The CEO of Sustainability Victoria (SV) Anita Roper yesterday, along with Mr Mark Sawers, the Australian High Commissioner to Brunei Darussalam, held a roundtable discussion at the Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD).

The roundtable was attended by a number of both undergraduate and postgraduate students at UBD, as well as lecturers, and was chaired by Datin Rosnah Ramly, Director of International Office at UBD.

The roundtable began with opening remarks from Mr Sawers, who said that it would be quite useful to engage a broader audience in Brunei and to have a bit of discussion about how countries go about implementing sustainability programmes.

"From our own discussions with the Bruneian government, we know that there's quite a bit of thinking going on about that question, so we thought it would be useful to provide a little bit of context in terms of how Australia is approaching the issue, at a sort of healthy level, and then to hand it over to Anita to talk a little bit more about the pragmatics.

"We're very fortunate to have Anita here today because she represents an organisation which is very active in the delivery of a wide range of programmes," he said.

The opening remarks were followed by Anita's presentation, in which she emphasised two common themes, in terms of sustainability, the first of which was partnership.

"The simple truth of it is that sustainability needs partnership," she said. "Neither Government nor industries, not even universities can do it on their own. We need to work together to make this journey," she said. The second theme was relevancy.

"Sustainability must be relevant to the situation, and that is why I would like to illustrate sustainability in practice with examples, because it's not a 'one class fits all' approach - you need to adjust to your particular circumstances."

She spoke about exactly what Sustainability Victoria does, and as an example, spoke of how sustainability can be integrated into schools.

"In terms of schools we have a rebate programme, which is a five million dollar programme over four years, so we can encourage behavioural change by providing educational activity about the benefits of reusable energy, and what we do is provide funding to schools to install PV systems on the roofs of their buildings, and so, not only do we allow schools to reduce their costs, but we also provide on-site educational training for students about renewables and the benefits of that."

"In addition to working with schools, we partner with industry bodies and member associations, because by doing that, it allows us to maximise our potential for reach in addition to working with individual companies, and it allows us to get more value for the dollars that we're spending as an organisation, but the other important factor, again coming back to the relevancy, is making sure that we're relevant with the particular sector, because as a government agency, we think we know what people would want, but we really don't until we get out there and talk to businesses, and so, by partnering with business we're able to deliver our programmes in a way that makes sense."

Sustainability Victoria's purpose, according to www.sustainability.vic.gov.au, is to show the way of using resources more efficiently and reducing everyday environmental impacts.

Anita has more than 25 years experience working with businesses, governments and communities to turn sustainability concepts into effective action.

The roundtable came a day after the National Environment Conference, at which Anita spoke of how going "green" can actually be "very good for business".

A very lively question and answer session followed the presentation, during which Datin Rosnah mentioned how each UBD student's third year is known as their "discovery year", and asked Anita whether the organisation would accept internship or attachment of UBD students for their discovery year.

"We would certainly like to explore that idea, as I can see just from this session that great exchanges can really take place," Anita replied.

The CEO of Sustainability Victoria will be in Brunei until Saturday.

By Danial Norjidi