Google maps described my road to peace as just under 12
kilometers and 18 minutes by car. On my Kona mountain bike the first time, it
was 55 minutes. I began last Wednesday at 6 am at approximately 920 meters
before I dropped to 800 meters, and then climbed back up to 910 meters. I
traversed hillside homes and compounds, a typical Costa Rica town (Ciudad Colon),
and the Pecacua River gulley. I saw the sun rise in the coffee fields around
6:30am and arrived at the University of Peace campus at 7am. My short trip by
bike that morning ended at the University for Peace, but my journey here took
over a dozen years.
Luck brought me to Costa Rica for the first time in 2001. I
was a second year assistant professor navigating a joint appointment in
political science and our small environmental science and policy graduate
program. Getting my first taste of
academia at the front of the classroom, I found myself with the challenge of
teaching and working with students at the intersection of the ecological and
social sciences. I recently returned
from a tour of European Universities exploring environmental study abroad
opportunities for our predominately Midwestern students. I was one ten years earlier in Indiana when
my own semester abroad in the Netherlands helped spark my intellectual
curiosity. Later, in my graduate
studies, renowned social scientist Seymour Martin Lipset (1922-2006) would
teach us how important international studies could be. He told us a very simple axiom shared in one
of his influential publications. “A
person who knows only one country basically knows no country well” (Lipset,
1993, p. 121). My study abroad began to
expand my vision. I returned to the U.S.
with a new perspective, or as I often describe; I gained a new set of lenses to
view my own country and the world. My
semester abroad gave me a prism that expanded my perspective well beyond the
singular spectrum I had viewed my American experience thus far.
The European connections never panned out while another one
came out of the blue. Or, in other words, out of the green. I received an offer from a business
instructor I had never met. She asked if
I would be interested in joining a study abroad trip to Costa Rica. I didn’t
hesitate. Another professor would cover
ecology, she would handle the economics, and I could do political and policy
stuff. She knew a National Park in Costa
Rica we could do volunteer work for. We attracted more than 25 undergraduates
and off we went for two weeks. This was
my first foray into sustainability education, or teaching at the intersections
of ecology, economics, and social equity. I never could have imagined how
deeply I would be affected by this Central American nation, but more directly,
by a week immersed in a rainforest side by side with the people working to
preserve an island of biodiversity in Carara National Park.
I soon left my first academic institution for a second. I quickly built another study abroad program that took Wisconsin students out of the harsh winters to Costa Rica in the first two weeks of January from 2003 to 2006. Emphasizing ecology and economics, we explored the conventional sides of Costa Rica. Rainforest, beaches, volcanoes, and ziplines. But we never confronted one of this nation’s truly exceptional conditions and captured by this photo of a popular tee shirt souvenir: no army.
Imagine more teachers than soldiers. Imagine no guns, no
war. It’s not easy, despite what Lennon’s lyrics tried to tell us, even when
you try. It’s so far from the politically possible in the US that even one
presidential candidate’s proposal for a Department of Peace ensured his
relegation to the left fringe of Democratic politics. Conversely, most living
Costa Rican’s can’t imagine a Department of Defense. In their 1948 Constitution,
and after a two year civil war, Ticos banned the military. More than thirty
years later and because of a history of stability in a conflict-ridden
region, the United Nations General Assembly established a University for Peace
in Costa Rica. www.upeace.org
In the summer of 2006, I was introduced to the UPeace
through a collaboration with a George Mason University (GMU) graduate course titled
Environmental Security and Sustainability. After a week delving into new
concepts like negative and positive peace, peacekeeping, and ecological
marginalization, I began to imagine how a similar experience for undergraduates
would complement their extensive background in economics and ecology. The
imaginary became possible when I transferred to Western Washington University’s
Huxley College of the Environment.
In my annual study abroad program, two days at the
University of Peace campus in Costa Rica present students with the third sphere
of equity. They contemplate how
environmental conflicts can be driven by unequal and degraded natural resource
conditions. Students read seminal work on environmental scarcity and how it,
according to Homer-Dixon, “. . . can sharply increase demands on key
institutions, such as the state, while it simultaneously reduces their capacity
to meet those demands. These pressures increase the chance that the state will
either fragment or become more authoritarian” (1994, p. 6). University of Peace
professors complement this reading with lectures on environmental scarcity and
conflict in Costa Rica.
These classroom presentations are magnified throughout the
students experience traveling across the country. For instance, after driving through a
multinational corporate resort one student observed: “You can go to Costa Rica
but never be in Costa Rica.” Another
observed that “Visiting Costa Rica has reinforced the beliefs I already held
for the importance of preserving natural areas.
However, I have a better understanding now of the problems that can
arise when setting aside land for conservation.
This human perspective of conservation is probably the most enlightening
knowledge I take away from this trip.”
These experiences and UPeace instruction provide students with concepts
to recognize how equity is instrumental to sustainability. This also becomes the foundation for students
to contemplate and discuss how rainforest conservation is not only an
environmental problem, but a much more complex socioeconomic challenge.
Eight
years after my first visit to Universidad Para La Paz, I’m back for a 12 month
sabbatical. Like so many of my students before, the faculty and staff have
welcomed me into their community. I am grateful to Amr Abdulla, Pablo Richard,
Jan Brietling, Robert Fletcher, Victoria Fontan, Esteban Gutierrez, Blanesta
Ada and so many others. On Tuesday January 15, 2013, I received my UPeace
identification badge pictured on the left. One chapter on my road to peace has
ended, and now another begins.
