Immigrants, Sustainability and Emerging Roles for Universities
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development. Copyright © 2002 Society for International Development. SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi), 1011-6370 (200209) 45:3; 119–123; 027195. NB When citing this article please use both volume and issue numbers.
SID On-line Dialogue
Immigrants, Sustainability and Emerging Roles for Universities LINDA SILKA
ABSTRACT Linda Silka discusses how models of interdisciplinary environmental work with refugee and immigrant groups are under way at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and bridging cultural traditions, environmental outreach and economic development. Three multi-level partnership projects that the university is involved in – the Southeast Asian Environmental Justice Partnership, the Urban Aquaculture Initiative, and the Immigrant Communities Clean Production Initiative – are analysed to understand the promise and challenges that lie ahead in terms of developing community–university partnerships. KEYWORDS aquaculture; environmental justice; ethnic food; identity; refugees; University of Massachusetts; urban agriculture
Introduction In 1996, the United States President’s Council on Sustainable Development (1996) produced its long-awaited report outlining recommendations for sustainable development in a global economy. The international processes of globalization were central to its concerns but, unlike policy makers who often assert that solutions to global problems must be top-down and nationally driven, the Council saw efforts at the local, community, and regional levels as essential. Indeed, much of the Council’s report stresses the degree to which models for sustainable economic development built around local efforts must take place if democracies are to prosper in a global economy. Of particular interest was its call for involving universities in sustainable economic development, especially in partnership efforts at the local level. But what would these roles look like? At the University of Massachusetts Lowell (UMass Lowell) we have sought to develop models of interdisciplinary environmental work with refugee and immigrant groups that bridge cultural traditions, environmental outreach, and
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development 45(3): SID On-line Dialogue economic development. Three multilevel partnership projects are analysed here. It is only by closely examining these concrete initiatives that we begin to sense the promise and challenges that lie ahead in terms of developing partnerships and working at the local level (Forrant and Silka, 1999). University leadership in these kinds of efforts poses numerous challenges. How do diverse faculty integrate their scattered efforts and not undo each other’s interventions? How does the work become truly interdisciplinary? These questions are not idle ones; they go to the heart of what roles universities will take in the globalizing economy. Place-based context The region in which UMass Lowell is situated faces the overlapping problems of urbanization, industrialization, and an inf
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