GLOBAL COALITION IS GOING TO RIO

ARE YOU INTERESTED IN GAINING HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE IN ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY AND DEVELOPMENT? 

 

WOULD YOU LIKE TO ATTEND THE UN CONFERENCE ON SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IN RIO THIS JUNE? 

DO YOU WANT TO BUILD A NETWORK OF INNOVATIVE STUDENTS & PRACTITIONERS FROM AROUND THE WORLD?

The Yale Office of Sustainability IS PARTNERING WITH  Fundação Getulio Varga AND UMASS Boston TO BRING TOGETHER student TEAMS DEVELOPING sustainability initiatives. 

On June 19 SELECTED STUDENTS WILL PARTICIPATE IN A  collaboration & idea-sharing WORKSHOP IN RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL.

SEE THIS WEBSITE FOR MORE DETAILS ON SUBMITTING A PROPOSAL: http://sustainability.yale.edu/news/rio2012

 

APPLICATIONS ARE DUE ON APRIL 16.

Sustain Yourself, Eat Sustainably!

The Yale Office of Sustainability has monthly campaigns relating to different focus areas and October is Sustainable Food Month! Food is such an integral part of our lives, not only as a necessity for survival, but as a routine that reflects our varied lifestyles, cultures, religions and incomes. It is something we all have personal experiences with.

You could say we are all experts on our own food consumption. It’s really empowering to realize that many of us also have the power to reduce waste and CO2 emissions by changing our consumption.  Today I can make a choice to go vegetarian- once a week, twice a week or every day and this will have a direct, positive impact on the environment.

Sometimes we associate dietary changes with depriving ourselves of our favourite foods or eating bland or unsavoury meals, but there are so many creative ways to eat more sustainably: substitute meat for non-meat protein, incorporate more fruits and vegetable into your diet and more – all choices which can be delicious and healthy for you and the earth.  Our health, environmental sustainability and food awareness/curiosity align—definitely a sign to evaluate our diets and find ways to be better to ourselves and to the environment.

I challenge you to go on a sustainable food journey and to take your friends and/or family along for the ride! For university students that want to address this issue on their campuses, check out two food-related sustainability initiatives being implemented by members of the Global Climate Action Coalition:

  Eaternity Program at ETH Zurich University

Eaternity = a concept promoting the consumption of CO2-optimized meals, with the overall goal of reducing CO2 emissions related to food consumption on campus

• http://www.eaternity.ch/en/informationen/umwelt-und-ernaehrung/zuviel-co2.html (English)
• http://www.eaternity.ethz.ch/ (German)

Yale Sustainable Food Project

• http://www.yale.edu/sustainablefood/

Introducing the Global Climate Action Coalition Coordinator for 2011-2012 : Amal Ga’al

Hello everyone! My name is Amal Ga’al and I’m the new Global Action Climate Coordinator for the Yale Office of Sustainability. I am a second year student and a prospective Global Affairs or Ethics, Politics and Economics major. I’m excited to be working on this initiative, because I strongly believe in the power of young people to bring about positive change and I hope that this forum will encourage and inspire us to take action on issues of environmental sustainability. Members of the coalition identify sustainability issues at their university and find innovative solutions. It is amazing how much students have accomplished: solar panel installations, energy-saving competitions, zero-waste events and other green initiatives!

This website has been on hiatus for some time, but it is back now! It will continue to serve as a space for coalition members to share experiences and best practices from their sustainability initiatives.  I will also be uploading online resources and learning opportunities that you may find helpful in implementing your projects and that are generally interesting.

Here’s to an active coalition and a meaningful learning experience!

I leave you with a quote from the late Wangari Maathai, Kenyan activist and Nobel laureate:

“It’s the little things citizens do. That’s what will make the difference. My little thing is planting trees. We need to promote development that does not destroy our environment.”

Coordinator Update: Cool Boston University Initiative

by Vi Nguyen, Coordinator

Boston University in Massachusetts recently released a powerful visual demo on their website recently. Those interested should check it out! And as we look toward 2011 with the Coalition, I hope our team members will realize that they’re fighting a great cause when they work on Sustainability issues on their respective campuses around the world, wherever they may be!

Coordinator Update: Moved to a New Space

by Vi Nguyen, Coordinator

The Global Climate Action Coalition moved to a new website! We’ve started migrating all the information from our old site:

to this current new site! We’re hoping this will be a better space for all current and future teams to share their projects and updates as well as get comments and feedback from those interested in their work! And we’d like to thank Google for hosting us all that time.

Coordinator Update: Cop16 & Coalition

by Vi Nguyen, Coordinator

Throughout November when Cop16 was approaching, we tried hard to find funding and support to host an event, looking at it as an opportunity to expand the Coalition, invite student groups active in finding sustainability solutions on their campuses in Latin America to join us. Unfortunately, we flopped.

This may have something to do with the fact that as Cop16 approached, its ability to be effect waned. A really telling post on Cop16 comes from a foreign policy professor here at Yale. His perspective is interesting, to say the least. So check it out when you get a chance, Walter Russell Mead’s post on “Bureaucrats Swindle Greens in Cancun” .

But we look forward to a meeting in March at Yale, coinciding with the International Alliance of Research Universities Conference. Let’s hope that works out!

Coordinator Update: M&E

by Vi Nguyen, Coordinator
The Coalition was founded with the mission to highlight Best Practices from and for university student groups around the world. As a result, our efforts with Monitoring and Evaluations (M&E) have started! We released our first two annual surveys to try and tease out these Best Practices. One is focused on the Coalition and the teams’ experiences with being a part of a Global Coalition. The data attained and analyzed from this survey will be used to improve the Coalition for the next year as we expand.

The other survey is stylized specifically for each team, asking them about their deliverables, their results, and trying to figure out what would have made the projects more successful–whether it was more team members, more administrative support from the university, or more funding!

The teams are currently filling out the surveys and we will be releasing that sometimes early in 2011! Be on the look out!

Coordinator Update: Skype Meeting with Tongji Team

by Vi Nguyen, Coordinator

I had the opportunity to meet a few of the members from the Tongji team this morning (but last night for them). The key take-away from the meeting in regards to the coalition is that for Tongji, they are in it for the communication. They hope the Coalition will be able to foster a sharing of useful ideas and exciting projects.

They were definitely excited to share some of the initiatives going on in Shanghai at Tongji University! They’re trying to tackle waste by training students on how to conserve water, e-waste and paper. In the coming months, they’ll be providing more details and visual updates for you.

Another exciting thing is that for the past year, our team at Tongji hasn’t been able to access the old website–but on this new wordpress portal–they finally have access! So you’ll be seeing more posts from them.

Coordinator Update: Interview w/ Nasser Brahim

by Vi Nguyen, Coordinator

Again, in following through with trying to gain a deeper understanding of the Coalition, I had a chance to interview Nasser Brahim. Nasser is a Master of Environmental Management (MEM) Candidate at the Yale School of Forestry. He was the Coordinator of the Coalition last year so I had a lot to learn from him! You can watch him talk about his engagements in the environmental movement!

Here are the three take-aways I took from Nasser:

• The website is valuable–it is the space through which the idea-sharing can take place.
• We must find a way to get more traffic to this website so it becomes a real-live communication space.
• Participation in the Coalition is an underlying problem. Our teams had trouble reporting on time.

Similar to what we hope to do with Matt’s suggestions, Nasser’s suggestions will be very useful as we try to troubleshoot and improve the Coalition.

Thanks, Nasser!

Coordinator Update: Interview w/ Matt Ramlow

by Vi Nguyen, Coordinator

In a past post, I mentioned that I wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the Coalition and connect with those that had been instrumental to the Coalition’s functioning last year. One of those people is Matthew Ramlow. I had the chance to speak with him over a meal and I wanted to share the three key take-aways with you!

Matt is currently a senior at Yale University, very involved in on-campus environmental initiatives at Yale. Specifically, Matt was at Cop15 and attended the meeting with the original Coalition members. He had been the Yale point-person for the collaboration with MIT on one of the projects presented at Cop15 during the Coalition Conference. He’s been a leader of the Yale Student Environmental Coalition (YSEC) and actively competes on Yale’s Crew Team. From the conversation with him, I took away three things:

• The Coalition is important–but students are busy so all this ‘trading of information’ might not work out as we hoped or be as useful as we think.
• The teams included in the Coalition were at varying stages and had various strengths. This may make it difficult to collaborate, but it is also a great opportunity for the teams to share their experiences and expertise with each other.
• Having teams with more than one person is incredibly incredibly important.

We will be keeping these things in mind as we build a stronger Coalition. Thanks, Matt!