Global Study

      • Pyramids of Giza
      • Feb 19, 2020 Global Study, Part 3: How Egypt Changed My Sustainability Perspective

        In November 2019, Executive Master of Natural Resources Jerry Headley traveled to Egypt with his XMNR cohort to take an in-depth look at environmental sustainability issues in the Cairo and greater Nile River Valley regions. Egypt is an especially relevant country to study as it faces many sustainability challenges, including: overpopulation of urban areas, water scarcity, pollution, and an underdeveloped infrastructure, just to name a few. Students have been studying sustainability issues for months in their classrooms in Arlington, VA. Like the rest of his classmates, Jerry was excited to be in the country and attempt to couple a sense of experience with his newfound knowledge. Little did he know just how important this would prove to be.

      • A felucca boat on the Nile River in Cairo city center; Photo credit: @Michael Mortimer
      • Dec 10, 2019 Global Study Series, Part 1: Egyptian Environmental Security: Old Wine in a New Bottle

        CLiGS faculty Bruce Hull and Michael Mortimer have recently spent three weeks in Egypt exploring Cairo and traveling upstream along the Nile River to the Aswan High Dam. Sharing experiences and reflections on the past and future of a country astride some of the most pressing environmental challenges of the 21st Century. This series of posts distills some of their thoughts on those challenges.

      • Airplane
      • Oct 23, 2019 ‘Cause I’m Leavin’ on a Jet Plane: Offsetting the Environmental Cost of Air Travel

        Fall semester 2019, the Virginia Tech Center for Leadership in Global Sustainability (CLiGS) will begin mitigating the carbon emissions from the air travel of both its students and faculty. Working with the company Terrapass, CLiGS will contribute to a portfolio that invests in renewable energy and methane recapture. CLiGS is the first group within Virginia Tech to launch this kind of climate action initiative.

      • Cape Town Intersection (Photo: Michael Mortimer)
      • Sep 19, 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.

      • map of india
      • Sep 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.

      • Woman by a body of water
      • Aug 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.