Blog
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09/12/2019
Environmental Security is a Matter of Equity
South African director Neill Blomkamp’s science fiction social commentary film Elysium sees wealthy elites in the near future removing themselves from planetary resource scarcity... literally. By abandoning a wrecked Earth for a utopian existence in an orbital space habitat, these elites effectively shield themselves from the shortages of water, energy, healthcare, housing, and other human necessities on the Earth below.
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09/11/2019
Global Study Series, India, Part 2: Sustaining, developing, or just surviving?
During my final semester in Virginia Tech’s Online MNR program, I joined a group of students and faculty from the Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability on the Spring 2019 Global Study. Our transformative, eye-opening journey to the eastern Indian state of West Bengal began in Kolkata.The effects of planetary environmental crises are already being felt in India. Heat waves, such as the one currently impacting India, have only been increasing in frequency and intensity, leading to summer high temperatures that are growing unbearable.
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08/13/2019
Global Study Series, India, Part 1: Preserving East Kolkata Wetlands
As a student in the Online Master of Natural Resources program at the Virginia Tech Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability, Kasey Fioramonti has had a chance to witness the enormous environmental challenges affecting one of the most populous countries in the world—India. Kasey’s International Field Experience (IFE) to India in February 2019 offered her a rare opportunity to see how to recognize a community’s sustainability issues early on and address them at the grassroots level; how individuals and families are affected by pollution; and how difficult combating these issues through policy can be.
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08/12/2019
Sustainability Professionals and the World Around Them
In 2014, through its core course Global Issues in Environmental Sustainability, CLiGS began providing international experiences for all of its students. Starting with its first program in China, CLiGS now offers study opportunities in China, Morocco, India, South Africa, Croatia, and Cuba. In 2020, Argentina, Iceland, and Spain will be joining the roster. Because CLiGS’s students are so often working professionals, our study experiences are designed to accommodate their schedules—they run from 10 to 12 days, and tie directly to the semester-long course content.
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08/09/2019
Climate change: a new twist on a very old story
More than 80 percent of adults in the United States now believe that climate change (i.e, global warming) is happening. However, only slightly more than 50 percent believe that humans are responsible (Pew 2018). Despite the established scientific consensus that our current climate crisis is the result of human activity, nearly half of the adult U.S. population still don’t believe it! And yet, there is more to this story; much more. I suspect that only a very small percentage of people know that humans have been contributing to climate change in significant (and positive) ways for thousands of years.
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07/16/2019
XMNR Alum Karlee Siepierski tackles sustainability management at Swire Coca-Cola
Since graduating from the Executive Master of Natural Resources (XMNR) program at Virginia Tech’s Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability in 2016, Karlee Siepierski has both shifted fields and advanced in her career to become the Corporate Sustainability Manager for Swire Coca-Cola, the producer and distributor of many beloved beverage brands in the U.S. While at first unfamiliar, the beverage industry has become a platform where Karlee demonstrates her attention to sustainable corporate…
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07/09/2019
Sustainable Brands Founder Calls for Courageous Optimism
The Sustainable Brands Conference drew over 2,000 people to Detroit’s Cobo Center the first week of June, for inspiration and exchange around global and local sustainability topics. The Sustainable Brands CEO and Founder KoAnn Vikoren Skrzyniarz set the stage by calling for courageous optimism in facing the challenges of saving the planet, despite the daunting data shared at the event: 60% decline in vertebrate species since 1970 The Amazon River is near its tipping point of 25% species loss 60–100…
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07/02/2019
CLiGS Instructor Brings EPA Experience to Private Sector in Green Infrastructure
Turning sustainability goals into action can be an arduous process, requiring skills in mass communication, civics, economics, and corporate management. Virginia Tech’s Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability Online Master of Natural Resources instructor Dominique Lueckenhoff has made outstanding efforts to prepare students to navigate the complexities of sustainable action. In bringing together her experiences with private-sector business models, academia, government regulatory/non-regulatory programs, and collaborative problem-solving, Lueckenhoff offers her students a broad…
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06/25/2019
Applying XMNR Lessons in the Field
When considering grad school, people often wonder whether the investment of time, effort, and resources will pay off. And if so, when? Tyler Walston is currently about half-way through the Executive Master of Natural Resources (XMNR) graduate program at the Virginia Tech Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability, and what he's learning in class, and through team and individual assignments, he has applied directly to his current job responsibilities.
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06/18/2019
India Series, Part 3: Rural Development Dilemma
Study tours help sustainable development professionals experience globally relevant challenges and innovations. In India, teachable moments abound, as was the case recently when I led a group of graduate students from Virginia Tech’s Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability (CLiGS). India’s development trajectory will likely be the most significant in human history and thus the most consequential for global sustainability challenges.
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