Travel extraordinaire MJ Engel shares her inspiring experience abroad as she studies the effects of climate change around the world.
This blog post begins with a simple, incredibly accurate, yet somehow controversial premise: climate change is real.
Anyway.
What do the smog filled cities of Vietnam, desert and mountains of Morocco, and salt flats of Bolivia share? They are where I am spending my spring semester jetting, bussing, and boating around in pursuit of understanding how climate change is affecting their environments and what different governments and grassroots organizations are doing to mitigate and to adapt. The program emphasizes comparative analysis and drawing connections between seemingly disparate peoples and places. Climate change is the preeminent issue of our time, and we are travelling around the world in order to piece together some kind of solution.
This program is the epitome of learning outside of the classroom. Rather than attending daily lectures and seminars, my classmates and I trek through muddy paths, observe cow dung transform into fertilizer, paddle through aquacultures, and visit with people displaced by hydropower dams. Then, we connect our conversations and observations in the field to readings in the classroom. Karl Marx’s theories have never felt more real. And this is just the first four weeks.
While I have learned so much already, I have also struggled with the limitations and potential issues with this program and study abroad in general. No amount of intellectual curiosity can leap over the language barrier in four weeks. No set of good intentions can lessen the impact we as Western travellers have on the environment and in the local communities we visit. No amount of compassion can fully answer to the painful historical echoes of colonization and the Vietnam War (here called the American War) still manifested in the decimated forests and Imperial Palace ruins. No matter how badly I want to transcend the role of tourist, some people we have met cannot see past our overwhelming American-ness and assume we are just like the others that they have met before. And perhaps they are right.
Maybe it’s my naiveté, my optimism, or my personal defense, but I like to believe that they are not. This program emphasizes three ideals as the pillars of our learning: intentionality, holding contradictions, and solidarity. It is essential to interrogate our position, power, and privileges as American students travelling in and out of diverse contexts, as well as the dynamics of our predominantly white group. We all care deeply about climate change, yet are flying to each country, one of the main producers of greenhouse gas. We are not a band of superheroes trapeizing around the world to solve climate change. We are a group of students dedicated to environmental justice for all people, prepared to struggle through the inherent complexities in order to nurture transnational solidarity. It is messy and I have already made so many mistakes, but fighting this good fight is a life worth living.
So, dear readers: study abroad. Do it. No questions asked. And remember: climate change is very, very real.