff meetings.
• Build sustainable teaching tasks into course outlines that relate to sustainable practices regarding social, environmental and economic issues. These will be incorporated through the usual pre-moderation processes.

• Adventure has specific courses on environment and sustainability
• Sports courses have direct challenges
• Addressing questions such as the sustainable sports event of the future – how to sustain such events without travel.  Exploring how events were run in the 1950s etc.
• Sports Institute currently redeveloping programmes
• Ideas from Adventure to be integrated where applicable to other OISA papers.

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