By Jenna Somers
South Asian university students who won Climate Champions Fellowships through the Student Society for Climate Change Awareness’s Climate Tank Accelerator visited Vanderbilt University in February, supported by a U.S. State Department grant. The fellows were from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka. They presented their winning research projects geared toward tackling problems of climate change in their respective countries and exchanged ideas and explored opportunities for collaboration with Vanderbilt faculty and students.
The Student Society for Climate Change Awareness is an accelerator program in South Asia that empowers university students with the knowledge and tools they need to educate others and to mitigate the effects of climate change. The program is implemented by two partner organizations:
- Seeds of Peace: a non-profit organization based in the U.S. that supports youth from Bangladesh, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka to become peacebuilders and leaders
- Beyond the Classroom Education: a social enterprise in Pakistan that empowers students through a leadership development program to engage in social and collective action
The 28 Climate Champions Fellows who visited Vanderbilt were members of the Climate Tank Accelerator’s seven winning project teams. They competed with more than 2,000 student participants. Winning projects included a legal think tank to educate rural Nepalese communities on climate-related rights and governance, a recycling program in Bangladesh to convert old jeans into reusable tote bags, a floating wetland in Karachi, Pakistan, to promote climate adaptation, and sea grass ecosystem restoration for carbon sequestration along India’s Visakhapatnam coast.
Qasim Aslam, project director of SSCCA and founder of Beyond the Classroom, and Shweta Patole, Seeds of Peace coordinator for India, led the students on their trip to Vanderbilt. Patole spoke about Seeds of Peace’s mission over the past 30 years to develop leaders who build solidarity across differences to solve societal conflicts.
“When we talk about conflicts, we realize that climate change is increasingly core to societal conflict. South Asian countries are particularly susceptible to the effects of climate change, and so we seek to develop methods to have conversations across lines of differences,” Patole said. “These fellows’ projects are a way for students to share very localized climate related problems and solutions and to exchange ideas for confronting the effects of climate change across societies.”
Visiting Vanderbilt
The fellows visit to Vanderbilt builds on the work of Peabody Global Initiatives to establish international research and education collaborations. During their visit, the fellows presented their winning projects at Peabody, followed by a cultural exchange reception. They also met with students from Dialogue Vanderbilt who had previously attended the Seeds of Peace Camp.
“We were delighted to welcome the Climate Champions Fellows to Vanderbilt. Their visit offered a wonderful opportunity for faculty and students across the university to engage in meaningful dialogue and strengthen our relationships with global partners,” said Ellen Goldring, Patricia and Rodes Hart Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy and vice dean of Peabody College.
Throughout the week, the fellows toured the campus to learn about Vanderbilt’s sustainability efforts, led by Chris Vanags, director of the Peabody Research Office and a leader of Peabody Global Initiatives. “It was an honor to spend the week learning from this group of future global leaders and getting to know them as individuals. Connecting them with my colleagues from across campus was a huge source of pride for me and the work that we do at Vanderbilt,” said Vanags, who also co-chairs the Global Engagement Committee of the Vanderbilt Center for Sustainability, Energy and Climate.
The fellows visited the new Highland Energy Plant, a solar panel project, innovative energy investments, and the smart meadow behind the 6 Magnolia Building. They also toured the Vanderbilt Museum of Art and exchanged ideas about climate solutions with faculty and students from the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences and the Vanderbilt Center for Sustainability, Energy and Climate.
Additionally, the fellows met with Angela Eeds, executive director of the Collaborative for STEM Education and Outreach, to learn about the CSEO’s programs for Metropolitan Nashville Public School students, including the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt. In the Magnolia Makerspace, they developed branding for their climate projects.
“It was an honor to spend some time with these visiting scholars and encourage their creative talents despite a snow day cancelling our planned project exchange with SSMV students. Their entrepreneurial spirit was inspiring,” Eeds said.
The fellows concluded their visit with a tour of the Wond’ry, where they observed the Green-a-thon, Vanderbilt Green Fund’s annual pitch competition to fund students’ proposals for projects that make campus more sustainable.
The fellows took an off-campus excursion to Caney Fork Farms—a research facility and family farm—where they learned about regenerative agriculture and responsible land stewardship alongside Vanderbilt students in a paleoclimates class taught by Jessica Oster, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences.
“My students and I had a wonderful day visiting Caney Fork Farm with these visiting scholars. We had informal and relationship-building discussions with them, and they asked insightful questions and offered ideas for the farm manager and outreach coordinator based on their experiences back home.” Oster said.
Jonathan Rattner, associate professor of cinema and media arts, is planning to make a film of the fellows’ visit. “Meeting these students and learning about their projects was incredibly inspiring,” Rattner said. “I wanted to make this short film to help share their story with the hope of encouraging others to think broadly about creative solutions to combat climate change.”
Tackling the climate crisis in South Asia
Asia experiences some of the most acute effects of climate change around the globe. While the Climate Champions Fellows seek to tackle localized climate-related challenges in South Asia, their work reveals problems that may span the globe as climate change worsens. With this understanding, the world has much to learn from impacted South Asian communities and the fellows who are forging solutions.
Aashika Ojha and Garima Bista, two of the fellows on the legal think tank project team, explained the mission of their work. “Nepal is a developing country with minimal industry, so we don’t really contribute to climate change, but we are one of the countries most affected by it. That motivates us to educate Nepal’s indigenous and remote communities who are affected but don’t know their rights,” said Ojha.
The think tank produces white papers for leaders and advocates familiar with climate change as well as educational materials and programs to raise climate change awareness among the public.
“As law students, we are working to let remote communities know their rights in terms of climate justice so that they can protect themselves from climate injustice,” added Bista. “We hope this trip allows us to teach people about our perceptions of climate change and to learn other people’s perceptions that could possibly support our work back in Nepal.”
Likewise, Emon Kazi, hopes that his team’s project will educate people on the environmental and social impacts of the textile industry in Bangladesh and the need to empower women in rural communities.
Bangladesh is a garment industry hub and a primary supplier of jeans to the U.S. The country’s production of jeans uses substantial amounts of water, reducing water levels and harming the agriculture industry.
“I am from a remote community that has felt these impacts in addition to losing everything to flooding, salinity, and the revolution, so I’m very personally motivated by our work,” said Kazi. “Coastal women are especially affected by climate change and lack opportunities to make a living wage. We are training these women to transform old jeans into reusable totes that they can sell to make an income while contributing to sustainability.”
The Climate Champion Fellows’ visit to Vanderbilt reflects the university’s commitment to building international collaborations to address the world’s most pressing problems. By touring Vanderbilt’s green initiatives and learning about the sustainable farming techniques at Caney Fork Farms, the fellows were able to contemplate how climate solutions in urban and rural Tennessee might apply to very local concerns across disparate South Asian communities and landscapes—a reminder that climate change knows no boundaries and requires global cooperation.
