The Global School Forum 2022-2023

SAVING HUMANITY: RADICAL CONFIDENCE FOR A POSITIVE FUTURE, A SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT TALK WITH ROB WATSON

Environmental performance platforms like LEED (green buildings) and SWEEP (solid waste) play an important role in slowing humanity’s race toward catastrophe, but, unfortunately, these types of approaches are structurally incapable of providing long-term solutions to humanity's environmental problems. We need to begin now to think about a radical revisioning around the valuation of transactions and a full "ethonomic” accounting of the impacts of transactions in order to bring about a sustainable future.

Rob Watson, LEED Fellow, is an international leader in market transformation in solid waste, green buildings, and sustainable tourism. He is best known as the “Founding Father of LEED,” which he launched in 1993. Under Rob’s direction, LEED became the largest and fastest-growing international standard by which green buildings are measured. Author Thomas Friedman called Rob "one of the best environmental minds in America." In 2019, Dartmouth Alumni Magazine recognized Mr. Watson as one of the "25 Most Influential Alumni" in the College's 250-year history.

Energy and Climate Change: Lessons Shared from Aotearoa-New Zealand
6:00 pm, Higgins House Panel Discussion

The Global School Forum for 2022-23 follows a series of UN-SDG themes; for B term we are focusing on Goal 7, Affordable and Clean Energy (the other three themes are responsible consumption and production/circular economy; good health and well-being; and quality education, with an overarching theme of climate action). 

While we have seen widespread development of renewable energy technologies and attention to the critical need for a clean energy transition in order to minimize climate change impacts, this process does not always center attention on environmental justice as it proceeds. Please join us at The Global School Forum in B term, as we engage scholars, NGO and local government leaders, and the business sector to explore the ways we can transform our fossil-fuel-based global economy into a more sustainable system, anchored in clean energy that is accessible to all.

The panel will review the history of how renewable energy has evolved in Aotearoa-NZ (where electricity is currently generated from 85% renewable sources); how the country continues to innovate around energy to move towards net zero emissions; the role that Aotearoa-NZ’s energy system plays in policies related to climate change mitigation and decarbonization; and how leaders there are engaging the challenges of energy hardship and justice across the country.

Stephen Batstone, Director of Whiteboard Energy, New Zealand 

Cristiano Marantes, CEO, Ara Ake, Taranaki New Zealand

Antonia Burbidge, Manager - Climate Change Commission, Wellington, New Zealand 

John Campbell, CEO and Founder, Our Energy, Wellington New Zealand 

Jenny van der Merwe, Renewable Energy Lead, Kāinga Ora-Homes and Communities, Wellington, New Zealand

Open Education, Global Learning, and Social Justice

Dr. Glenda Cox is a senior lecturer in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT: http://www.cilt.uct.ac.za/) at the University of Cape Town and her portfolio includes postgraduate teaching, Curriculum change projects, Open Education, and Staff development. She holds the UNESCO chair in Open Education and Social Justice (2021-2024). She is passionate about the role of Open Education in the changing world of Higher Education. Dr. Glenda Cox is currently the Principal Investigator in the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) initiative. Her current research includesanalyzingg the role of open textbooks for social justice.

Growing inequity continues to manifest within and between higher education institutions of the Global North and Global South, highlighting the plight of the disadvantaged versus the advantaged in the system (Holscher & Bozalek, 2020). In addition to the challenge of high university fees impeding access, there are challenges related to the cost and appropriateness of textbooks in higher education (Cox et al., 2019) – all of which have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the widening inequality that has manifested as a result (Hargreaves, 2021).

Internationally, research has highlighted the importance of providing access to textbooks and online educational resources in order to maximise returns on remote learning necessitated by the pandemic, particularly in the context of unequal access to learning materials and curricula (Mishra et al., 2020; Reimers & Schleicher 2020).

The work shared in this presentation emerges from research conducted within the Digital Open Textbooks for Development (DOT4D) project, an open textbook research, implementation and advocacy initiative which investigates the current ecosystem of open textbook publishing and provides implementation support in open textbook publishing activity at the University of Cape Town (UCT). The project operates with an underlying social justice agenda.