Environmental Sustainability and Internationalization in Higher Education: A New Frontier in Research,Policy and Practice

Abstract

Ensuring environmental sustainability has gained global attention in recent years due to the effects of climate change and growing concerns about environmental degradation. A wide range of stakeholders have contributed to the urgent call for action, with recent analyses indicating both progress and alarming shortcomings in implementing needed changes. The field of international education has also begun focusing on environmental sustainability, with research exploring the intersections between internationalization and environmental impact. This special issue of the Journal of Studies in International Education presents timely perspectives on this complex topic, highlighting research on carbon footprints, air travel, sustainability rankings, and the role of professional associations. The issue also addresses the need for individual and collective action, and the importance of social justice and equity in achieving environmental sustainability. While the coverage is extensive, there is a notable absence of voices from certain regions and a lack of focus on student perspectives.

Ensuring Environmental Sustainability: A Twenty-first Century Imperative

The effects of climate change and the need to address the many and diverse aspects of environmental sustainability have been part of the public consciousness around the world for several decades. In the twenty-first century, however, this conversation has taken on new urgency, through research documenting its worrisome trajectory and key calls to action by a wide range of organizations, institutions and governments, as well as individual politicians, activists and policy makers.

Notable among the efforts to advance our collective understanding of the issues at stake and the need for thoughtful, coordinated action is the work of the United Nations (UN). The UN Millennium Development Goals, which were launched in 2000 with an eye on key achievements in 2015, recognized the need to ensure environmental sustainability as one of eight essential action areas (United Nations, n.d.). The subsequent 2015 launch of the UN's Agenda 2030, with the attendant 17 Sustainable Development Goals, established that “(c)limate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time and its adverse impacts undermine the ability of all countries to achieve sustainable development” (United Nations, 2015, n.p.). Further, Agenda 2030 highlighted the existential nature of the threat to our physical environment in the current context, by stating unequivocally that “(t)he survival of many societies, and of the biological support systems of the planet, is at risk” (United Nations, 2015, n.p.).

Recent analyses of global warming trends show some progress but also alarming shortcomings, such that today “(w)e are in a critical decade for climate action (United Nations Climate Change, 2023, n.p.). In March 2023, the UN Climate Change Executive Secretary asserted that “We’re running out of time but not out of options to address climate change” and that “we have to do more on climate change now” (United Nations Climate Change, 2023, n.p.). Noting both the urgency of the present moment, and the increasing clarity and sense of responsibility that the international education sector is now bringing to this issue – perhaps evidenced most notably by the 2019 creation of the Climate Action Network for International Education (CANIE) – this special issue of the Journal of Studies in International Education endeavors to provide a range of timely perspectives on the complex intersections between internationalization in higher education and environmental sustainability around the world.

A Small But Growing Foundation

Although the field of international education has long been directed explicitly at the task of working to ‘make the world a better place,’ as evidenced not least by many of the vision statements of the field's professional associations and other stakeholder organizations, only relatively recently has the specific matter of environmental sustainability been widely foregrounded in the field. Indeed, the body of literature – both classically academic and more ‘grey’ in nature – exploring the nexus between internationalization and environmental sustainability is rather scarce to date. However, there are encouraging signs of development, and the pace of publication of resources and analyses focused on various aspects of this topic appears to be picking up momentum.

The 2019 publication of Robin Shields’ article on “The sustainability of international higher education: Student mobility and global climate change” (Shields, 2019) serves as a lynchpin of sorts in a body of emerging research that is now aiming to bring greater clarity to the question of the environmental impact of air travel for academic purposes. Other examples of carbon footprint research in higher education can be seen in the work of Helmers et al. (2021), who collected and compared carbon footprint data from 20 different universities around the world, and Valls-Val and Bovea (2021) who conducted a literature review of articles focused on the examination of institutions’ carbon footprint calculations, considerations of activity-specific carbon footprint assessments or greenhouse gas emission reduction. Organizations such as the European University Association (EUA) have also taken steps to collect and anaylyze data relevant to institutions’ behavior in relation to sustainability practices and “greening” efforts, the latter term they define as “increasing awareness and taking concrete action towards a green, environmentally-friendly and resource-efficient university” (Stöber et al., 2021, p. 3).

In close alignment with the topic of carbon footprint analysis is the work that has been done to understand how academic and professional actors in higher education who undertake air travel reason with themselves about the place of air travel in their professional lives (see for example Eriksson et al., 2020), as well as the “critical role” that funders of research do and could play in shaping researchers’ travel practices (Bousema et al., 2002). With an array of rankings now focused on how higher education institutions, students, and other stakeholders around the world relate to considerations of environmental sustainability and operationalize responses – among these the THE Impact Rankings and the UI GreenMetric World University Rankings – analyses on the basis of rankings data are also available (see for example Bothwell, 2021).

In addition to the research that has been produced by individual researchers as well as university associations and rankers, we note with particular interest the increasing role of professional associations and other networks specifically focused on this field to expand the knowledge base and agenda for action in relation to environmental sustainability. A multitude of examples can be cited here, including the publication of Sustainability in International Education by the 2020–21 Senior Fellows of NAFSA: Association of International Educators (Lamont et al., 2021); the European Association for International Education's (EAIE) dedication of the Spring 2022 issue of is member magazine, Forum, to the theme of “Our changing climate”; and the Forum on Education Abroad's newest installment in its “Standards in Action” book series, Sustainable Education Abroad: Striving for Change (McBride & Nikula, 2023). Associations have also rallied around environmental sustainability in connection with the focus and content of their annual conferences, most recently evidenced by the 2023 annual conference of the Asia-Pacific Association for International Education (APAIE), which was organized under the theme “Towards a sustainable future for international education in the Asia Pacific”. Blogs and podcasts by these associations focus frequently on the subject of climate action and internationalization, as well.

New Contributions

Interestingly, despite the urgency of the climate emergency and the clear indication of growing interest and commitments to environmental sustainability in the field of international education, we envisaged that we would receive a larger number of submissions to this special issue than ultimately materialized. We believe this has everything to do with the still nascent nature of the research being undertaken in this area, which of course provides even more impetus for putting this special issue forward at this time. Still, by virtue of both inclusion and omission, the half-dozen or so articles that comprise this issue provide a telling indication of what is salient to researchers when it comes to this topic and suggest important new directions for further investigation.

Noting the common understanding that meaningful responses to the climate emergency require action at both the individual and collective level, several of the pieces included in this issue present perspectives that shed light on dynamics across those various levels of analysis. In “Promoting International Student Mobility for Sustainability? Navigating Conflicting Realities and Emotions of International Educators”, Campbell et al. (2022) small-scale qualitative study brings forward the voices and perspectives of international educators in a variety of professional roles in the United States, with the goal of surfacing insights into the question of how these individuals perceive the relationship between international student mobility and climate action, and what new actions – both conceptual and practical – could potentially flow from these understandings. Nikula et al. (2022) are also concerned with the question of how individual professionals in the field of international education globally make sense of – and can ultimately leverage – the “tension” embedded in the relationship between their work and the environmental degradation caused by the educational travel. Their analysis draws principally on the concept of cognitive dissonance to help clarify these dynamics, and suggests that organizations – such as the CANIE – which offer practitioners structured opportunities to explore the tensions between international education and climate change can serve as “supportive communities of practice.”

Indeed, the actions, experiences and potential responsibilities of institutional and organizational actors are captured in several of this issue's articles. For example, through a consideration of the various sustainability rankings that have emerged over the past fifteen years, Calderon (2023) explores not only the methodological nuances of these exercises, but also the disparity in performance among higher education institutions around the world. Potential improvements in these rankings and ways in which the administrative burden of supplying and analyzing data can be strengthened are also suggested. For their part, Chasi and Heleta (2022) train their sights on the environmental impact of large-scale, in-person international education conferences. From their perspective, not only is the physical health of the planet a casualty of these high carbon footprint events, but questions of social, political and economic justice and equity are also in play. The achievement of both social justice and environmental sustainability is also at the heart of the analysis brought forward by Baer (2023), whose article turns on the concept of eco-socialism. McCowan's contribution similarly highlights “two key dilemmas for internationalization”: “how to provide experiences of engagement with difference without burning fossil fuels” and “how to ensure global reach and influence of universities without homogenising and marginalising” (McCowan, 2023). Meanwhile, a distinctly regional perspective – in this case from Latin America – is provided by the article contributed by Cassol-Silva et al. (2023). Taking examples from six Latin American universities in non-central locations, they highlight the ways that global concerns about the environment and support for local development can be mutually reinforcing, and how this intersection of the local and the global may align to greater or lesser degrees with institutions’ understandings of and commitment to internationalization.

Important Gaps

While the scope of coverage in this special issue is notable – spanning the array of issues noted above along with geographic representation from the United States, Australia and New Zealand, Latin America, the Global South, and more generally ‘worldwide’ – we note a distinct lack of voices and insights from many other corners of the world.

We are also conscious of the gap in focus on student perspectives in this collection of articles, specifically as they may relate to the use of international education to shape and guide student understandings of environmental sustainability or in terms of incentives to modify behaviors of students toward more ‘green' travel. Student activism in support of fossil fuel divestment has also been widely discussed in the media, although we have yet to see a particular connection drawn in the research literature between this issue and the broader field of international education or the mobility of international students specifically. We are aware that student organizations themselves (see for example Students Organizing for Sustainability International, 2021) are collecting and reporting out on data reflecting student opinions, interests, perceptions about sustainability and higher education, as are others with a vested interest in international student mobility dynamics (including, for example, THE Consultancy, 2022).

Further insights missing from this special issue include perspectives on national policies for internationalization, and we note that such documents generally exclude reference to climate change or to environmental sustainability (see for example United Kingdom Government, 2019).

At this stage, our sense is that the field of international education has only begun to scratch the surface – in terms of research, policy, and practice – when it comes to making sense of the dynamics between internationalization and environmental sustainability. We hope this special issue offers useful insights into some of the key issues of the day as well as a surge of inspiration that will fuel a much-needed expansion of the knowledge base in this area. We are grateful to the authors and peer reviewers who shared their time and expertise with us to make this special issue a possibility, and the JSIE editorial team that so generously provided this platform to advance this urgent topic.