Environmental Sustainability: Challenges and Opportunities of Greening your Study Abroad Program

World Learning’s mission to “… create a more peaceful and just world” by necessity encompasses environmental dynamics, considering that the root causes of most social justice issues and violent conflicts can be traced to environmental degradation and disproportional access to shrinking natural resources. Thus our mission mandates that we employ an ethic of environmental stewardship in all our pursuits and put in place mechanisms to mitigate our environmental impacts. “We shall never achieve harmony with land, any more than we shall achieve absolute justice or liberty for people. In these higher aspirations, the important thing is not to achieve but to strive.” Aldo Leopold The value of environmental sustainability is widely recognized in higher education circles. Indeed, the majority of U.S. colleges have embraced campus sustainability initiatives by providing staff and resources, and over half of all schools have made a formal carbon reduction commitment. Extending these on-campus policies and practices to off-campus programs is a recent phenomenon that is not yet wide spread. Incorporating a practical sustainability agenda in study abroad is seen as difficult primarily because of the huge carbon footprint produced by air travel. Nonetheless, environmental sustainability policies and initiatives encompass more than just carbon emissions. In study abroad programs, environmental sustainability needs to address three areas: • Program Design & Management: Environmental Impact Mitigation • Curriculum: Environmental Literacy and Advocacy • Communities, Stakeholders & Ecosystems : Environmental Stewardship This session will highlight the key challenges and opportunities of running an environmentally sustainable program, with a focus on the practical over the theoretical, using examples from the Ecuador Comparative Ecology and Conservation program