The Ags » education

MIT Sustainability Summit

alexandra — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:39:38 +0000

23 April 2010, Cambridge, USA

Sustainability@MIT – MIT’s student group for sustainability – held their 2nd annual MIT Sustainability Summit on 23 April at Microsoft’s New England Research and Development Center. There were over 200 students and sustainability professionals in attendance. The event was entirely student run and organized and supported through sponsorship contributions from The Alliance for Global Sustainability.

2010 Sustainability Summit

Keynotes were given by Peter Senge – a senior lecturer at MIT and founder of the Society for Organizational Learning; Kook-Hyun Moon -President of the New Paradigm Institute and former CEO of Yuhan-Kimberly; and Anne Kelly – Director of Governance Programs at Ceres. Then attendees selected from 15 different interactive panels and exercises structured around the Summit’s theme of Collaboration and Communication. These included an introduction to systems thinking, a mock climate change negotiation, and a panel discussion on ESG investing. This year’s Summit left organizers and attendees energized for the 2011 MIT Sustainability Summit. We hope to see you there!

Pictures and proceedings can be found at: http://sustainabilitysummit.mit.edu

Student Sustainability Workshop in Tokyo

alexandra — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 10:44:21 +0000

16-20 March 2010, The University of Tokyo, Japan

Text by Yoshimasa Takahashi and Susanne Droescher

The AGS-UT Student Community hosted an international student workshop in Tokyo in March 2010. Our goal was to discuss and propose solutions for sustainability problems in Asia and to launch a sustainability network among Asian students. 50 students from Bhutan, China, India, Taiwan, Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines and other Asian countries, as well as Japan, were joined by students from the other AGS universities (ETH, MIT and Chalmers).

Our main motive was to focus on sustainability issues in Asian countries, so we focused on the theme “Growing Asian Cities: Structuring Sustainability Problems”. Asia has some of the world’s fastest growing economies, and global sustainability discussions often neglect the problems that accompany this growth.

We achieved our goals at the meeting through the group work. Each group of six students represented an Asian country and tackled an issue the group decided was important for this country. For example, groups addressed solid waste management in Malaysian cities, and the Bhutan government climate change strategy. We used methods introduced by Marc Neff from Arizona State University, who showed us interactively how to structure a problem and identify its causes and effects. This gave us a broad picture of the situation, which then allowed us to analyze possible points for intervention. This stage of identifying pros and cons of different ideas for solutions raised very interesting discussions that lasted whole nights. In a final session all groups presented their work and were given feedback from the other groups and from representatives of the AGS universities and industry. We also had welcome and closing parties and a field trip to Toyosu, Tokyo, as a case study for the urban remodeling project.

“The most difficult challenge was reaching consensus in group work, not only because group members were very diverse in nationalities and academic backgrounds but also the sustainability issues themselves were diverse, complex and ambiguous. The most memorable experience, though, was sharing each group’s ideas and solutions in the presentation session. Though it was a big challenge to discuss and reach consensus, we were able to unite and propose innovative ideas together and this gives us hope for the future. Now our network has been launched, and we look forward to cooperating and initiating sustainability events with the friends we have made.”
Yoshimasa Takahashi, AGS-UT Student Community, The University of Tokyo

“The most impressive experience for me was the intensity with which every participant was drawn into the group work. Our different backgrounds provided a large number of viewpoints onto our chosen issue, which was later displayed in the (sometimes) unconventional proposals for solutions. Besides learning about “Coal mining in the province Jiangxi in China” I learned a lot about social systems and the economic situation in the countries of the other group members, and about their concerns.”
Susanne Droescher, president of [project21] students for sustainability at ETH Zurich.

Report on organising conferences sustainably: “Implementing Sustainability at Conferences”

alexandra — Sun, 09 May 2010 13:20:20 +0000

In this report, two ETH Zurich students have carried out a careful investigation of the sustainability impacts of the AGS AM2009
Download the report herehttp://theags.org/education/report-on-organising-conferences-sustainably-implementing-sustainability-at-conferences

AGS AM2010 poster prizes

alexandra — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 15:01:10 +0000

The poster session of the AGS Annual Meeting 2010 featured 44 posters addressing energy and mobility in urban areas, pro-poor urban futures, sustainable building and construction, challenges for business and politics, urban ecology and natural resources, urban design and sustainability/visions of future cities, education for sustainability, student activities for sustainability, and food and water. Five posters were awarded best poster certificates.

Oscar Modin and Kensuke Fukushi The University of Tokyo
“Reducing chemical usage at wastewater treatment plants with microbial fuel cells”

Sunhee Suk and Toshizo Maeda, Chulalongkorn University and Institution of Global Environmental Strategy Kitakyushu (IGES)
“Study on the low-cost and simple decentralized wastewater management system model in the Southeast Asia: Case studies of Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand”

Andreas Hanning and Anna Priem Chalmers University of Technology
“Market analysis of need of engineering competences in sustainability”

Keisuke Miyauchi, Ryozo Ooka, Toshiyuki Hino, Yujin Nam and Yusuke Harada, The University of Tokyo, Kajima Technical Research Institute, Keio University
“Development of an advanced heat pump system with multiple sources and multiple uses for sustainable building“

Jennica Broman, Chalmers University of Technology
“Bio-energy from Enköping to Shanxian“

AGS AM 2009 poster prizes

alexandra — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:33:02 +0000

The poster session with 126 posters highlighted a wide range of innovative solutions to questions of energy, mobility, water and urban agriculture, policy and governance, sustainable construction, education for sustainable development, and urban sustainability indicators. Six poster prizes and three runner-up prizes were awarded according to the six poster session themes. Most of the winners were PhD students. Click on the title to read the abstract.

Rising concerns about anthropogenic climate change have led to biofuels being promoted as a potential fossil fuel substitute, with additional policy implications for energy-security and rural development.

However, there is debate about biofuels’ potential negative impacts on land use with forest conversion as one much-publicized outcome.

This project aims at addressing the biofuel issue in a comprehensive way, via the application of the concepts and empirical methods of economics. Special attention is given to indirect effects of biofuel production on land use and forest conversion, as well as on social welfare. This includes, for example, the study of biofuels on related markets such as land, other agricultural commodities and labor. The proposed research aims to add to current knowledge, in which direct and partial effects are already relatively well-understood, but indirect impacts are missing. An example of such indirect effects is, for instance, the influence biofuel production may have in migration patterns, through a labor demand.

To fill this gap, analytical modeling will make use of the general equilibrium and micro-level approaches of land allocation. Also, the latest methods in econometrics will be applied to the problem.

The poster focuses on the first steps of the analytical modeling. More precisely, it presents a land allocation model, where two different classes of land can be allocated to three different and competitive land uses. As such, land can be used for forest, or for agriculture. Agricultural land is used to grow an energy crop and an agricultural commodity.

Methodology employed in this model is based on the basic principles of land economics and especially the Ricardian approach. Consequently, land allocation is determined by the land rents associated to the different competitive uses. Innovation comes from explicit modeling of competition between different land uses, including forest and an energy crop. This allows for a clear demonstration of the negative externality associated to forest conversion and the role played by biofuel production in this process.

The main objective of the model is to see how land allocation will change according to the variation of key parameters such as a shock on demand. For a number of reasons, it is reasonable to expect that demand for biofuels will increase, thus influencing land allocation. By modeling possible impacts not only relatively to other agricultural commodities but also on forest conversion, it is expected to derive insights on sustainability of biofuel production. Regarding this sustainability issue, a major interest will be the determination of biofuel production carbon balance.

The research findings are expected to be useful for optimal policy design both in current biofuel producer and consumer countries. Potential future producers may also benefit from policy implications derived from the research output.

(theme: Energy and Mobility in Urban Areas)

The majority of existing buildings follow a far from optimal scenario and are responsible for significant energy consumption. Buildings represent 35% of Portuguese primary energy consumption in 2006 and around 65% final energy in Lisbon city (Tirone, 2005). Expected to grow at around 5% yearly until 2020, building rehabilitation is a great opportunity for energy rehabilitation for a stock of 800 000 buildings needing medium to high interventions (AECOPS, 2008). Also the presently favorable conditions for rehabilitation programs focused on the energy component create a good opportunity to energy retrofitting.

This poster presents the combined efforts of three MIT-Portugal Program students working together to improve the energy efficiency of buildings, focusing on improving the existing building stock in Portugal.

One project develops a methodology that intends to include the energy component in rehabilitation schemes with an integrated and comprehensive analysis. The cross cut perspective of energy retrofitting, the detailed variables and data for a city scale case-study (Lisbon with four typical and representative building structures according to historic period/ construction techniques) and the vital audience proximity (energy services industry, municipality, sector players), gives a fair potential for applicability and replication of the methodology to a larger scale.

A second, closely related project focuses on using optimization techniques to quantitatively assess technology choices in the built environment. To minimize energy use and emissions in a cost effective manner, this project will match supply to demand by balancing distributed generation alternatives with energy efficiency measures. Design space exploration will determine a set of distributed generation and energy efficiency choices that can be effectively implemented in Portugal. This set will then be used as input to a multi-objective optimization to quantitatively compare the options.

For these tasks to be successful it is also necessary that procedures consider an accurate technical framework, where existing technologies and best case-studies can be considered in order to drive passive measures for retrofitting forward. One such opportunity lies in unconventional roof technologies, such as cool roofs, which have been shown to reduce a building’s cooling load by up to 28% (Simpson, 1997). The third project investigates these potential energy savings by developing a tool to be used to evaluate potential energy savings from roofs for Portuguese buildings. An energy balance is applied to each type of roof technology (currently a green roof, cool roof, concrete roof, and modified bitumen roof) with climatic parameters as inputs to find the heat flux through the roof. This tool will be used to assess which roof technology is most energy efficient in various Portuguese climates, which can then be used in the aforementioned rehabilitation schemes.

References:

AECOPS, 2008. Portuguese Civil Construction Market – Challenges and Opportunities, Lisbon.(AECOPS – Portuguese Association of Public Works and Construction Corporations)
Simpson, J. & McPherson, E. 1997. “The effects of roof albedo modification on cooling loads of scale model residences in Tucson, Arizona.” Energy and Buildings 25, 127-137.
Tirone, L., Leite, Carla P., 2005. “Matriz Energética de Lisboa, Lisboa E-Nova” – Lisbon Municipal Energy and Environment Agency.

(theme: Sustainable Building and Construction)

Ecological footprints are an attempt to measure global ecological impact as a result of our demand for resources and generation of waste. Using the common unit of land area, Ecological Footprints represent a partial measure of the extent to which the planet, individual countries or cities are moving towards sustainable development, by comparing the demand for natural capital with the (finite) amount of natural capital available. Inccreasingly, Ecological Footprints are being used by local government as a vehicle to both measure and communicate environmental sustainability. Furthermore, this metric is increasingly being used to support policy making at the local scale.

A first approximation of Cape Town’s Ecological Footprint was undertaken by Gasson in the late 1990’s. His approach was to convert the metabolic inputs and outputs for the City of Cape Town into their respective productive and absorptive land areas. His results showed that the Ecological Footprint of Cape Town is approximately equal to the entire area of the Western Cape Province. Furthermore, the calculated Ecological Footprint is 50 times larger than the jurisdictional area and 160 times larger than the built footprint of Cape Town. The major contributors to the footrpint were calculated to be food followed by energy.

This work seeks to update the Ecological Footprint for the City of Cape Town. The approach taken here due to the lack of sufficient local consumption data is to use national data scaled or adjusted for the local population size and consumption behaviour. Thus the National Footprint Accounts available for South Africa are used and scaled to account for differences in consumption between Cape Town and South Africa. An attempt is made to generate a consumption-land use matrix and so unpack the metric into policy-relevant themes and, where possible, identify “hotspots” of unsustainable consumption. This is further investigated to determine what insights and possible policy recommendations can be given to policy makers at the City level on the basis of this metric.

(theme: Urban Environment and Natural Resources)

Despite advancement in technology and globalization, the world continues to experience global challenges that threaten to send the planet into a collective demise. Education is an important tool for addressing these challenges. Factors that contribute to gaps in education provision have been studied elaborately and documented in several policy papers and publications. Family poverty, effects of conflict, war, disease, violence and displacement; cultural practices; gender discrimination; inadequate infrastructure or educational facilities particularly in rural or isolated areas which lack adequate funding have been cited as the major challenges to sustainable education provision. Despite the studies, discussions and actions focusing on education for all, it appears as if educational gaps are widening. Majority of the youth, especially those from developing countries still have limited prospects of accessing and being sustained in tertiary education. Others graduate without gaining skills, knowledge, and values necessary for innovative community leadership. “In 2006, some 75 million children, 55% girls, were not in school, almost half in sub-Saharan Africa.”11 EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009 observes that governments are not giving priority to youth and adult learning needs in their education policies. Meeting the lifelong needs of youth and adults needs stronger political commitment and more funding. It will also require more clearly defined concepts and better data for effective monitoring.12)

This presentation is intended to explore non-monetary incentives that would spur the youth: students and school leavers, and the broader community to embrace sustainable development. This poster directs its focus to where sustainable action begins- the mind. The greatest enemy to innovation and youth empowerment is the mind that lacks motivation and commitment. Many young people, beneficiaries of increased school enrollment policies, are still disillusioned only harboring thoughts of the impossibilities to initiate change. They idle, urging their leaders and developed countries to prioritize on education provision, poverty eradication, and environmental stewardship. Due to superstition, pessimism and escapism they aren’t inspired to exploit the available opportunities to address our generational problems.

To such people, it is inadequate to attend more, well built or highly staffed schools; it isn’t fulfilling to get a distinction in exams. They desperately need inspiration through holistic, activity-oriented programs based on hands-on learning of life changing skills. These programs must entirely be contemporary socioeconomic enterprises like agriculture, art and business.

My major preoccupation is to develop a quality project that creates and establishes an attitude of how the youth can maximize in a positive way the potentials of real and perceived limitations to initiate change; instead of waiting for ‘favourable’ conditions. Hope Youth Information and Resource Development Center will be presented as a conceptual project prototype. The project utilises innovative learning approaches to alleviate poverty and instill positive thinking and sustainable action among the youth.

11) Education For All Global Monitoring Report 2009. “Overcoming Inequality: Why Government matters”.UNESCO, Oxford University Press, Page 15.
12) Education For All Global Monitoring Report 2009. UNESCO, Oxford University Press, Page 16.

(theme: Education for Sustainability / Student Activities for Sustainability)

The devastating earthquakes of 8.0M in Sichuan, Gansu and Shaanxi Provinces in China on 12 May 2008 shocked the world and caused near 100,000 lives with millions of homeless. After the Sichuan Earthquake, it has been estimated that over one million new houses need to be rebuilt, three million damaged houses renovated and over 50 cities and counties need to be resettled or rebuilt. (People’s Daily 10^th of September 2008). The total budgets for reconstruction are over $150 Billion US Dollars approved by the Chinese Central Government in September 2008.

After such damages, the fast reconstructions often lack consideration of sustainable planning and construction, which has in many aspects a negative influence on the urban development for the years ahead. For example, after three months, many emergency shelters built for homeless people were already destroyed by the seasonal flood and landslides, and the people in the earthquake region are bearing huge psychological pressure. The most challenging aspects are how to develop an approach for sustainable buildings combined with local constructions rules and habits from the residents in mountain regions. Based on several intensive field investigations trips, our research objectives are to develop new qualitative and quantitative models and process-oriented approaches for sustainable building concepts for reconstruction and resettlement planning of urban disaster areas, such as the destroyed cities in the province of Sichuan. We propose a systemic way of approaching the issue of the reconstruction of cities from a sustainable development perspective. The framework differentiates the well-known tenets of environmental, social and economic sustainability in a systematic approach, raising questions about sustainability related to building codes as well as environmental, human, individual, social and cultural systems. Strategies for the sustainable buildings and local construction methods have been developed for the central and local government, in order to strengthen their regulatory, environmental and managerial capacity.

(theme: Sustainable Building and Construction)

RUNNERS UP:

Swamy, Savitha, Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and Environment, India: “Exploring means of sustaining green spaces in Bangalore, using the flagship image of butterflies”

Nam Yujin, The University of Tokyo, Japan: “Potential Map of Ground & Groundwater Energy Use for Sustainable Society”

Tilley, Elizabeth, Eawag, Switzerland: “Struvite recovery in Kathmandu: a business model for increased food security”

IPOS2009

alexandra — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 10:48:00 +0000

IPoS 2009 – “Food, Energy and Water”
The IPoS 2009 summer session was held in Rayong Province, Thailand, 1-12 August. The theme was “Food, Energy and Water”. These are closely related with each other. Water and energy are necessary for food production. Energy can be produced either by growing crops (as energy crops) using water or by using water in hydropower stations. Using large amounts of energy, fresh water can be gained from seawater through desalination, or agricultural water use can be avoided by importing food from other countries (the virtual water trade). In this way, relationships among food, energy and water are very complicated and differ from place to place depending on local conditions.
Through this theme, IPoS 2009 tried to let students notice that there are different dimensions to sustainability issues in the world, different framings and different disciplines, and then tried to foster their capability for multi-cultural and multi- and trans-disciplinary collaboration. At the end of the course, students prepared presentations in groups, and the students and staff voted to award the “Best Presentation” and “Professor Sumi Prize” to two groups.
Though the process in which the students with such multi-cultural and multi-disciplinary backgrounds worked together to solve sustainability issues was very hard, the outcome obtained from the active and exciting discussion was very great.

Nissan Workshop 2009

Most of the students of the summer IPoS course came back to strengthen their friendships, collaboration, and understanding at the Nissan Workshop in December in Yokosuka, Japan. The theme “Sustainable mobility with zero emission vehicles” challenged the students to think about best scenarios and design proposals for how zero emission vehicles could create sustainable mobility in different kinds of city – under different levels of density, compactness, and transport nodes.

More information at Intensive Program on Sustainability (IPoS) website

MIT’s S-Lab

alexandra — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 10:32:48 +0000

Sarah Slaughter, Senior Lecturer, Sloan School of Management at MIT

The Sloan School of Management at MIT offers a course that specifically addresses how organizations of all kinds – including traditional manufacturing firms, those that extract resources, a huge variety of new start-ups, non-profits, and governmental organizations of all types – are tackling the massive challenges of sustainability. The course includes the S-Lab, where teams of students focus on “live” projects with an organization that has requested help in thinking through a challenge or opportunity related to sustainability. The goal of S-Lab is to provide students with an opportunity to apply the concepts, theories and tools through working with host organizations on their actual sustainability projects. Each team professionally and effectively delivers analysis, advice and recommendations that are immediately useful to the host organization and advance the field of sustainability as a whole. The teams make a formal presentation to the host organization at the end of the project and provide them with a final report, including supporting written analysis and data as appropriate, and present a project poster for the MIT and wider community.

Students at S-La

The host organizations often incorporate the S-Lab team results into their policies and procedures, reflecting the real-time value of the topic for their organization. Host organizations have also followed up on the S-Lab results through additional collaboration with MIT faculty and staff, including subsequent course-based projects, internships, and research programs.

MIT S-Lab website

Students to the COP-15 Climate Summit

alexandra — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 13:01:13 +0000

December 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark

The AGS and the World Student Community for Sustainable Development sponsored students to join the COP15 in Copenhagen. These students from diverse backgrounds and countries have shared their opinions and experiences of the Climate Summit here and in the blogs of the WSC-SD and the AGS universities.

Read about their huge store of impressions and encounters, emotions swinging from inspiration to despair and frustration, impromptu encounters with delegates, experts, and indigenous people. Hoping for a FAB- a Fair, Ambitious and legally Binding – climate treaty. Organising workshops and getting together to generate momentum for the ideas of the young generation on how to achieve the low carbon society.

Student reports from the COP-15>>
Report on WSC-SD at the COP-15 – experiences>>

Students to COP-15

alexandra — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 10:58:09 +0000

Reports from the COP15>>

AGS students at the first COP-15 week:

The University of Tokyo (Todai)

Akira HIRAISHI, MSc student
Akira HIRAISHI“I will keep an eye on the political significance of any “Post-Kyoto Decision” and conflicts of interests between major countries over the new framework. Also I have the aspiration to make the “IR3S joint workshop” and its student session successful.”Akira Hiraishi is a masters student of the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo. His current research is focused on the evaluation of policy through an economic approach.
Yasuaki KAMBE, PhD student
Yasuaki KAMBE“At the COP15, I’m interested in watching the relation between science knowledge and negotiation/discussion matters. My biggest question is how we can overcome the gaps in our scientific knowledge and negotiation/political knowledge between scientists and politicians.”Yasuaki Kambe is a PhD student of the Graduate School of Engineering, Dept. of Chemical System Engineering, at the University of Tokyo. His study is aero-chemistry, mainly the detection of air polluted species and developing detection systems.
Takako OGIMOTO, MSc student

Takako OGIMOTO“I’m now feeling very lucky to be the witness of a historical turning point of the global movement to tackle climate change. And also very eager to see how each country exerts its political influence in the negotiations.”Takako OGIMOTO is majoring in international conflict resolution process and the negotiation. She is interested in the political science of conflict resolution processes in ethnic conflict and other cases.
Makoto TAMUGI, MSc student

Makoto TAMUGI“First, I planned to research only about the topic of technology transfer. However, I realised that technology transfer could not be included within the CDM, but it was a theme involved in various aspects of the negotiations. So I am going to follow all topics about technology.”Makoto TAMUGI is a student in the Masters of the Graduate school of Frontier Sciences of The University of Tokyo. His major is International Studies.
Fang-Ting CHENG, PhD student

Fang-Ting CHENG“For me, the reason to participate in the COP15 is to witness the political determination of concerning Parties as well as to observe the process in negotiating futures agreement. What will be the key factors of making progress? I would like to hear your opinions and the purposes bring you here.”Fang-Ting CHENG comes from Taiwan and she is a PhD student of Graduate School of Law and Politics in The University of Tokyo, majoring international politics on global environmental issues.
Marcos Makoto IKEGAME, PhD student

Marcos Makoto IKEGAME“The reason I am participating in COP is that I would like to see how politics shape policy making and how policy making, in turn, spur the creation of new industries.”Marcos Makoto IKEGAME is a PhD student at The Univesrity of Tokyo. He is studying the promotion (i.e. policy making) and economic impacts of bio-energy and bio-fuels in the Department of Advanced Interdisciplinary studies of the Graduate School of Engineering.
Takara TERANISHI, part-time student

Takara TERANISHI“I will attend COP privately to focus on my research. I would like to draw the picture; what is the best scenario and mechanism for many countries for both developed and developing countries. This is a very difficult question.”Takara TERANISHI is a part-time student, who is working at JBIC (Japan Bank for International Cooperation). She is seconded to JFC (Japan Carbon Finance) to purchase CER from the project.

Chalmers University of Technology

Johan TORÉN, MSc student

Johan TORÉN“The large scale problems facing our global community, be it climate change or the broader trials facing us as we stride for a sustainable future, cannot be solved without strong international cooperation at all levels in society. The COP15 meeting in Copenhagen presents a great platform to connect with individuals and organisations determined to work for a better tomorrow in the large and in the small.”Johan TORÉN is a MSc student in Industrial Ecology. He is combining thesis work and research at the division of Physical Resource Theory, focusing on industrial energy use and green house gas emissions in a carbon constrained world. He is also developing methodologies for biomass potential assessment as part of an EU wide initiative.
Linus HELMING“In order to meet the needs of future generations, sustain natural resources and mitigate climate change, my personal view is that all people in the society has a responsibility to take action, debate these issues and participate in the negotiations of climate change and thus COP15.”Linus HELMING has a MSc in Chemical Engineering from Chalmers and works in the Chalmers Physical Resource Theory group on an EU project on alternative fuels and alternative more efficient automotive technologies. He is an active member of Chalmers Students for Sustainability and the WSC-SD.
Marcus HÖGBERG“We are all part of the global system – which makes us sensitive to changes in our living environment on the planet. However, at the same time we are all individuals and can decide about our own consumption, way of transportation and way we are living in general.”Marcus HÖGBERG has an MSc in Chemical engineering from Chalmers and works as a process engineer at Akzo Nobel. He is an active member of Chalmers Students for Sustainability – vice chairman 2008 and advisory board member 2009.
Guoguo LIU“Faced with the increasingly serious climate problem, COP15 is a great opportunity for all environment advocates to exchange ideas and network on the climate issue. I will get to know the political attitudes of different countries, but also learn more about how other organisation contribute and plan for the future. Global cooperation is the only solution.”Guoguo LIU is an active environment activist and member of WSC-SD. She has a master degree in Civil Engineering, Industrial Ecology and Management of Science and Technology. She intends to do her master thesis in Waste Technology and Management Direction at Chalmers.
Carl Justin Kamp, PhD student at Chalmers, WSC-SD co-president
Christopher Hedvall, research assistant at Chalmers, CSS and WSC-SD
Rasmus Einarsson, PhD student at Chalmers, CSS and WSC-SD
Christian Stöhr, PhD student at Chalmers
Kristina Sahleström, architecture student at Chalmers, CSS and WSC-SD
Susetyo Priyojati, student at Chalmers, CSS

ETH Zurich

Markus HUBER, PhD student

Markus HUBER“Climate change represents an enforced opportunity for collaboration between policy, science and economics. The tools to cope with the issues of climate change have already been derived in these fields. Let’s hope that they are being implemented in Copenhagen.”Markus HUBER studied physics at ETH Zurich and is currently writing his PhD thesis in climate physics. He co-founded the student club ETH Model United Nations and an interdisciplinary Climate Change PhD lunch to foster interdisciplinary discussions at ETH Zurich.
Tim SCHLOENDORN, MSc student

Tim SCHLOENDORN“Climate change is the greatest danger for mankind since the Cuba missile crisis. This time the critical decision will not be taken by a handful of actors, but will be in the sum of uncountable individual decentralised actions.”Tim SCHLOENDORN is currently writing his masters thesis in Environmental Sciences in the research group Environmental Policy and Economics at the ETH Institute for Environmental Decisions.

Second week of the COP-15 negotiations

ETH Zurich

Franziska AEMISEGGER, PhD student

Franziska AEMISEGGER“The climate change debate is a new opportunity of historical importance to face frighteningly old problems linked to power, equity, as well as social, economical and technical development.”Franziska AEMISEGGER has a master degree in Environmental Engineering. She is now writing her PhD in the Atmospheric Dynamics research group of the ETH Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Science.
Katja HALBRITTER, MSc student

Katja HALBRITTER“Yes, we can!…. But do we do?”Katja HALBRITTER holds a Master of Science in Chemistry from the University of Cologne. She is currently working on her MSc thesis in Management, Technology, and Economics at the ETH Institute for Environmental Decisions.

MIT

Kat Potter, PhD student and co-president of Sustainability@MIT
Aaron THOM“I’m greatly interested in the relationship between science and policy, especially on an international scale. The negotiators will (likely) be non-technical people talking about data which they themselves did not compute. Of course, they have multiple other values to conider that the scientists did not, including social and econimic impacts of their decisions. How do they manage these various factors? Will our WSC_SD group have a different perspective or insights? What can we learn about how we can become more effective ourselves?”Aaron THOM is president of Sustainability@MIT – he helped set up the first annual MIT Sustainability Summit and many other events. He is working for his Bachelor of Science in Environmental Engineering with minors in Economics and Political Science at MIT. His interests focus on the relationship between science and policy, with an emphasis on environmental management.

Chalmers University of Technology

Emil LEEB-LUNDBERG“I feel very lucky to be witness to this historical event. Personally, I am interested in seeing the application of efficient solutions to replace outdated and unsustainable methods of society.”Emil LEEB-LUNDBERG is a student in Chemical Engineering with Engineering Physics at Chalmers.
Robert Rochowiak, Alexander Poestra, Nordic Engineers for Sustainable Development (NORESD) at Chalmers

Other students in the World Student Community for Sustainable Development

Christopher Baan, WSC-SD Executive board member, Morgen – the Dutch national student network for SD, The Netherlands
Sina Birkholz, WSC-SD Co-president, Augsburg, Germany
Tamilla Khalilova, WSC-SD Executive board member, Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Mohammed Rizwan Shamim, WSC-SD student, BRAC University, Bangladesh
Annisa Utami, WSC-SD student, Gadjah Mada University, Indonesia
Lindsey Cray, WSC-SD student, The State University of New York
Juan Diego Venezuela, WSC-SD member, NGO, Venezuela
Pieter Ploeg, WSC-SD member
Urias Goll, WSC-SD member

LINKS TO RELATED BLOGS:

WSC-SD blog: http://cop15.wscsd.org
The WSC-SD is a global community of students motivated to take action for sustainable development. A team from all over the world and from 6 universities blogged every day.
ETH Klimablog (german only): http://blogs.ethz.ch/klimablog/
Der ETH-Klimablog will die aktuelle Debatte zum Klimawandel aufnehmen und einer breiten Öffentlichkeit vermitteln. Die Blogger sind sowohl Professoren und Studenten der ETH Zurich als auch Gast-blogger aus Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur und Gesellschaft der Schweiz.
Chalmers and Göteborg Universities blog: http://forskarbloggcop15.wordpress.com/
AGS-University of Tokyo students blog: http://todai-cop15.blogspot.com/

Chalmers WSC-SD Focus Meeting on Education for Sustainable Development

alexandra — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 13:03:23 +0000

4-7 October, 2009, Göteborg, Sweden

This meeting discussed different approaches to ESD from a student perspective, and how students and student communities can improve the education in sustainable development.
More information and application on the WSC-SD website.