The ESI’s Angélica Mayolo Invited to Provide Technical Support as City Advisor for the Biodiversity COP (COP 16) in Cali, Colombia

By: Sophia Apteker, Administrative and Communications Assistant

When Angélica Mayolo was advocating for the city of Cali to host the Biodiversity COP (COP 16), her marketing was simple: “Choosing Cali means that you recognize the populations in the Colombian Pacific that are working toward the conservation of the environment.” 

Here, the “you” refers to the Colombian government, with the implication that failure to integrate historically underrepresented voices into climate conversations would undermine any type of progress made at the international event. 

The people of Cali, like those of other marginalized groups, have been innovating localized solutions for generations. The “Piangueras,” for example, are a group of women in the Colombian Chocó that collect a mollusk called Piangua from roots of mangroves. By protecting them, they also expand local gastronomy to include the Piangua, which guarantees local interest in mangrove preservation. 

Yet, since these solutions like this haven’t been translated into scientific knowledge, they can, and have, gone overlooked by those in academic and governmental spaces. 

With this in mind, Mayolo’s people-centric argument — supplemented by Cali’s wealth of biodiversity — made for a rather compelling case. And against all odds, it was enough. 

See, Cali was an underdog, competing with roughly ten other Colombian cities for the hosting spot since December of last year, after Turkey withdrew from their position in August due to a series of devastating earthquakes. Shortly after Colombia was declared the hosting country, during the Climate Change COP 28 in Dubai, Mayolo began reaching out to various members of the national and local government to discuss the possibility of hosting the COP in Cali. Several organizations and key leaders from Cali quickly got on board with her proposal, and it evolved into a collaborative effort to present the city as a candidate.

Despite this surge of support, Cali wasn’t always seen as an immediate, clear winner. For example, when stacked against the other finalist city, Colombia’s capital of Bogotá, Cali had comparably less apt infrastructure and fewer resources to support the expected influx of 9,000 attendees, given Bogotá’s population of 7.1 million and Cali’s population of 2.8 million. It’s also worth noting that Cali has been riddled by cartels and gang-related violence, giving it the reputation as one of Colombia’s most violent urban centers

To combat these weaker points, Mayolo, who is an MIT MLK Fellow and a consultant for the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI) leading the Afro-Interamerican Forum on Climate Change, had to lean heavily into the importance of recognizing the Biogeographic Choco region and the work of the local communities as stewards of biodiversity. 

“To present the technical reason behind Cali’s candidacy, we brought together representatives of the hotel industry, local airport, local governments, academia, and others,” Mayolo said. “The proposal itself argued that aside from the role of local communities and biodiversity richness of Cali, we had, as a city, sufficient capacities to host the event, support all the activities related to it, attend all the needs presented by the U.N., and emphatically, that the team behind the candidacy could rally several organizations and leaders in Cali, the State of Valle del Cauca, and the Pacific Region of Colombia in support of the event’s needs.”

On February 20, Cali was officially recognized as the host city for the Biodiversity COP (COP 16), and Mayolo was invited to provide technical support as city advisor. She is now planning the event within a tight timeline, one that usually spans two years but is now compressed to eight months due to Turkey’s resignation. It will be held from Oct. 21 to Nov. 3 of this year, and will invite a range of attendees, including scientists and government representatives, from 180 countries. 

“Receiving the news from the Minister of Environment that Cali had been selected was an incredible rush of energy for me personally, and for everyone involved in the candidacy for host,” Mayolo recounted. “As soon as we received news of our selection, the representatives of the organizations collaborating got together at the City Hall and started planning out the upcoming days of work towards COP.”

Since the starting gun has been fired, time has not been wasted. 

In the upcoming months, Mayolo’s work will center around articulating the various needs and opportunities of the parties collaborating towards COP 16 by reaching out to the communities and leaders of the Pacific to help build an academic agenda for surrounding events. She will also be engaging the private sector and local governments to coordinate additional efforts. 

Mayolo credits the ESI for providing her with tools and networks that have given her “an opportunity to grow [her] understanding of how vital and unique the ecosystems in the Americas are, as well as how local communities work tirelessly for their protection.” 

“We recognize that choosing Cali as a host means the U.N. and the national government understand the importance of the Biogeographic Choco and all the species living there, so we seek to make the region the protagonist of the COP,” said Mayolo. “With side events and activities related to showcasing the biodiversity of our region, bolstering the work of our local communities to protect it, and expanding the understanding of local needs and opportunities by the countries participating, we believe that the COP can impact Cali, the Pacific Region, and Colombia beyond the scope of the event itself, reinforcing our identity as a beautiful and biodiverse destination.”

Science, Technology, and Environmental Justice: Addressing MIT’s Imperative of Justice in the Classroom

By: Madeline Schlegel, Co-op and Chris Rabe, Postdoctoral Associate

The environmental justice (EJ) movement arose in the early 1980s to better understand and address how people of color, low income groups, and Indigenous peoples experienced disproportionate environmental harms across the United States. This led to a multidisciplinary field of EJ studies that has evolved to include aspects of sociology, public health, human rights, geography, environmental science, history, and much more. From protests in Warren County, N.C. about PCB contaminated soil in a predominantly Black community to racial and economic gaps in recovering from Hurricane Katrina, the EJ field attempts to explore the ways in which historical social injustices are interconnected with ecological and environmental problems.

MIT recognizes this interconnectedness in The Imperative of Justice section of Fast Forward: MIT’s Climate Action Plan for the Decade. This section highlights the need to decarbonize the economy by centering justice and equity in the process. Furthermore, it asserts that solving issues of the climate and environment requires a simultaneous effort to solve issues of injustice and inequity.

However, despite increased recognition from the North American Association of Environmental Education (NAAEE) and the Association of Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education (AASHE), research in higher education continues to demonstrate that EJ content knowledge isn’t sufficiently included in environmental and sustainability degree programs, and even less likely in STEM program contexts. The ESI recently published a white paper that reinforces this, highlighting an extreme dearth of climate and environmental justice (CEJ) content within MIT’s STEM departments. This means that students engaging in STEM related learning and research experiences aren’t being exposed to CEJ issues, which is problematic because it may cause a perpetuation of EJ issues in the field.

In an effort to address the lack of CEJ content knowledge in STEM courses and further MIT’s Imperative of Justice, the ESI and the Program in Media, Arts, and Sciences within the MIT Media Lab collaborated to offer a Science, Technology & Environmental Justice (ST&EJ) course during the 2024 IAP session. The course was originally created by Ufuoma Ovienmhada, a PhD candidate in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and was co-taught by Chris Rabe, a postdoctoral associate at the ESI.

ST&EJ students listen to a lecture. Photo credit: Madeline Schlegel

The initial interest form for this course garnered 64 responses from students across a wide range of schools and departments, which demonstrates a significant interest of MIT students in the inclusion of CEJ issues in STEM courses. Ultimately, 25 students participated in the course with 11 students taking the course for credit. The primary goal of the ST&EJ course was to experiment with environmental justice as a foundational framework to foster a meaningful, culturally relevant, and socially just context for STEM learning. More specifically, the course explored the question: How can science and technology be employed in the study of and fight against environmental injustice?

This past January, students engaged with this question by first examining the foundational history of the EJ movement; then by studying the role science and technology has played in exacerbating or ameliorating environmental inequalities; and finally by considering different theoretical frameworks, methodologies, and technological tools that contest (or produce) environmental injustice. Throughout the two weeks of instruction, several topics were discussed, including: engineering climate justice, environmental justice and AI, critical data science and environmental justice, community engagement, electronic waste, environmental justice, and energy justice. Students also gained knowledge of and experience using tools like ArcGIS Story Maps, EJ Screen, and EJ Atlas.

Another aspect of this course included participation from guest lecturers, including Bianca Bowman from a local EJ organization, GreenRoots; Alejandro Paz, an MIT librarian; and other EJ scholars and researchers working at the intersection of EJ, science, and technology.

ST&EJ students engage in a workshop using EJScreen, an environmental justice screening and mapping tool. Photo credit: Chris Rabe

The final project for the ST&EJ IAP course was to create a project proposal of an environmental justice artifact that discusses or presents analysis of an environmental justice issue. The goal was for students to practice applying environmental justice theory and methodology and engage with themes from the class related to science, technology, and environmental or climate justice. The students’ final project presentations focused on a wide variety of topics, like mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia, battery storage facilities, historical EJ issues in Cancer Alley, L.A. and global EJ issues in Honduras and India, among others.

An ST&EJ student gives a final project presentation on mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia. Photo credit: Madeline Schlegel

To further the ST&EJ course’s goal to experiment with environmental justice as a foundational framework to foster a meaningful, culturally relevant, and socially just context for STEM learning, the course will be adapted to a full, semester-long course and a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). The semester-long course will be offered within the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in Spring 2025, but it will likely be cross registered within at least one engineering department. The MOOC (planned to launch in Fall 2024) will be free of charge and fully open to the public. 

In both forms, the future iterations of the ST&EJ course will provide more space for both instructors and students to experiment with a collection of STEM tools and approaches for identifying, understanding, and exploring potential solutions to complex EJ issues across the globe.

For more on climate justice education, contact Chris Rabe at cjrabe@mit.edu.

Music Industry Leaders Tune in to Climate Solutions at Sustainability Summit

By: Sophia Apteker, Administrative and Communications Assistant

The inaugural Music Sustainability Summit in Los Angeles earlier this week was accompanied by record-breaking rainfall — more than half the average seasonal precipitation in just three days. Such extreme weather made conversations centered around human-induced climate change, and the responsibility that music industry stakeholders have to mitigate it, salient all at once. 

“It’s not a solo sport,” said one speaker. “We need to get the ecosystem in this room, and that’s what we’re doing.” 

(As noted in Billboard, the summit was held under the Chatham House Rule, which advises that anyone who comes to a meeting is able to use information from that meeting, but is not allowed to reveal who made any particular comment. This rule was enacted so that summit attendees could speak freely, allowing for a more impactful event.)

The industry is a multifaceted landscape with a range of players, including, but not limited to, artists, managers, agents, venue owners, production teams, merchandisers, and catering vendors. Over 300 of these individuals attended the summit, from premiere companies like Live Nation Entertainment, ASM Global, Sony Music Group, and Warner Music Group to organizations with more specialized missions, like Support + Feed (founded by Maggie Baird, mother of Billie Eilish and FINNEAS) and the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. 

The hosting Music Sustainability Alliance — which aims to be a central hub for these workers to convene for climate action — created a shared knowledge base to assist this array of workers as they prioritize more eco-conscious decisions. Their resources are also available to general audiences. 

An obscure carbon footprint

Public data on the environmental impact of festivals and live events across the globe is slim, and it’s even more scarcely available for the United States. In 2007, a UK report found that emissions from the music industry accounted for a tenth of a percent of the country’s total emissions, with 73 percent coming from live music and 15.6 coming from festivals. While the industry itself may not have the largest sum of emissions, it is still deeply intertwined with leading emitters in the transportation, electric power, and agricultural sectors.

It helps that climate solutions being applied in these areas (more on those later) are transferable to the music industry. Moving forward, they must also be supported by policymakers, applied equitably, and prove to be capable of meeting the existing and growing demands of festivals and other live events. 

To fill in the dearth of data, the ESI is partnering with Live Nation, Warner Music Group, and Coldplay to compile a comprehensive assessment of the US and UK markets that delves into the relationship between live music and climate change, identifies key areas where the industry and concert goers can drive planet-positive outcomes, and offers actionable solutions based on the latest developments in green technology and sustainable practices. It is expected to be completed in July 2024. 

To be more green

But even without this in-depth evaluation, areas where urgent action is needed are still evident. Fan travel, for instance, accounts for 70 to 90 percent of the live music’s carbon emissions. This could be lowered by offering shuttle systems or holding festivals in areas more accessible by public transit. There is also 23,500 metric tons of waste accumulated by the millions of people who attend festivals in the US each year, which could be minimized by deploying recycling incentives or implementing reusable cups. Right now, only around 8 percent of plastic waste generated at festivals is recycled.

From the artist’s side, planning ahead and nailing down logistics — with regard to factors like freight transport, food, and waste — is imperative. A lack of lead times can cause bad decisions, and consequently, a regretful environmental impact. 

Some questions for them and their team to consider include: How is freight being transported? (A bus or an airplane?) What is the source of electric power? (Diesel generators, batteries on site, or the grid?) How much gear is there to transport? (And could it be reduced?) During the show, how much renewable energy is available? And after the show, will the catered food be local? Will it be plant-based? Sustainably packaged? How will leftovers be handled? (Donated or disposed of?) These discussions can be navigated with the aforementioned knowledge base

Overviews of past climate reports have highlighted the crucial need to decarbonize globally by 7 percent annually to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. To get there, people must act collectively and intentionally, something that the Alliance hopes to facilitate through working groups and monthly webinars. 

John E. Fernandez, director of the Environmental Solutions Initiative, later supplemented his talk by saying, “Getting to net zero is certainly not a tweak. It’s a paradigm shift across all sociotechnical systems, especially the energy sector.”

The artist’s role is nuanced and requires a thoughtful approach when determining how to communicate their efforts to their fans. They are the most visible embodiment of their brand and their approach to climate, but they are most likely not a climate expert. Even though fans often like hearing artists talk about climate change, there is also a fear of getting canceled, or accused of greenwashing. 

Their best bet? Supporting climate actions with authenticity and the backup of science and scientists. 

Today, the music industry is moving quickly to adopt a range of climate-positive recommendations, but it is still in its early days. At some point, hopefully soon, meaningful climate actions will become the standard — like LED lights or electric runner vehicles — and it will be easier to make a full transition to low and net-zero live music. 

“Artists don’t always have to be the speaker,” said one panelist. “They can shine their light on experts and activists.”

For more on panelists and resources, visit the Music Sustainability Alliance website.

Local Journalism is a Critical “Gate” to Engage Americans on Climate Change

By: Sophia Apteker, Administrative and Communications Assistant

To get Americans to care about climate change, guide them to their gate. At first, it might not be clear where it is. But it exists. 

That message was threaded through the Connecting with Americans on Climate Change webinar on Sept. 13, which featured a discussion with celebrated climate scientist and communicator Prof. Katharine Hayhoe and the five journalists who made up the 2023 cohort of the MIT Environmental Solutions Journalism Fellowship. Prof. Hayhoe referred to a “gate” as a conversational entry point about climate impacts and solutions. The catch? It doesn’t have to be climate-specific. Instead, it can focus on the things that people already hold close to their heart.

“If you show people…whether it’s a military veteran or a parent or a fiscal conservative or somebody who is in a rural farming area or somebody who loves kayaking or birds or who just loves their kids…how they’re the perfect person to care [about climate change], then it actually enhances their identity to advocate for and adopt climate solutions,” said Hayhoe. “It makes them a better parent, a more frugal fiscal conservative, somebody who’s more invested in the security of their country. It actually enhances who they already are instead of trying to turn them into someone else.”

Last year’s Pew Research Center data revealed that only 37 percent of Americans said that addressing climate change should be a top priority for the president and Congress. Furthermore, climate change was ranked 17th out of 21 national issues included in a Center survey

But in reality, it’s not that Americans don’t care about climate change, Hayhoe argued. It’s that they don’t know that they already do. 

The MIT Environmental Solutions Journalism Fellowship provides financial and technical support to journalists dedicated to connecting local stories to broader climate contexts, especially in parts of the country where climate change is disputed or underreported. 

Climate journalism is typically limited to larger national news outlets who have the resources to employ dedicated climate reporters. And since many local papers are already struggling — with the country on track to lose a third of its papers by the end of next year, leaving over 50 percent of counties in the US with just one or no local news outlets — local climate beats can be neglected. This makes the work executed by the ESI’s Fellows all the more imperative. Because for many Americans, the relevance of these stories to their own community is their gate to climate action. 

“This is the only climate journalism fellowship that focuses exclusively on local storytelling,” said Laur Hesse Fisher, program director at MIT ESI and founder of the fellowship. “It’s a model for engaging some of the hardest audiences to reach: people who don’t think they care much about climate change. These talented journalists tell powerful, impactful stories that resonate directly with these audiences.”

Narratives from across the nation

From March to June, the second cohort of ESI Journalism Fellows pursued local, high-impact climate reporting in Montana, Arizona, Maine, West Virginia, and Kentucky. 

Collectively, their twenty-six stories had over 70,000 direct visits on their host outlets’ websites as of August 2023, gaining hundreds of responses from local voters, lawmakers, and citizen groups. Even though they targeted local audiences, they also had national appeal, as they were republished by forty-six outlets — including Vox, Grist, WNYC, WBUR, the NPR homepage, and three separate stories on NPR’s Here & Now program, which is broadcast by 45 additional partner radio stations across the country — with a collective reach in the hundreds of thousands. 

Micah Drew published an eight-part series in The Flathead Beacon titled, “Montana’s Climate Change Lawsuit.” It followed a landmark case of 16 young people in Montana suing the state for violating their right to a “clean and healthful environment.” Of the plaintiffs, Drew said, “They were able to articulate very clearly what they’ve seen, what they’ve lived through in a pretty short amount of life. Some of them talked about wildfires — which we have a lot of here in Montana — and [how] wildfire smoke has canceled soccer games at the high school level. It cancels cross-country practice; it cancels sporting events. I mean, that’s a whole section of your livelihood when you’re that young that’s now being affected.”

Joan Meiners is a climate news reporter for the Arizona Republic. Her five-part series was situated at the intersection of Phoenix’s extreme heat and housing crises. “I found that we are building three times more sprawling, single-family detached homes…as the number of apartment building units,” she said. “And with an affordability crisis, with a climate crisis, we really need to rethink that. The good news, which I also found through research for this series…is that Arizona doesn’t have a statewide building code, so each municipality decides on what they’re going to require builders to follow… and there’s a lot that different municipalities can do just by showing up to their city council meetings [and] revising the building codes.”

For The Maine Monitor, freelance journalist Annie Ropeik generated a four-part series called, “Hooked on Heating Oil” on how Maine came to rely on oil for home heating more than any other state. When asked about solutions, Ropeik said, “Access to fossil fuel alternatives was really the central equity issue that I was looking at in my project, beyond just, ‘Maine is really relying on heating oil, that obviously has climate impacts, it’s really expensive.’ What does that mean for people in different financial situations, and what does that access to solutions look like for those different communities? What are the barriers there and how can we address those?”

Energy and environment reporter Mike Tony created a four-part series in The Charleston Gazette-Mail on West Virginia’s flood vulnerabilities and the state’s lack of climate action. On connecting with audiences, Tony said, “The idea was to pick a topic like flooding that really affects the whole state, and from there, use that as a sort of an inroad to collect perspectives from West Virginians on how it’s affecting them. And then use that as a springboard to scrutinizing the climate politics that are precluding more aggressive action.”

Finally, Ryan Van Velzer, Louisville Public Media’s Energy & Environment reporter, covered the decline of Kentucky’s fossil fuel industry and offered solutions for a sustainable future in a four-part series titled, “Coal’s Dying Light.”  For him, it was “really difficult to convince people that climate change is real when the economy is fundamentally intertwined with fossil fuels. To a lot of these people, climate change, and the changes necessary to mitigate climate change, can cause real and perceived economic harm to these communities.” 

With these projects in mind, someone’s gate to caring about climate change is probably nearby — in their own home, community, or greater region. 

It’s likely closer than they think. 

To be notified when applications open for the next fellowship cohort — which will support  projects that report on climate solutions being implemented locally and how they reduce emissions while simultaneously solving pertinent local issues — sign up for the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative newsletter. 

Questions about the fellowship can be directed to Laur Hesse Fisher at climate@mit.edu.

The Climate, Environment, and Sustainability Infusion Fellowship (CESIF): An Interim Update with Initial Findings

By: Chris Rabe, Postdoctoral Associate

The ESI’s Climate, Environment, and Sustainability Infusion Fellowship (CESIF) launched in February 2023 to empower nine faculty members across seven MIT departments to cross their disciplinary boundaries and embed topics of climate science, the environment, and sustainability (CES) into the regular undergraduate curriculum. 

As an ESI white paper explains, climate education is necessary for several reasons, including its ability to encourage critical and collective reflection on science and its implications on equity in order to break down disciplinary boundaries. This, in turn, provides students with the tools to “challenge technological and scientific advancement that can perpetuate the unjust status quo for more just solutions.” 

Since we are nearing the halfway point of this two-year fellowship, let’s examine its structure and how research questions have been addressed thus far.

CESIF Structure

On the left-hand side of the figure below, individual faculty change is depicted through Hauk’s model for faculty readiness and change. This model includes domains of the professional change environment, as professors may be influenced by many factors including personal interest, disciplinary expertise, or institutional pressure. 

Conceptual framework for CESIF individual, community, and institutional change. Figure courtesy of Chris Rabe

Moving to the center, CESIF’s components include three models that will create a faculty-centered, experiential community of practice where professors receive support from the CESIF staff and faculty peers through monthly meetings. These models are based on research that shows successful faculty development projects have a long-term duration, focus on shifting beliefs, and seek to create a community of practice. During this time, CES instructional frameworks will be presented to professors and include sustainability content knowledge/literacy areas (sustainability knowledge, systems thinking, social justice, futures thinking, and active citizenship) and sustainability instructional approaches (collaborative, small group learning, inquiry based learning, experiential learning, service learning, place-based learning, and culturally sustained learning), all of which are supported by an ESI white paper titled An Introduction to Sustainability Education. Professors will interpret and infuse these frameworks based on their disciplinary experience and expertise. 

The central area also depicts how the CESIF community of practice interacts with the process of individual change. Work from Kim Kasten and Cathy Maluca highlights how communities of practice influence individual change, which can then reciprocally benefit changes to the community, something they refer to as “a reciprocal benefit feedback loop.”  

The right side of the framework depicts a successful influence of CESIF on the faculty participants which includes changes in content knowledge, instructional approaches, and teaching philosophy. In addition, it highlights how faculty members can disseminate their changes to their departments and create new departmental course offerings, syllabi, units, or course modules that can be used by other faculty members. A critical goal of CESIF is to spur wider departmental and institutional integration of CES course content and pedagogical strategies. 

Although this study builds on models for STEM transformation and communities of practice for instructional change and a framework for examining faculty instructional readiness for change in geosciences, the framework for CES infusion in STEM disciplines created for this study would be the first of its kind. 

Research Questions & Initial Findings

What factors contribute to or inhibit instructional change? 

Two challenges that have been noted often among faculty are (1) The need to cover a wide-range of discipline specific content and a limited amount of space to include new CES units or modules and (2) a lack of CES disciplinary expertise and a need for time and resources to engage in learning experiences to gain knowledge in this area. 

To address this, some of our discussions have focused on the potential of infusing CES content as part of disciplinary content, rather than thinking about adding onto an already crowded syllabus. This is quite a challenge, especially when exploring ways to integrate CES content and teaching practices throughout a course’s syllabus, as opposed to merely adding a new lesson or unit. 

Factors that contribute to change include varying levels of institutional support, the potential to share ideas with the CESIF community, and previous CES teaching experiences. 

For example, in discussing community support, Mike Short, associate professor of nuclear engineering, explained that one reason why he joined CESIF was, “to be a part of this community because MIT is so decentralized that it’s hard to find who else resonates with you. You could find great friends hiding just in the next building that you’d never meet otherwise.” 

In addition, Ariel Furst, Paul M. Career Development Professor of Chemical Engineering, believes that future support is possible. On this, she said, “I think the combo of teaching and sustainability is going to be important. And I am hoping that student evaluations will speak for themselves, that students will be more engaged in these classes. And then you can share that with deans and things like that and say, ‘This is working.’ We should encourage faculty to incorporate this.” 

What kinds of instructional changes are in process? 

Faculty members are still in the process of making modifications to current courses and exploring the creation of new courses. 

For example, Katrina Lacurts, lecturer in electrical engineering and computer sciences (EECS), is investigating using CES as a context for subjective decision making processes and how it can be integrated within classroom content and assignments. 

Betar Gallant, the American Bureau of Shipping Career Development Professor in Mechanical Engineering, is aiming to expand and refresh mechanical engineering courses (2.005/2.006 series Thermal Fluids and Engineering I and II) with new renewable energy based content.

Furst is working on changes to the 10.569 Polymer Synthesis course by adding new inquiry based and active learning opportunities for students to explore sustainable processes and polymers. 

meeting

CESIF members meet for a presentation from Michael Short (associate professor of nuclear science and engineering) titled Anthro-Engineering Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale. Photo credit: Sophia Apteker

Next Steps and Future Goals

By building a multidisciplinary framework for CES infusion in STEM disciplines, more undergraduate students will be exposed to innovative CES content and instructional approaches in STEM disciplines across institutions of higher education, which will provide them with a unique combination of competencies to address a wide-range of climate change problems that occur around the world. 

As we move into the academic year 2024-25, faculty members will continue to refine and implement changes into their courses, and we will have the opportunity to learn more about the impacts of these changes on student learning experiences. In early 2025, we plan to have an event that will allow these faculty members to showcase their instructional innovations to the MIT community. 

As discussions continue related to better integrating climate and sustainability within the General Institute Requirements (GIRs) at MIT, we believe the experiences and findings from the CESIF project can have a substantial impact on larger, institute-wide curricular change. 

Learn more about CESIF.

Exploring the Intersection of Climate Justice and Computing in the Social, Ethical, and Responsibility for Computing (SERC) Program

By: Chris Rabe, Postdoctoral Associate

Recently, a well-warranted amount of attention has been given to the alarming and intensifying environmental impacts that result from data centers and other areas of computing, such as hardware disposal (or e-waste) and biased AI algorithms. However, not enough scrutiny has been placed on the ways in which computing causes and exacerbates climate injustices impacting the world’s most vulnerable groups at national and international levels. What is more, the world of computing education still lags behind in incorporating both more general discussion of sustainability and more specific issues of climate and environmental justice within the general curriculum. 

data center

A Google Data Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. Photo credit: Chad Davis via Flickr

Unfortunately, this means that students currently graduating with computer science degrees at MIT are exposed to a minimal quantity of environmental and sustainability computing content. For example, a recent ESI white paper documented that only approximately 3 percent of the courses within the electrical engineering and computer science curricula at MIT contained content related to either sustainability or climate justice. Informal conversations that I’ve had with computer science students have confirmed this lack of environmental focus in their coursework. 

So, what would a course look like that centers climate justice as a foundational theoretical framework from which to explore the world of computing? 

I am currently leading a reading group as an affiliate postdoc in the Social, and Ethical, Responsibilities of Computing (SERC) program within the Schwarzman College of Computing that attempts to address the climate impacts and injustices of computing and corresponding gap in computing education. SERC was founded to provide a space for students to explore  the broad social challenges that are associated with computing, including political, ethical, philosophical, and legal issues, among others. Our reading group focuses on a core question: What are the ways in which different areas of computing (and computing education) can either exacerbate, or potentially mitigate, issues of climate justice across the globe? 

The interdisciplinary group, which features seven students from both undergraduate and graduate levels across various schools and departments, began to review the above question in October of 2024. Students include Anastasia Dunca (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Major), Ellie Bultena (Linguistics and Philosophy Major), Lauren Higgins (Political Science Major), Jasmin Liu, (Master in Business Administration), Mrinalini Singha (Master in Art Culture and Technology), Sungmoon Lim (Master in City Planning), and Lelia Hampton (PhD Candidate, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science). 

Topics featured in the syllabus include the state of computing education; the impact of hardware production and disposal on communities of the Global South; cloud computing and data center environmental impacts; AI ethics; data science, equity, and justice; and other topics based on student interest. Because this topic is fairly unexplored, the main goal is to expose students to a variety of different subtopics, which would provide opportunities to spark a wide range of interests and academic deliverables. 

During our meetings — of which we’ve had 10 at the time of publication, with 15 more remaining — some topics have garnered more interest. So far, students are most compelled by the broad area of electronics hardware production and disposal. This includes the mining of raw minerals, the manufacturing process, and electronic waste (e-waste), specifically as it relates to the inequitable impacts of these processes on communities around the world, especially the Global South. 

It seems that students are interested in this area for a few reasons. Bultena is intrigued by the history and evolution of electronics manufacturing from an environmental justice perspective, whereas Hampton is currently exploring the intersection of indigeneity and e-waste. Dunca is interested in how to influence big tech to rework their business models or material improvements to reduce e-waste. In addition, our discussions have also focused on a potential lack of awareness among MIT students (and college students in general) regarding their electronic devices and the best way to conserve their lifespan and correctly dispose or recycle them. 

E-waste recycling

E-waste recycling. Photo credit: Fairphone via Flickr

As student interest in these topics continues to be deepened and refined, there are various deliverables that students could produce. For example, the above discussion on student awareness on e-waste has sparked an interest in creating new educational materials for students both at MIT and within other educational institutions. This novel educational material could take on many forms. One option would be to write a SERC Case Study that explores various aspects of e-waste and climate justice, or other adjacent issues. SERC Case Studies are commissioned, peer-reviewed research papers with the specific goal of being used for undergraduate instruction across different fields of study, both for computing-specific students and for a more general audience.

A secondary option would be to create new modules or other educational tools for the Climate Justice Instructional Toolkit, a curricular development project to support faculty and instructors across disciplines at MIT and beyond to better integrate climate justice content within their teaching.

No matter how the students in this SERC reading group communicate their learning experience to the outside world, the main goal is to place much needed attention on the intersections of computing and climate justice to better harness solutions for a more equitable and sustainable planetary future. 

Interested in getting involved in this project? Please contact Chris Rabe at cjrabe@mit.edu to learn more. 

Advancing Natural Climate and Community Solutions at COP28

By: Marcela Angel, Research Program Director and Angelica Mayolo, MLK Visiting Scholar

The 2023 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28) brought over 84,000 people together in Dubai — representing governments, businesses, civil society, academia, and local communities — to discuss how to move forward with the implementation of The Paris Agreement goals. The attendance was the largest in COP history. Discussions deepened on topics such as the global stocktake, mitigation and adaptation policies, and the operationalization of the loss and damage fund. Despite it being characterized by some media as a quiet COP for the lack of significant announcements from governments and stalled negotiations, the sheer number of delegates and wide array of topics covered in side events testified that climate action continues to gain traction on the ground. 

“COPs are moving into an implementation phase, where the big announcements are coming less and less from the negotiators, and more from organizations doing the hard work of implementation and bringing forward new models of collaboration and engagement,” said Marcela Angel, Research Program Director at the ESI. 

In an official side event titled “Knowledge to Action: Co-developing Local Solutions to the Climate Crisis,” MIT brought examples of how community-led collaborations between researchers, practitioners, and decision-makers promote knowledge sharing, capacity building, and solutions that are aligned with global environmental challenges and local socio-environmental priorities. Similarly, the ESI’s Natural Climate Solutions Program (NCS) had a robust participation across five pavilions, with over 20 invited speakers and six events, contributing to raising the visibility of technology-enhanced and participatory Natural Climate and Community Solutions. With the participation of community representatives, government officials, multilateral organizations, and researchers, these events were representative of the multi-stakeholder community collaborations needed to foster equitable local climate solutions.  

Speakers from the “Knowledge to Action: Co-developing Local Solutions to the Climate Crisis” event gather. From left to right: Marcela Angel, Mark Ortiz, Joice Mendez, Sergey Paltsev, Bethany Patten, Benjamin Zaitchik, and Maria Zuber. Photo credit: Angelica Mayolo

Showcasing the results of a participatory landslide monitoring pilot project

The ESI has been working alongside local partners in the city of Mocoa, Colombia on the challenge of equitable climate change adaptation since 2017, after the city suffered a devastating landslide that caused the death of over 300 people, while injuring and displacing hundreds more. During a side event in the Colombia Pavilion, a team of researchers from MIT, Corpoamazonia, and Pratt Institute — alongside community representatives from the Community Researchers Network, government officials from the Ministry of Environment, and strategic allies from the Development Bank of Latin America CAF and the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) — provided a vision for equitable community-based and technology-enhanced strategies to monitor and respond to climate change. The session showcased the results of the GEF project titled “Drones for Equitable Climate Change Adaptation,” which outlined strategies to combine community-based planning and the development of technological tools for landslide monitoring in Mocoa. Participants were able to engage with the project’s online platform prototype and take part in a lively discussion about the challenges and opportunities presented by the use of new technologies for environmental data collection, and the potential of information coupled with the promotion of community participation to develop risk reduction strategies through nature-based solutions. 

The ESI’s Marcela Angel and local partners present the “Drones for Equitable Climate Change Adaptation” project at the Colombia Pavilion. From left to right: Lucy Castillo, Maritza Garzón, Edgar Torres, and Marcela Angel. Photo credit: Angelica Mayolo

“Civil society worldwide is claiming for collective governance and more diversity in the organizational mechanisms,” said Edgar Torres, a member of the Community Researchers Network. “By being connected to the research from its origin, influencing the project’s mechanism of citizen participation called the Community Researchers Network, and with the objective of bringing in, acknowledging the role, and connecting the community, we are putting forward a model for community-led participation.” 

New partnerships for citizen science and biodiversity-based planning

At a side event titled “Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities’ perspectives for climate action and biodiversity protection: integrating traditional knowledge, culture and local innovation the ESI, alongside the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) ACDI/VOCA, Universidad Javeriana, indigenous representatives, and Colombia’s Institute for Scientific Research of the Pacific (IIAP), announced a collaboration to work in partnership with the Humboldt Institute of Colombia to strengthen local capacities in participatory science as a tool for co-creation, democratization, and social appropriation of biodiversity knowledge by various entities, ethnic communities, and local academia in the urban and peri-urban areas of the city of Quibdó. 

Speakers at the “Indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities’ perspectives for climate action and biodiversity protection” panel convened by ESI and the AIFCC. From left to right: Marcela Angel, Zoraida Quesada, Luis Sevillano, Vanessa Teteye, Pablo Palacios, Angelica Mayolo. Photo credit: Sabrina Monsalve

“Quibdó is located in the Chocó Biogeographic region, within the Tumbes-Chocó-Magdalena global biodiversity hotspot,” said Zoraida Quesada, a researcher at the IIAP. “And it is representative of the development challenges of cities with limited resources and capacities to address the overlapping climate, biodiversity loss, and poverty crisis. Using the bioblitz method, we hope to engage the youth in biodiversity monitoring, aiming to create a baseline of information for the city while transferring technical capacities for the co-creation and appropriation of biodiversity knowledge, empowering local youth in biodiversity protection.” 

A research milestone for the Afro-Interamerican Forum on Climate Change (AIFCC)

The panel “Research to action: Insights for conservation from Afro-descendant communities in the Americas,” co-hosted by Conservation International (CI), the ESI, and the Afro-Interamerican Forum on Climate Change (AIFCC) at the Nature Positive Pavilion, showcased the findings of the forthcoming study (led by CI and with co-authors from the other groups) titled, “Recognizing Afro-descendant peoples’ (ADP) role in securing nature in the Americas.” This study, which was framed in the discussions of the AIFCC and headed by CI, a technical ally of the Forum, provides the most compelling evidence to date of the contribution of Afro-descendant people in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Suriname to biodiversity conservation and climate mitigation. 

Angelica Mayolo presents the vision for the AIFCC and moderates the “Research to action: Insights for conservation from Afro-descendant communities in the Americas” event with the participation of Hindou O. Ibrahim, Kelvin Alie, Martha Rosero, Hugo Habini, Marina Marcal, Luis Sevillano, and Pablo Minda. Photo credit: Marcela Angel

Martha Rosero, the Social Inclusion Director at CI and a co-author of the paper, presented the study. Then, people responded to the findings with their own perspectives and recommendations. The respondents — representing  organizations such as USAID’s ACDI/VOCA, Universidad Javeriana, C40 Brazil, the Saramaka Community of Suriname, and Universidad Tecnica Luis Vargas Torres of Ecuador — represented four countries and organizations from academia, NGOs, community leaders, and international cooperation working towards the conceptualization and launch of the AIFCC Researcher Network, which aims to promote a collaborative research agenda focused on addressing research gaps to advance policies and local priorities of ADP related to biodiversity and climate. 

Discussing transnational priorities for the Grand Chocó region

In a conversation convened and facilitated by the ESI and the Development Bank of Latin America CAF at the Latin America Pavilion, Sebastian Carranza and Ligia Castro — the Climate Change Directors of the Ministries of Environment of Colombia and Panama — led an in-depth discussion about the pressing threats and challenges with regard to the sustainable development and conservation of the Chocó Biogeographic Region and the need for instruments to strengthen collaborative work and enable joint international efforts for the conservation of this region. Ignacio Lorenzo, Technical Director for Climate Action and Positive Biodiversity at CAF, shared CAF’s perspective on the effective ways in which governments can implement coordinated conservation efforts. 

The side event, which was titled “The Chocó Biogeographic Region: Urgent call for a transnational effort to protect biodiversity,” also featured the work of Javeriana Professor Pablo Palacios and the MIT ESI’s MLK Visiting Scholar Angelica Mayolo, who presented an overview of the current demographic, economic, and environmental challenges of the Biogeographic Chocó (which is also referred by the researchers as the Grand Chocó region). 

Speakers from “The Chocó Biogeographic Region: Urgent call for a transnational effort to protect biodiversity” event gather. From left to right: Zoraida Quesada, Luis Sevillano, Ignacio Lorenzo, Alicia Montalvo, Ligia Castro, Pablo Palacios, Angelica Mayolo, Marcela Angel, and Martha Rosero. Photo credit: CAF

“The Grand Chocó region has lost around 10 percent of the local species of birds, 16 percent of all species of mammals, and 39 percent of amphibians,” explained Palacios, referring to the biodiversity loss trends in the region. “With a quarter of all species being endemic to the region, the damage to local biodiversity puts the entire ecosystem at risk” 

Mayolo reinforced those figures in her closing remarks. 

“The biggest challenges faced by the Biogeographic Chocó are all international threats, therefore requiring international action to ensure the protection of the region,” she said.

The ESI appreciates the support and commitment of multiple partners who contributed efforts and resources for the successful realization of these events and the wide participation of members from local communities, including GEF, CAF, USAID ACDI/VOCA, Pratt Institute, MIT´s MLK Program, the BMW Foundation, Universidad Javeriana, CI, and MISTI.  

Three Questions on Carbon Markets with Jimena Muzio

Before Jimena Muzio officially joined the ESI as a research associate this August, she was a student in a “Biodiversity and Cities” course that was co-instructed by ESI Director John Fernández during the Spring 2022 and 2023 semesters. She also served as an ESI Summer Fellow in 2023, where she traveled to Colombia to work on a Spanish report that aimed to provide urban development strategies to promote biodiversity conservation in the city of Quibdo and its surrounding areas. These findings were presented to national and local government authorities, research institutions, and civil society organizations. 

Currently, she is working on a research project focused on understanding the involvement of ethnic communities in the Colombian carbon market and its impact on advancing sustainable development goals and promoting climate justice.

To introduce Jimena, we asked her three questions about her work with carbon markets.

How have you applied what you’ve learned from your range of pre-ESI experiences — from working in Argentina’s non-profit and government sectors to serving as a research assistant at the MIT Center for Real Estate — to your research at the ESI?

My professional experience before coming to MIT, both at the non-profit and government sectors, taught me two important concepts when dealing with complex problems, particularly in the realm of governance and policy-making: resilience and robustness in analysis. 

Resilience in policy making is about creating policies and governance systems that can withstand shocks, adapt to changing circumstances, and continue to fulfill their objectives in the face of uncertainty. This becomes crucial when thinking about climate change and environmental challenges.

Similarly, I learnt that robust analyses are a crucial component of designing policies. By conducting a robust analysis, policymakers can enhance the quality of decision-making, improve the likelihood of successful policy outcomes, and build public trust through evidence-based and transparent practices.

What is something that you think everyone should know about carbon markets? 

One of my main takeaways of NYC Climate Week 2023 is that carbon markets alone cannot resolve the climate crisis, but they can indeed make a substantial contribution to them, provided the primary focus remains on decarbonizing our economy. In this sense, given the considerable costs associated with decarbonizing operations, ensuring the alignment between science and the real economy is imperative. Otherwise, companies will not invest in these efforts unless they can break even. This raises the question of what measures the public sector can take to provide the right incentives and support for decarbonizing real economy sectors.

What excites you most about your research moving forward?

I’m really excited about the future prospects of carbon markets projects with ethnic communities and the possibility of contributing to enhancing their potential to uplift and benefit these communities. I believe that by refining and improving their transparency, carbon markets can be effective mechanisms for biodiversity conservation and carbon emissions reductions while, at the same time, fostering equitable development.

To learn more about Jimena’s research, you can contact her at mjmuzio@mit.edu.

Creating Climate Art as a Participatory Design Research Method

By: Sara Laura Wilson, Research Assistant

Designing for sustainable behavior change is more than a technological challenge; it’s a human one. Each of us brings a complex tapestry of attitudes, beliefs, and associations to our interactions with designed products and services, which invariably color our receptivity. For instance, a hopeful or hopeless attitude towards climate change greatly influences our engagement in sustainable behaviors. When interacting with products or services designed for sustainable behavior change, we are not merely responding to the design elements in isolation – we are also engaging with our deeply entrenched associations with the broader issues of climate change.

To understand the human perspective of sustainable design, Sara Laura Wilson, a research assistant in the Environmental Solutions Initiative (ESI), is looking into the intersection of climate identities and design for pro-environmental behaviors, like energy conservation, waste management, and environmental protection. Together with ESI research associate Supreetha Krishnan and their cohort of UROPs — Bianca Lee, Zainab Khan, and Simon Opsahl — they hosted a Climate Art Night on Nov. 14. The event was a research workshop that doubled as a social gathering. It drew 40 participants from the MIT community who each created an art piece that reflected their relationship with and attitudes towards the environment, collaged with their choice of assorted magazines, newspapers, construction paper, crayons, and paint pens. Upon completing their piece, participants wrote an artist statement to accompany their creation and provide further insight into their artistic process and mindset.

MIT students created art pieces that reflected their relationship with and attitudes towards the environment at the Climate Art Night on Nov. 14. Photo credit: Bianca Lee

This workshop is part of an ongoing series of events that are tailored to understanding user perception on climate change and environmentalism through fun and interactive means. It was first conducted as part of the MIT Climate Machine’s collaboration at the 2023 Group Therapy Weekender, an electronic music festival at the Gorge Amphitheater in Washington state. There, 30 festival attendees created climate art pieces that were displayed as a collective art piece at the festival.

Climate art gives insight into the emotional and visual associations people have with the environment; it can also serve as valuable user input for early-stage design development. The integration of user input in the early stages of product and service design is a critical component in developing effective tools that promote pro-environmental behavior. Engaging with users during the formative phase of design not only enhances the overall acceptability of the product but also significantly lowers the risk of product abandonment due to design-user misalignment.

The Climate Art workshop, conducted as a participatory design research method, was developed to understand the visual, verbal, and emotional associations each participant has with the environment. Photo credit: Bianca Lee

Insights from these workshops will be integral to the research group’s development of eco-feedback mechanisms for product design. Eco-feedback design, which encompasses quantitative displays (such as the number of resources consumed or saved) and figurative representations (such as visual metaphors that convey environmental impact), stands out for its effectiveness in promoting environmental stewardship. Through workshops like this, the researchers aim to understand the pre-existing visual and emotional associations users have with the environment, and thereby effectively design figurative representations for eco-feedback that encourage behavior change.

The challenge, and the opportunity for sustainable behavior design innovation, lies in designing mechanisms that not only convey information effectively but also inspire a long-term commitment to pro-environmental behavior. Such designs must therefore be user-centric, involving users in the developmental stages to ensure that the final product aligns with their values, beliefs, and emotional landscape. Through continued workshops within the MIT community and beyond, the research group’s goal is to create a product experience that, through strategic information delivery and emotional engagement, perpetuates sustainable behavior beyond the point of direct interaction with the product itself.

Results and analyses from this event and the Group Therapy Weekender will be examined in a forthcoming research publication, expected in Spring 2024.

Cyclone-Like Technology Holds Promise in Creating a Circular Economy for Small Plastics

By: Sophia Apteker, Administrative and Communications Assistant

For Alexis Hocken, a third-year PhD student in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT, conversations at the Packaging Recycling Summit revolved around a singular question: How can people — at all links of the circular supply chain — bridge the communicative gap between brands who are designing plastic packaging and material recovery facilities (MRFs) that are recycling them? 

Hocken works specifically with small-format plastics, or items that are less than two inches long in at least two dimensions. (Think: travel-sized containers, cosmetic packaging, or other consumer product goods.) When it comes to her research, the disconnect occurs when these products are sent to a MRF to be recycled, but their tiny size causes them to slip through a mesh screen, which was intended to filter out glass shards. 

“It results in this glass stream that’s riddled with a lot of these valuable small formats that could be recycled and ultimately are not getting recycled,” Hocken said. 

At a typical MRF, small-format plastics slip through a mesh glass breaker screen early on in the recycling process. Photo courtesy of Alexis Hocken

 

To get these plastics to the end of the recycling line, a coalition of consumer product companies — including Colgate-Palmolive, Procter & Gamble, the Estée Lauder Companies, L’Oreal, and Haleon — have partnered with Hocken and her team in Prof. Brad Olsen’s lab to develop solutions. The lab also works in collaboration with Desirée Plata, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering; the MIT Environmental Solutions Initiative; and The Sustainability Consortium

At the Summit, Hocken spoke on a panel titled “Making the Case for Small-Format Packaging Recycling.” She was joined by Jennifer Park, the Director of Engagement at The Sustainability Consortium, and Ana Espinosa, the Packaging Sustainability Manager at ELC Management llc. Approximately 300 people were in attendance, either in person or virtually. 

Park opened with a few notes on why eliminating small-format plastics, or just making them bigger, is not a sustainable solution. Most importantly, many small plastics are small for a reason: they maintain the utility of the object. (“You wouldn’t want, or be able to use, a giant Chapstick tube or contact lens case,” she said.) This presents a problem to a slew of companies, specifically those within the cosmetics industry, that have portfolios dominated by small-format plastics.

Because if the plastics’ size can’t be altered, then what? 

Espinosa pointed to innovation within the current recycling streams and processes, a space where Hocken was able to step in. She presented her lab’s proposed solution: a secondary cyclone-like screening process. 

“It’s like a density-based separation where we can capitalize on the stark density differential between plastic and glass,” Hocken said of the technology. “It results in these two theoretically pure streams: one glass and one of small format plastics. These plastics can then be recovered and used in new products and packaging.”

A secondary screen would be able to separate the plastic and glass that fell through the glass breaker screen. Photo courtesy of Alexis Hocken

 

“So we have this mixed plastic and glass inlet that’s fed through into this cyclone,” Hocken said in her presentation. “Basically, you have this circular air profile that’s present, and so your lighter plastics will be able to stay suspended within this air profile long enough to be able to access out this side outlet. Whereas your glass, this denser, heavier material, would be relatively unaffected by this air profile and just fall out the bottom.”

Since there isn’t a lot of data available on the amount of these small format plastics that are actually making it into these recovery facilities, The Summit was useful in connecting those working on this project, especially within The Sustainability Consortium, to industry leaders with resources that could assist them in furthering their research. The conference also helped garner a more well-rounded perspective regarding the cyclone’s feasibility, especially from those at MRFs.

Looking ahead, the cyclone’s results are promising. Hocken and her team ran a techno-economic assessment (TEA) and calculated its global warming potential (GWP) to determine if its implementation would be beneficial from economic and environmental standpoints. The cyclone checked both boxes.

Recently, the team has filed a patent with the MIT Technology Licensing Office. 

“We’ve seen really effective separations already within this smaller prototype,” Hocken said. “We’re excited to keep digging and keep pushing this technology to be more similar to what you would see in a realistic environment, that is, a waste recovery facility, and see how it performs in those more challenging or intense circumstances.”

To view the full presentation and slides, you can make a free account on the Packaging World website.