We are in the last months of 1999; the twenty-first century is here, and it offers us valuable opportunities. One of those that I consider most important is to make a retrospective of our actions as administrators, of the wonderful work, our planet earth, in which we coexist and develop our fundamental functions: to be born, to develop, to reproduce and to die. Enough has been said about the need to analyze our history, our successes and mistakes, so as not to repeat the latter.
We are the administrators of the next millennium, we are called to generate development and well-being for our fellow men, we must align all our forces and knowledge with optimism and determination in the search for a better world for future generations.
This possibility is provided by the Zero Emissions Research Initiative (ZERI), which has been developed by the economist Gunter Pauli, with the support of the UN. This has deeply penetrated the needs of third world countries, and In it, the business faculties of such nations come to play a determining role, as multiplying factors of such concern, which we were able to notice in the First World Youth Meeting ZERI / held between October 11 and 16 of the present year, in the beautiful city of Manizales, whose central theme was "Diversification Strategies for the Tropics."
This is how the idea of exposing some of the experiences and knowledge acquired in such an event was raised to me. The concept of ZERI basically lies in maximizing the use of the raw materials involved in any production process, in order to generate the least possible amount of waste. The idea is especially valid in the case of organic production processes, or where large amounts of biomass are used, as in the case of the food industry, where millions of tons of material highly rich in nutrients are being wasted every year. like the seeds and skins of various fruits in the production of nectars.
In such processes, a minimum amount of biomass is being used to obtain the final product, which generates significant amounts of waste, which will cause great environmental problems and also a great loss for the planet and for businessmen. In this way, the idea is to analyze such wastes and based on them, produce new products, taking advantage of all the advantages in nutrients that are currently being wasted, and that increase the environmental burden in our world every day.
We had the opportunity to attend interesting conferences, among which I must highlight the opening one by Professor George Chang, who spoke to us about the possibilities of generating biogas through the use of biodigesters and organic waste material, thus solving problems of energy demands in depressed populations at a low cost, through the use of disused infrastructure: such as chimneys.
In another module we were told about the limited possibilities of Colombia as a world producer of mushrooms, for culinary and pharmaceutical use, by Professor ST Chang.
There we saw how there are limited varieties of mushrooms in our country, many of which have not been analyzed, for possible commercialization and use. Mushrooms offer spectacular opportunities, since they are produced at low costs, in very short harvest times and the raw material is waste from productive processes, especially agricultural, such as coffee threshing, reaching very important prices in the international market.
The Colombian architect Simón Vélez brilliantly exposed us to the unlimited uses that guadua offers, as a noble material in the construction of real mansions. The above, according to the properties that it presents, such as resistance and flexibility, in addition to replacing highly toxic components such as asbestos in the construction industry.
In another important contribution of the academic content of the congress, we were told that the development of all the activities of man in the last centuries, since the Renaissance, has revolved around himself. This is called homocentrism. In the beginning God was put at the center of everything, which was called theocentrism.
The idea that was proposed in the congress is to generate a new vision in the development of man, and of all the activities that this entails, in which life is put as a new axis; such a view is called biocentrism.
In it, the life factor would prevail as a fundamental variable to affect in each process that man tries to develop, whether of a social, cultural, scientific or economic type. Thus, it would be possible to generate the awareness that we do everything based on life, and always thinking about the consequences of our actions for it.
According to what happened in Manizales, I offer some conclusions below:
- The world currently needs a new vision in the way of doing business, in which we think that not necessarily one of the parties should lose (or gain less), in order to solve the imbalances and inequities present in the modern world. Developing countries we have enormous opportunities to compete and develop based on our biodiversity, which we must take care of and make the best use of in a future world, in which water and air will be scarce resources. University has the possibility of being a leader in the development of initiatives such as that of ZERI, since one of its requirements is interdisciplinarity in the analysis of problems or a systemic approach,which we can develop without difficulty in our alma mater since we have the best engineering and science faculties, in addition to having a fairly comprehensive training.
It is time to think about the enormous responsibility that we have, we are creators of the future, a future that we must make certain and prosperous for the generations that will replace us in our infinite journey through the cosmos.
