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SGI members’ experiences in faith

Each Drop Counts

by Davide Bixio, Belgium
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When the World Summit on Sustainable Development took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2002, I was in Tokyo for a Buddhist seminar. There I heard about a proposal from SGI President Ikeda that the years 2005-14 be designated the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. This idea had been proposed at the Summit through a Japanese NGO forum and was ultimately adopted.

Out of this grew a personal determination to actively contribute to the Decade. SGI-Belgium's activities to learn about, reflect on and promote the Earth Charter were one concrete opportunity to do this. In my work, the opportunity of focusing on water recycling emerged. At that time I was working as a water engineer in the research and development department of Belgium's largest environmental company. Water recycling supports several principles endorsed by the Earth Charter by, for example, conserving water for agriculture, improving the efficiency and sustainability of water use, and lessening the impact on the environment created by the demand for food. It can also help promote peace, stability and prosperity in water basins which cross political boundaries.

A Change of Heart

To make water recycling sustainable, clearer institutional arrangements, economic instruments and norms are essential. Technological innovation and the establishment of a framework of "best practice" will help, but the most critical need is to produce a change in people's underlying perceptions about water and its value. The renowned Nigerian writer Ben Okri has expressed this in the following terms:

You can't remake the world
Without remaking yourself.
Each new era begins within.
It is an inward event,
With unsuspected possibilities
For inner liberation.

Overall, it is a similar sort of inner change in my own life which has allowed me to become engaged in protecting water resources. In 1993, the year my mother introduced me to Buddhism, my poor academic results and the difficult financial condition of my family made me seriously consider quitting my studies in environmental engineering. Until then, I had no interest in the deeper questions of life, and the choice of my field of study was dictated merely by the prospect of being able to easily get a job.

The hope and understanding I gained from my Buddhist practice gave me the strength to persist in my efforts and to completely turn my situation around. In the last two years of my studies, I was awarded grants which enabled me to pay my student fees, and I graduated near the top of my class. Shortly afterwards I started working for the protection of water resources, which I continue to do today.

Regarding my determination to contribute to the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development, since 2005 I have managed to coauthor 41 scientific papers and five books or book chapters, and to speak at 11 conferences, seminars and workshops, and several other smaller events. As the economist John Kenneth Galbraith said, those who believe they can do something good for the world make more resolute effort than those who don't.

Thanks to efforts made over the past few years, I'll soon be joining an international institution as task manager for aid programs in the field of wastewater treatment and recycling, and I will be awarded a PhD in chemical engineering. However, the greatest acknowledgment, for me, is that the director under whom I worked for the past 11 years has told me that if I ever wished to come back, the door would always be open. Not only is this contrary to his policy, but he decided to put me on unpaid leave, maintaining all my employee rights, for three years, the maximum allowed by Belgian law.

While there is still a long way to go before I become the kind of world citizen I wish to be, there is no doubt that my Buddhist practice has helped activate and broaden in my life the innate sense of responsibility that we all possess to contribute to the well-being of others and of the planet.

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