Get Herald RSSHow does industrial growth affect groundwater pollution? What's the effect of soil disturbances on aquatic ecosystems? This year's Watson International Scholars for the Environment, who arrived on campus last week, hope to lend an alternative perspective to such issues, and hone the expertise it takes to tackle them.
The seven WISE scholars, hailing from Zimbabwe, Brazil, India, Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Trinidad and Tobago, will spend a semester at Brown receiving training and participating in a seminar on land-use change in the developing world. By sharing their experiences and expertise, the scholars act as both students and teachers, said Steven Hamburg, associate professor of environmental studies, as they collaborate with students and faculty in exploring the issues they work on.
"The program brings together people from the developing world who care about problems we deal with and are working with them day in and day out," he said.
The selective program, which began in 2001 with support from the Henry Luce Foundation and the United Nations Environmental Programme, gathers mid-career professionals from diverse backgrounds of environmental work in the developing world. Conceived as a sort of sabbatical for those who wouldn't normally have such an opportunity, the program helps the scholars explore new ideas and practices in their field of work, Hamburg said.
Jasjit Singh Walia, a WISE scholar and chief executive officer of the eco-tourism program in the Himachal Pradesh Forest Department in northern India, said that such a retreat helps him develop new perspectives on his work.
"All these sabbaticals really help me to go back, re-learn, tell myself whether I'm doing it right," he said.
In addition to its reflective aspects, others say, the cornerstone of the program is the opportunity to build off of each other's expertise.
"All the interaction with all the people from other countries - this will be a fundamental combination of science and networking," said Edenise Garcia, a WISE scholar and an environmental scientist from Brazil who now works in Vancouver. Though many people often think that solutions to environmental problems require lots of money, she said, a better answer can often be found by simply sharing ideas.
"My main goal is to acquire simple but effective tools that environmental managers can apply," she said.
The other WISE scholars are Rahanna Juman, research officer in wetlands ecology at the Institute of Marine Affairs in Trinidad and Tobago; Bala Ram Kandel, senior community forestry officer with Nepal's Department of Forests; Michael Avosa, program director for the World Wildlife Fund in Papua New Guinea; Abha Shende, advisory president of the Environment and Energy Department at the Mitarth Environmental Institute in India; and Lizzie Mujuru, unit coordinator and lecturer in the department of environmental science at Bindura University in Zimbabwe.
Having only just arrived in Providence last week, the scholars may not yet be settled in, but they already have some first impressions of campus.
"It's not as beautiful as Portland," said Walia, who visited Oregon recently. He nevertheless mentioned an "international flavor" around campus and noted that people are especially friendly.
For Avosa, the weekend's snow flurry was a first. "I sent an e-mail off to my family," he said, smiling.
Over the course of the semester, the scholars will participate in a number of workshops covering topics ranging from geographic information systems to environmental economics. They will also take part in a seminar that includes undergraduate and graduate students who study the fields the scholars work in.
Jessica Hunter GS, who took the course last fall and now assists in managing the program, said that the scholars' anecdotal evidence about putting environmental policy into practice lent a fresh perspective to her studies.
"What was interesting to me was that despite being from extremely different places, they had to deal with the same sorts of challenges and overcome the same barriers," she said.
Hamburg said that the scholars' perspective on issues of development and environmental policy colors his research as well. For example, though he had always been aware of the relationship between corruption and land-use change in the developing world, the accounts of a WISE scholar from Cameroon last year helped him realize how much the two phenomena are inextricably linked, he said.
The program's networking opportunities help the exchange of ideas and expertise continue after the scholars leave campus. Several students who have taken the seminar course have later traveled to work or undertake research projects with former scholars in their home countries. Hunter spent last summer with a scholar in Brazil exploring a case study for her thesis on the environmental effects of specially designed riverfront parks, or "greenways."
"It's like one step better than study abroad," Hamburg said of the opportunity to partner with WISE scholars on their own turf. Because students aren't embedded with peers from the developed world, they get an unrivaled experience observing environmental policy-making and practice in the developing world, he said.
Given the University's push for internationalization, Hamburg hopes to see Brown recognize the potential for building upon programs like this one, perhaps hosting events internationally and exploiting a broad network of previous WISE scholars.
"We've got the infrastructure. We've got the networks," he said. "The key is funds."
But for now, he and the scholars will go about turning a semester in Providence into a "transformative experience."
"Everyone's waiting for what I'm going to bring back," Shende said. "I think I'm going to get experience that will help my work, my country ... I'm going to get something very big here."
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