UWC Venezuela Article

This is an article that Andy and I wrote for the UWC Venezuela student magazine concerning the environmental project that we are spearheading here at UWC Mostar.

UWCiM Environmental Project: iM Green

We are putting into action a student-lead initiative at the United World College in Mostar, aimed at reducing the environmental impact of the school.  The goal of the environmental project is to increase our school’s long-term sustainability and to conserve both natural and economic resources by reducing excess energy and resource usage.  Though green projects are becoming quite commonplace around the world, this is something very radical for the country of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is still recovering economically from the wounds of war. Therefore, up until this point, attention to and legislation concerning the environment have been almost non-existent.

                Beginning with fundamental projects such as changing light bulbs, composting, and reducing waste greatly diminishes the impact of our school’s carbon footprint.  Many people are unaware of the huge impact that these seemingly menial tasks can have.  Therefore, our hope is to raise community awareness, in collaboration with the Ecology Group, locally as well as in the whole country of Bosnia and Herzegovina.  Previously, this took place in the form of paper collections for recycling and local garbage pick-ups.  We received tremendous appreciation for our work as well as many volunteers who jumped right in to help us.  Now we hope to expand these projects and start new ones to continually embrace our responsibility for the stewardship of our planet. 

We have both short term and long term initiatives. We are implementing many of our projects immediately; however, more drastic measures must be taken to accomplish our goal of becoming self sustainable.  The best way to become completely sustainable is to fully utilize local resources, readily available in your area.  In our case, we are blessed (and sometimes burdened) by exorbitantly strong winds (called the “Bura”) in this mountainous region of Herzegovina. It is our hope to employ this resource to our advantage by generating renewable wind power to support the energy needs of our school. That is to say, our goal is to create Bosnia and Herzegovina's first sanctioned wind-power generator. It is projects like this, which are daring yet attainable, that can really truly combat against environmental degradation and act as a role model for the beautiful vicinity in which our school is located.

                Furthermore, this month has seen a movement throughout the UWCs to support the 350 initiative, which emphasizes the growing necessity to protect the environment and consciously reduce harmful emissions into our atmosphere.  350 is the calculated limit, in parts per million, of carbon emissions that can be released into the atmosphere before we cross the “threshold” of irreversible climate damage.  This underlines the importance of projects like UWCiM's which, together with others, can protect our precious environment.

                In the spirit of the UWC movement, we hope that our project will inspire other UWCs to initiate or continue their own environmental projects, and that an exchange of ideas will develop between the colleges, so that together, we can significantly reduce the harmful impact on our home.