For the end of orientation week, we went climbing at Crazy Horse, a series of limestone cliffs and caves outside of Chiang Mai.  We went with Chiang Mai Rock Climbing Adventures (CMRCA), a great organization that we work with and runs outstanding climbing and caving programs.

The goal of the day was to get to know each other, learn about leadership and responsibility, get outside, and start building a base of expedition skills for the semester.

Boi teaching belaying to Krissy and Lindsey.

Boom backing up Betsy belaying

Emily climbing.

Carrie "sanuk!"

Explaining safety and risk management for the tyrolean

Uan starting Lyndsey on the tyrolean

Molly crossing the tyrolean 53 meters up.

Pi Pu enjoying a day out of the normal office routine on the tyrolean traverse.

Student Ben rapelling after the tyrolean traverse

Pi Ben and Pi Pu resting in the shade (Ben may have been snoring...)

This semester we are giving each student a new book: Thailand: Travellers’ Wildlife Guide.

This is a great resource with all the most important birds, mammals, reef fish, reptiles, insects and other wildlife. We’ve been looking for something like this for a long time, and even has a good variety of insects. Lots of information on the ecology of Thailand, as well as specific habitat, etc.

From the publisher:

Thailand holds a special place in the minds of the world’s nature-lovers as a paradise of splendid tropical forests, untrammeled ocean beaches, and spectacular underwater coral grottos. Nature travellers to Thailand want to experience these stunning habitats and catch glimpses of exotic wildlife-gibbons and elephants, hornbills and storks, gliding lizards and cobras, brightly colored reef fishes and marine invertebrates. In this book is all the information you need to find, identify, and learn about Thailand’s magnificent animal and plant life.

• Identifying and location information on the most frequently seen animals.
• Full-color illustrations of nearly 600 of Thailand’s most common insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, and coral fish.
• Up-to-date information on the ecology, behavior, and conservation of the animals.
• Information on Thailand’s habitats and on the most common plants you will encounter.

Brief descriptions of Thailand’s most frequently visited parks and reserves.

Easy-to-carry, entertainingly written, beautifully illustrated – you will want to have this book as constant companion on your journey.

About the Authors

David L. Pearson is a research professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University. He is co-author of The New Key to Ecuador and the Galapagos and of Ecuador in this series.

Les Beletsky is a professional wildlife biologist and former university zoology teacher. Prior to taking up writing wildlife guides, he conducted many years of field research into the ecology and behavior of birds. He is the author of numerous books, including Costa Rica, Ecuador, and Peru in this series.

Even if you’re not in Thailand, this is a good introduction to the ecology and wildlife of Thailand. Highly recommended!

That said, from our research and experience we feel that the information on farming in the tropics and human impact presents a unsophisticated understanding of the complex ethno-ecological relationships in Thailand and Southeast Asia. That isn’t the focus of the book, however, so it is still a valuable resource on the wildlife.

We’ve found a few errors (not unusual in a book of this size and complexity).  We’ll update this list as we find more.

Errata:

p. 19: The metric conversion for fan palm is incorrect. They list “3 m, 30 ft, tall” and 3 m and 30 ft are not the same, so one is wrong.

p. 35: The labels for breadfruit and jackfruit are switched.

p. 382: The information on behavior, habitat and numbers on dugong is incorrect. The Phuket Marine Biological Institute estimates from aerial surveys that there are between 100 and 130 individuals, not “40″. Dugongs are mostly observed in the sea grass beds off of Muk and Libong Islands, not “the mouth of the Trang river”.  Dugong do not feed on “green algae and other seaweeds, usually in areas of rocky outcroppings.” Dugong feed on sea grasses in large sea grass beds off the islands (sea grass is a true vascular plant, not a form of algae). Finally, dugongs do not “rest by day in deep water; by night, feeds underwater in shallow coastal waters.”  They do rest in deep water, but dugong feeding is based on the tides, not the sun.  They come in to feed on sea grasses during high tides, and retreat to deep water to rest at low tide.  For more on dugongs, see Dugong: Status Report and Action Plans for Countries and Territories by UNEP, or Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dugong.

Here’s the link to Amazon.

(Thanks to Binney and Tim from Kalamazoo College for spotting it on Amazon and showing us a copy!)

Making the connection

How do we understand ecology and ecosystems? Not just in the classification of species or their inter-relationships, but in the “deep knowing” that one gets from a connection with the natural world?

In a classic work by the sociologist C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, he writes about the need to be able to ask questions and pay attention to the social world:

“Method” has to do, first of all, with how to ask and answer questions with some assurance that the answers are more or less durable. “Theory” has to do, above all, with paying close attention to the words one is using, especially their degree of generality and their logical relations. The primary purpose of both is clarity of conception and economy of procedure, and most importantly just now, the release rather than the restriction of the sociological imagination.  (from C. Wright Mills, The Sociological Imagination, 1959, p.178)

The methods and theory of ecology can do the same for the natural world — releasing the “ecological imagination” — connecting to and seeing the interconnections and ecological relationships of the natural world. E. O. Wilson argues that in some sense we need that connection:

[W]e are human in good part because of the particular way we affiliate with other organisms.  They are the matrix in which the human mind originated and is permanently rooted, and they offer the challenge and freedom innately sought.  To the extent that each person can feel like a naturalist, the old excitement of the untrammeled world will be regained. I offer this as a formula of reenchantment to invigorate poetry and myth: mysterious and little known organisms live within walking distance of where you sit.  Splendor awaits in minute proportions. (Edward O. Wilson, Biophilia, 1984, p. 139, emphasis added)

Getting out into the natural world is hard to do for many students — college and university campuses are often urban or suburban, and the time to connect and be in nature is hard to find.  As Richard Louv has documented in Last Child in the Woods, college students are loosing that connection that previous generations had as children.  From “stranger danger” to the fears talked about on cable TV, fewer kids are let out to roam and spend time outdoors connecting.

Our society is teaching young people to avoid direct experience in nature. That lesson is delivered in schools, families, even organizations devoted to the outdoors, and codified into the legal and regulatory structures of many of our communities. Our institutions, urban/suburban design, and cultural attitudes unconsciously associate nature with doom—while disassociating the outdoors from joy and solitude. Well meaning public-school systems, media, and parents are effectively scaring children straight out of the woods and fields. In the patent-or-perish environment of higher education, we see the death of natural history as the more hands-on disciplines, such as zoology, give way to more theoretical and remunerative microbiology and genetic engineering. Rapidly advancing technologies are blurring the lines between humans, other animals, and machines. The postmodern notion that reality is only a construct—that we are what we program—suggests limitless human possibilities; but as the young spend less and less of their lives in natural surroundings, their senses narrow, physiologically and psychologically, and this reduces the richness of human experience.

Yet, at the very moment that the bond is breaking between the young and the natural world, a growing body of research links our mental, physical, and spiritual health directly to our association with nature—in positive ways. Several of these studies suggest that thoughtful exposure of youngsters to nature can even be a powerful form of therapy for attention-deficit disorders and other maladies. As one scientist puts it, we can now assume that just as children need good nutrition and adequate sleep, they may very well need contact with nature.

Reducing that deficit—healing the broken bond between our young and nature—is in our self-interest, not only because aesthetics or justice demands it, but also because our mental, physical, and spiritual health depends upon it. The health of the earth is at stake as well. How the young respond to nature, and how they raise their own children, will shape the configurations and conditions of our cities, homes—our daily lives.  (From http://richardlouv.com/last-child-excerpt, emphasis added)

While the academic content of our courses at ISDSI is important, perhaps one of the most important and lasting things we do is allow space for students to develop their ecological imagination — seeing and knowing and understanding the connections and systems of the natural world. Giving them space and time to do this during the Expedition Field Courses is key to making the connection and reducing the nature-deficit so prevalent today. The academic content of the courses supports and broadens that connection, giving depth and meaning to what students are learning experientially. At the same time, space and time to think, reflect and write is critical if we are going to see that connection develop.

You cannot develop an ecological imagination if you’ve not spent time in the natural world.

Laurie explaining the role of the Ping river in urban sustainability

This past week ISDSI students fanned out across the city collecting and analyzing data to develop sustainability indicators for Chiang Mai city. This was a great exercise in experiential learning and they were able to apply their Thai language skills as well as knowledge of the city and sustainability issues in general.

Early in the week, we had two activists with the Rak Baan Rak Muang group come and talk with the students, sharing about their struggle to make Chiang Mai more sustainable. (Read more about them here.)

The 33 students were divided into 8 groups, with a group of 4 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon.  They focused on four key issues: traffic, walkability, the availability of organic vegetables and the Ping river.

Monday was spent planning their studies, with Tuesday and Wednesday focused on data collection.  Thursday was a frenzied day of data analysis and preparing posters for Friday’s presentation and poster session.  The Friday poster session was organized like those at a professional conference, with all eight posters up, time to browse and look at the posters. Each group then presented their methods, findings, and questions for further research.

The focus of the exercise was twofold.  First, to give the students a chance to apply what they have been studying for the last five weeks — from Thai language to knowledge about sustainability and Thai society. The second goal was to gather some useful data about what is going on in Chiang Mai. The research the students did will be given to the Rak Baan Rak Muang group so it can be used in helping make a more sustainable city.

Rapid surveys like this can be very valuable for getting a sense of what is going on in an area (a city, village or landscape), and the students did a terrific job figuring out indicators and collecting the data. The studies are exploratory, not definitive, and so provide a good starting point for further research and generating more questions for follow-up studies later on.

Each study is available below as a PDF file:

Organic Produce, Organic Markets

Walkability 1, Walkability 2

River Use and Access, Urban/Suburban River Health

Traffic Composition, Traffic Flow

Learning about forest ecology firsthand.

Seth Godin has a great post up today about learning versus schooling, Education at the crossroads.  Good food for thought.

School was the big thing for a long time. School is tests and credits and notetaking and meeting standards. Learning, on the other hand, is ‘getting it’. It’s the conceptual breakthrough that permits the student to understand it then move on to something else. Learning doesn’t care about workbooks or long checklists.

For a while, smart people thought that school was organized to encourage learning. For a long time, though, people in the know have realized that they are fundamentally different activities.

Seth’s got a good point, which I would modify a bit.  Schools are not necessarily organized around encouraging learning in the sense of “getting it.”  The good ones, however are organized around learning.  I think the distinction might be better if understood between good schools (where real learning is happening) and others that just push student through.  If all that is happening is testing, then clearly there is a problem!

His primary point, however, is the distinction between scarcity and abundance in education.

MIT and Stanford are starting to make classes available for free online. The marginal cost of this is pretty close to zero, so it’s easy for them to share. Abundant education is easy to access and offers motivated individuals a chance to learn.

Scarcity comes from things like accreditation, admissions policies or small classrooms.

For us at ISDSI, we have an inherent scarcity for our semester programs – we can can only take so many students a semester, based on class size and how many students our partners in the villages we work in can accomodate.  Recognizing that not all the students who would like to come can come, we’re in the process of exploring ways in which to share classes, experiences and our understanding of culture and ecology in Thailand.  As one step in that direction this last year we put all of our syllabi online, and are now exploring video, photos essays and other options for sharing what we’eve learned. We hope to have some lessons and other materials up over the next year.  If you have ideas of things you’d like to see or learn about, let us know in the comments!

Sustainability has a long history in SE Asia

Good overview of the growing importance of sustainability in higher education by Jillian Berman in USA Today, “College students are flocking to sustainability degrees, careers.”

Several schools are mentioned, as is AASHE (The Associate for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education).  Both undergraduate programs, graduate programs, majors, minors and other initiatives are surging in popularity.  I know that last year at the AASHE conference it had grown enourmously from the first one I attended six years ago – from 300-400 people to close to 1,800 participants, 400 presenters and 130 exhibitors!

This growth in interest is across the board – from undergraduate majors, to MBAs, architecture degrees to student life. Not content to just focus on sustainability in the classroom, there is a lot going on outside the classroom as well – with campus organic gardens, LEED certified buildings, recycling, etc.

What is most exciting about this is that the initiatives are largely student driven – as students get together to push the (sometimes reluctant) school administrators for more green / sustainable initiatives on-campus.

We’ve noticed the trend ourselves – we’ve got a record number of students enrolled this fall, and are seeing the students who do come have a deeper understanding of sustainability issues than in the past. It is enourmously encouraging to see the growth over the last 10 years at ISDSI, as sustainability has moved increasingly to the center of higher education!

Our students have just returned from our Forests course studying political ecology and the relationship of the Karen tribal people with the mountain forests that is their home.  Long days in the mountains and rai, weaving naturally dyed cloth, eating “mu-sa-to” (delicious Karen chili paste), and learning from our tribal colleagues and teachers.  This course is one of our oldest, and shows how wonderful learning can happen with village teachers and collaborative curriculum design.

Here are a few excerpts from student blogs and some photos.

In Ban Hui Hee, a Karen woman spinning thread. (from Jeremy)

Spinning.

Another photo of spinning thread from Ally:

Grandmother.

Ally also wrote about her host mother:

Mom

My beautiful host mother is one of the most loving people I have ever met. She spoke very little Thai, but was extremely excited to teach me about her culture. I have never seen anyone shower people with love and care the same way that she did. She taught me so much. Thank you.

Writing more about host families (from Johnny)

the host families were truly amazing. just in a matter of days, the connections we had with these people and their community were unexplainable. we would eat, sleep, work, and sit with them, yes, but in every village we would all meet together as a community so we students could ask them questions about their livelihoods. sometimes we would sing american songs for them and they would sing karen songs back, and the joy that we all felt was wonderful.

Click over to his blog for more on why we study with the Karen, and have them as our teachers:

we visited all these communities because of what they all had in common- their relationship with the forest. all of them lived subsistence-based lives, growing and gathering all the food they consume, cutting all the wood they use, and fetching all the water they drink. the history of these karen communities with the forest was one of harmony and sustainability. they always have lived with the forest and their lifestyles have not been destructive to the ecosystems they inhabit. but the government begs to differ.

Acadia has a great post up on sustainability, biodiversity and culture:

Before coming to Mae Hong Son and after spending a week reading and discussing the Karen and political ecology, I assumed that the attitude of the Karen toward natural resources would be born of subsistence necessity and utilitarianism. Now, I see that the situation is much more complex. Outside forces, such as the central Thai state, world religions, and the global economy have caused reactions from these mountain communities that have moved them away from traditional relationships with the natural world and toward a redefined culture-ecology connection. For example, increasing state control in conservation areas that are also home to Karen villages have caused the villages to systematically classify and distinguish their lands into different use areas in order to show that they are not pillaging the landscape as is commonly portrayed and also to lay claim to lands that might otherwise be taken away.

Here is some of the news about ISDSI in 2007:

• One of our favorite companies making a difference for sustainability is Patagonia. Our program was highlighted in Patagonia’s blog, The Cleanest Line. Read the full entry here. (June)

• ISDSI helped organize the first Southeast Asia ECHO Agricultural Conference. We were involved in the planning committee, helping to increase participation from Thai development workers, and ran a workshop, Global Climate Change: Implications for agriculture and community development. (June)

• An article explaining the ISDSI approach to cross-cultural place-based education is online “A New Model for Study-Abroad” (a pdf version is available here). This was published in The Bangkok Post on March 20, 2007 and can be read online. (March)