Beyond Emissions: Deepening International Education's Engagements With the Climate Crisis

• In Event: Future Directions for Equity-Driven International Student Research in Post/Crisis Times

Abstract

Although questions of climate change and sustainability remain underexamined in higher education research, many have argued that colleges and universities have the resources and responsibility to lead in this area. This has become a particular interest for those of us working in the area of international higher education, who are increasingly asking questions about how our work might be made more sustainable. For instance, a growing body of research examines the carbon emission impacts of international educational mobility, including that of international students but also faculty and domestic students studying abroad (e.g., Crumley-Effinger & Torres-Olave, 2021; Davies & Dunk, 2015; Dvorack et al., 2011; Shields, 2019).

In this conceptual paper, I seek to encourage international higher education researchers to examine the implications of climate change beyond questions of mobility-related emissions. Drawing on insights from decolonial approaches to climate change and sustainability (e.g., Davis & Todd, 2017; Shotwell, 2016; Whyte, 2020), I suggest that efforts to address sustainability in international higher education that narrowly focus on emissions foreclose examination of the deeper causes of unsustainability related to the colonial foundations of modern universities and the modern societies in which they are embedded (Stein, 2019). These critiques argue that as a result of colonial legacies, complicity in unsustainability is unevenly distributed, and therefore responsibility for it is also unevenly distributed; however, these analyses also suggest that all those who work and study in the modern university are implicated in its unsustainability.

In this presentation, I review different dimensions of this unsustainability, and propose the possibility of developing a reimagined international higher education – for domestic and international students alike – that could prepare us to address the full scale and complexity of the climate crisis without becoming overwhelmed or immobilized. I suggest that this approach to international education would not be only about accumulating more content related to climate science or advocating for specific policy changes, but also about developing the stamina and the capacities to face the volatility, uncertainty, and complexity of the world and the “wicked problem” of climate change with more sobriety, maturity, discernment, and accountability. This may require reimagining approaches to equity, for instance, those that are premised on the assumption of growing an ever-expanding global middle class. Given that a decolonial approach to climate change suggests that such an expansion always comes at the expense of marginalized communities and the wellbeing of the earth itself, it also suggests the need to imagine an approach to equity that takes into account these often invisibilized costs. In this presentation I will reflect on my experience inviting pedagogical engagements with these complex issues. I emphasize that this work of reimagining is often difficult, uncomfortable, and even painful, as it requires that we denaturalize harmful but pleasurable habits and desires, and question perceived entitlements, exceptionalism, and innocence. Nonetheless, as we confront the limits of a finite planet, the possible contributions of such an approach become increasingly evident.

Author

• Sharon Stein, The University of British Columbia