From the plane to Durga's Den

It is almost the conclusion of my second day at Durga’s Den. It feels like a long time since I’ve been home already. The plane ride went relatively smoothly. We spent the first day primarily waiting at the airport, but between Gabrielle’s and Ryan W.’s flights coming in, the four of us who had already arrived experienced Jamaican fast food, a beach, and a tourist restaurant. It was an interesting first taste of the country. Of course we then had a long ride back to the Crystal Ripple Beach Hotel. In the morning after breakfast we had some time to relax and get acquainted with our surroundings. 

View of the beach at the Crystal Ripple.
Pic by Melissa Peterson

I went out to take pictures and ended up meeting a lot of Jamaicans! That was exciting and unexpected. I was floored by the genuine friendly reception I got when I said my normal, “Hi! How are you today?” I actually had two kind men sit down with me and give me a lesson in Patois! That was exciting. I met a man by the name of Scooby and he insisted I go for a swim. The water was amazing and in the process, I made lots of friends. I didn’t feel treated like a tourist, I felt like everyone I met was genuinely concerned that I get a good impression of his country (I met all men). Scooby showed me the river mouth and while we were down there, a Sandals tour boat pulled right up to the river mouth with some very uncomfortable-looking tourists on board. I couldn’t help but wonder how different their experiences will be from mine. I don’t know why seeing people on their own beaches causes discomfort to some tourists, but I assume it is because they were viewing from a boat like the walls of the fancy, covered boat are like glass in an aquarium through which to view a foreign environment.

During breakfast I took note of fishing with nets. The nets were lain by boat in a circle. I wonder what the fishing restrictions are along the various coasts of Jamaica in comparison to what I saw in South Africa last semester. I’m sure there are pressures on the marine ecosystem because of the coastal populations and tourism on the island.

We then drove through town for some last minute supplies and for jerk lunch. I had jerk pork and sweet potato fries: heavenly! Neil made a point that the restaurant we ate at was intended for tourism, and while we did see a lot of tourists, we also saw a good amount of locals. He pointed out that businesses intended with tourists in mind still serve a purpose for Jamaicans. Everyone loves good food and a fun atmosphere! That makes total sense. I guess I don’t want to go to tourist places in my hometown, but the places that are really good, I still go to. This is just a Jamaican parallel.

This is the composting toilet
structure at Durga's Den.

After a drive through Ocho Rios, we drove up the mountain to Durga’s Den. We have been here for a little over a day now, and it is definitely a different environment than I’ve ever been acquainted to. I will expand more later. 

~ Melissa Peterson

What are we thinking about? Happiness. Education. Sustainability. Progress. An awful lot.

Ryan, Ryan, Gabrielle, Melissa, and Neil – our lions – are now in Jamaica. We’ll be updating regularly now with as much about them as we can. But before we get rolling, we want to share some of the sustainability materials that we’ve been looking at.

This year marks the 50^th anniversary of Jamaica’s independence from Britain. Over those 50 years, it has undergone incredible development pressures, some positive, some not, and many controversial in the nation itself. We hope to understand some of the dilemmas island nation face in the light of sustainability. So we will be exploring Jamaica’s culture, agriculture, biodiversity, and much more over the coming weeks. But in order to create a frame, we have explored islands and sustainability in several ways.

We can’t hope to share all of it with you, but here are a few things we’ve done so far and how we are approaching them. Here’s a quick rundown in no particular order of importance.

What is happiness? What does sustainability mean to us? What is the purpose of our education? We have explored these three questions (and invite you to do the same) to get at our assumptions and beliefs. Most of us agree that connection to other people, our health, and the opportunity to take meaningful action make us happy. Sustainability, like justice or freedom, is a big concept whose definition can be elusive. One of our members Ryan Walker, though, compared it to stewardship, implying a kind of responsibility to use and care for ourselves and the rest of the planet. But we know this is a rabbit hole that we will tumble down for weeks to come. And our education is the vehicle to achieve our place in society, primarily our professional aspirations. However, our own Gabrielle Reese wrote that education is also a way to learn about ourselves.

Could education be a way to better citizenship for us the globe? Should the purpose of education be to create a more sustainable culture? Or could we incorporate that purpose into education more fully?

One of the authors we have spent some time with is David Orr (picture at left). In his seminal book, Ecological Literacy (1992), he argues education needs to be transformed to help foment an ecologically literate citizenry. That is, people need to become critically aware of the consequences of how we (mostly the developed the people of the world) have lived and continue to live today. It should follow that an educated person become skilled in living well in their places to create a healthy economy and happy society in harmony with nature. To understand the many challenges before us in this class, then, we have examined different views of important concepts behind sustainability and ecological literacy by asking questions about some of our cherished concepts.

Are the sustainability crises Jamaica faces today in agriculture for example, the consequence of unfettered economic growth? Are we humans just restless creatures whose essential nature drives us to toward unsustainability? One of our members wondered with some equanimity whether humans are “parasites?” It’s not uncommon to wonder these kinds of things. If we are, what does that mean for us?

What would progress be? Like sustainability, it’s an amorphous term whose definition seems to slip around the corner when you think you’ve found it. So to get at it, we read pieces by three very different authors on progress. Bjorn Lomborg, something of a cornucopian, thinks technological progress, though responsible for many of the environmental woes we face, is “the only game in town.” Vandana Shiva, urges us to rethink progress as technological progress precisely because of its role in the ecological and cultural crises before us like climate change. She argues that we need to bring human labor freed from industrial machinery back into the economy so that people have meaningful work. It’s as if people have become tools for the tools they made, slaves to machines instead of the other way around. Finally, Derrick Jensen says that we are “high on progress,” and like addicts, have indeed become slaves to an economy and civilization that might need to collapse in order for the rest of the biosphere to thrive. Progress is an Orwellian term to Jensen. Up is down and down is up. Progress is regress.

So what other ideas or questions do we start to ask? Can we develop better technologies with a different definition of progress guiding us? How can a system like Natural Step help shape our problem solving toward a more sustainable world? What should we value in our “one world”? Can we ethically “manage” or “operate” planet earth? What is the right thing to do in a warming world? How should we do it? What skills do we need? Does humanity, or some part of it, need to undergo a spiritual awakening to realize a sustainable civilization or civilizations? So many questions.

And even if we answer these questions, could we become people armed with good intentions unwittingly sending many of us to proverbial hell? Ivan Illich certainly thought so. It can all be rather disorienting.

Island nations face stresses different from continental nations. Their resources are fewer, their boundaries tighter, and their cultural and biological diversity special and unique. To get a handle on how sustainability and sustainable development are playing out on island nations, we read the United Nations report Trends in Sustainable Development: Small Island Developing States (linked here). Development has brought urbanization, natural resource exploitation, changing demographics, and new energy demands all of which create sustainability issues. Climate change, biodiversity loss, deforestation, ocean acidification, and rising sea levels – all the result of the global economy if you follow David Orr and Vandana Shiva – confront islands in their own ways. We will see how some of these play out in Jamaica and how people are dealing with them.

So in the weeks to come we will be mulling over these and many other things. We hope you continue to check back in, get to know each of us better, and share in the excitement.

Who are we?

Next week, five of the six of us will be embarking on our journey to Jamaica where we will be living as well as we can with Jamaicans to learn sustainability on an island. It is an exciting time.

Who are we?

Ryan Walker is a fourth year student of landscape architecture at Penn State University.  There, he has worked on designs spanning community layout and design, watershed analysis, the design of a greenway, and courtyard and park designs in the university design studios.  While studying landscape architecture, he has received a scholarship award for his studies and an award for the Excellence in the Study of Landscape Architecture given to the top students of each class every year by the Department of Landscape architecture.  He is also pursuing a minor in geography at Penn State to supplement his degree in landscape architecture.  

Along with his work in the landscape architecture studios, Ryan Walker is a student ally of New Leaf Initiative, a non-profit company focused on the application of sustainable practices spread across multiple disciplines.  Here, he has worked on a green wall project for the town of State College, PA as well as researching and developing solutions for a potential project in Haiti that looked at helping the country manage the changes it faced after the earthquake struck the country.   Ryan has applied his study of landscape architecture in the professional setting at a residential landscape architecture company and a design firm that works on the environmental restoration of floodplains, streams, and waterways in the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

* * *

Gabrielle Reese is from Clarks Summit, Pennsylvania, a suburb just outside of Scranton. She is going to be a second year Energy Engineering student at Penn State University Park. In addition, she recently enrolled in one of Penn State's new Sustainability Leadership minor. That is how came across the Jamaica Sustainability study abroad Program.

Outside of school, she actively practices yoga and loves to spend her time outdoors. An environmentalist from the start, Gabrielle's focus has been on environmental and community based issues. Her first initiative was working with an environmental group in her high school. She then began volunteering almost full-time with the Sierra Student Coalition, a completely youth-run environmental organization. This included both working on committees within the organization, as well as planning and executing an eight day long camp with a cohesive team of trainers. Since attending Penn State, she has joined Eco-Action, the oldest environmental-political based action group on campus. She also was an Eco Rep, a group of freshmen students working to promote sustainability within the freshmen dorms. Beginning to learn about sustainability from a university perspective has given her the opportunity to begin studying sustainability concepts in a systematic and concrete way. Her goal is to focus on sustainability at a local level, working to strengthen communities. She believes that localization in all aspects and a strong community are essential to create a sustainable world. To contact Gabrielle send her an email at ger5048@psu.edu. 

* * *

Ryan Brown is a senior at The Pennsylvania State University, majoring in Integrative Arts w/ a focus in Architecture and Sustainable Design. He is the current President of the Penn State Student Black Caucus (Facebook page here) and a proud brother of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., along with many other campus affiliations.

Throughout his time at the university, Ryan has received a multitude of University honors for his service to the community and aiding students in fighting against social and civil injustices. He has recently received an inaugural Way Paver’s Award, the Medgar Evers Social Activism Award, and a variety of Community Service Awards. He is tearing down barrier after barrier each and everyday as he is a First generation college student and is doing as his award has stated, paving the way, for all those that will soon follow.

Ryan believes that all of the awards and recognition that he has received has aided him in  reaching his goals and aligning him with the proper path in which is feels he is destined to take. Having learned many lessons through his activities, Ryan is strongly encouraging his peers to be responsible GLOBAL citizens and aid in protecting the earth no matter where we are located.

Ryan is seeking to further his education in sustainable design and sustainability as a whole. Through the program he seeks to gain further knowledge on the topic of sustainability and the ways in which he can aid in protecting the environment. With the many lessons learned from this summer aboard and aid his friends and family in protecting the globe.

* * * 

Melissa Peterson is a rising junior at the Pennsylvania State University. An

alumna of the Semester at Sea program and the Cape Town Parks and People study abroad, she enjoys traveling. Melissa is an aspiring geographer majoring in

Physical/Environmental Science and Geographic Information Systems. From EMS Student Council and EMS THON to the geography and geoscience clubs, she is an active member of the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences. Her other academic interests include climatology, African studies, and sustainability.

When Melissa is not participating in school-related functions or working, she enjoys reading classic novels and going on adventures. She likes to work with her hands on various creative projects such as drawing, painting, sculpting, and bead working. She has an interest in fashion, which particularly manifests in her love of shoes. She will always make time for a Phillies game or a Penn State football or volleyball games. When exploring a new city, Melissa is most likely to seek out a museum and a street cafe to get acquainted with her new surroundings. Earth sciences are not only her academic interest but a hobby as well. She loves atmospheric and earth sciences, and particularly relishes a good cloud formation. Interests in cartography, geoscience, and atmospherics drive her at school and in her personal learning. She is particularly interested in the interactions between humans and the earth, in terms of resource use. Melissa’s life goal is to somehow make a marked positive difference in the world, however that may manifest in her future.

Melissa’s picture was taken in Mkambathi Nature Reserve in South Africa during her participation in the Parks and People program.

* * *

Dr. Neil Brown holds a split appointment with the Alliance for Education, Science, Engineering, and Development in Africa (AESEDA), and the Penn State Center for Sustainability. His research interests include sustainable systems and international education in developing countries with particular interest in agricultural sustainability.

In addition to his research, Dr. Brown directs and assists in developing Penn State international engagement initiatives that link researchers, students and stakeholders in the co-generation of knowledge. These initiatives occur in areas where critical human-environmental systems are coupled with unique or fascinating consequences. His current projects are focused in Jamaica and the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. Both programs focus on sustainable development, environmental conservation and biodiversity and include a semester long study abroad program.

Dr. Brown is the primary instructor for two of our courses this summer, “A Ship in a Bottle” and “Sustainable Jamaica.”

* * *

Peter Buckland grew up around State College, Pennsylvania. He considers himself a boy of the woods, having an abiding love of the mountain gap streams, rhododendron, hemlocks, mountain laurel, and the great diversity of fauna thriving in the Rothrock just a few hundred feet from his house. Since his teens, he has expressed himself through music, fiction, essays, and articles including three years on the radio co-hosting Sustainability Now Radio on the Lion FM 90.7.

Currently, Peter is completing his Ph.D. in Penn State’s Educational Theory and Policy program where he focuses on sustainability, ethics, and policy. He co-founded Environment-Ecology-Education in the College of Education (3E-COE), who won the 2010 Outstanding Student Group Award. Peter’s teaching on education and sustainability earned him the Laurel Haven Conservation Award and the Harold F. Martin Teaching Award. In fall 2011 he worked with Groundswell to successfully pass an Environmental Bill of Rights and Hydraulic Fracturing Ban in State College by referendum. This kind of engaged work for sustainability and democracy earned him both a fellowship in Penn State’s Capacity to Foster Democracy program and one of the first Student Sustainability Leadership Awards for which Penn State planted a tree in his name.

Peter is the recently hired Director of Sustainability for the Kiski School, a boy’s prep school founded in 1888 teaching grades 9-12. There, he will teach for ecological literacy, develop a small farm, work on energy, conservation and waste projects, and collaborate people for a culture for sustainability.

Peter is the editor of this blog and the instructor for one of the Lions in Jamaica courses, “Managing Planet Earth.” Peter’s picture was taken on the bridge at the end of No Name Trail in the Rothrock State Forest in Pennsylvania.

Lions in Jamaica: The Journey Begins

This summer, a small group of Penn State students and faculty are traveling to Jamaica to immerse themselves in Jamaican culture. Along the way, we – the Lions of Jamaica – are going to share our experiences with you.

Over the next few weeks we will experience a lot: travel to a different culture, we will visit organic farms, see traditional tourist sites, witness inequality of incredible proportions, see brilliant wildlife, see the results of natural resource exploitation and its effects on the society, economy, and environment, and of course meet incredible people. All along the way, we hope to share with you, whoever you are.

Today, Jamaica’s culture and natural environment is nested in a global political and economic system. Through agencies like the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Organization (formerly GATS), the “developed” nations of the global North have refashioned Jamaica since its independence from Britain 40 years ago. Almost no part of Jamaica’s land and biosphere, human culture, or services and institutions, are untouched by globalization. Jamaica is undergoing the effects of the Anthropocene age too – the age of humans. Understanding its massive scope, we will investigate global management’s possibilities, limitations, and dilemmas by exploring sustainability within Jamaica’s context.

We will explore many questions on journey. Some of these might include: What are ethics and morality? What are progress, the environment, economic growth, happiness, education, and globalization? What is sustainability and how can we use it? Sustainable what? Sustainable for whose advantage? What are development and sustainable development? What are resilience and how does it connect with sustainability and development? In light of the UNCED Rio +20 summit this summer and our hopes for thoughtful responses to the interconnected problems of climate change, biological diversity impoverishment, deforestation, the continued human population boom, and barely calculable human suffering, we believe we are called to examine and move away from the business as usual plans.

Why wait for the powers that be to do it? So we are starting with us.

In the next several weeks we will be doing a lot. First, we will do our best to understand ourselves and understanding Jamaica and our relationships in the global systems. Second, we will be developing skills and strategies about and for sustainability that will entail developing a new vocabulary. Don’t worry, we’ll keep the jargon down and the clarity high. Communication is one of those skills! Third, no experience this rich would be worth it without some deep reflection on our total experience. So we will be sharing our own reflections with you in writing, video, photographs, and maybe interviews too. Finally, we hope that we can make good connections between our temporary home in Jamaica and our homes in the United States and work out ways to bring the best lessons home with us.

In the next few days, we will be introducing ourselves to you, students and faculty alike and explaining our inspiration for this class. As we get going, we will do our best to keep you up to date on what we are doing and share what we read, discuss, and experience with you.

Let the journey begin!