Hundreds and thousands of students are traveling to countries throughout the world every year for acquiring knowledge and gaining prestige. Scholars are conferencing to and fro to know and to let know other scholars of their generated knowledge with the hope for the development and improvement of the world. However, the very same actions are fueling the climate crisis in the world. Unknowingly we may have often overlooked the issue. International mobility for higher education is something the necessity of which can never be denied. However, the darkness underneath the light is alarming.
Works cited:
Hickel, J. (2020). Quantifying national responsibility for climate breakdown: an equality-based attribution approach for carbon dioxide emissions in excess of the planetary boundary. The Lancet Planetary Health, 4(9), e399-e404.
And Pérez-Neira, David & Rodríguez-Fernández, Ma Pilar & Hidalgo-González, Cristina, 2020. "The greenhouse gas mitigation potential of university commuting: A case study of the University of León (Spain)," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 82(C).
Shields, R. (2019). The sustainability of international higher education: Student mobility and global climate change. Journal of cleaner production, 217, 594-602.
Stough, T., K. Ceulemans, W. Lambrechts, V. Cappuyns, (2017).Assessing Sustainability in higher education curricula: a critical reflection on validity issues, Journal of Cleaner, doi: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.02.017