As a Senior Fellow and global partner for advanced educational programs at the Liechtenstein Institute for Strategic Development, I am working with LISD Director Peter Droege in developing mentorship, internship, and research opportunities.

We have created the LISD Embedded Action and Practitioner Program (LEAP), and are bolstering an international network of mentors that will support the program and its Fellows.

leap

LEAP internships can be across a range of geographies and opportunities. e.g. in Berlin, on metropolitan and regional energy transformational issues and its massive regional transition drives away from coal dependency; in Strasbourg, around hydrological challenges; in Liechtenstein and Switzerland, on Alpine regional and eco-economical challenges; in Australia and Oceania, focused on mounting climate emergency and energy transition programs and initiatives. 

LISD is also engaged in a pan-African scholarship program with eight African universities, raising funds to enable excellent and deserving students to engage in Masters Level studies in renewable energy access fields, in collaboration with the UK Carbon Trust and the UK Aid Endowed Energy Access program.

LEAP candidates are able to select from many opportunities offered by LISD, or they can propose their own project, and benefit from the direct mentorship of Peter or another expert from LISD's network.

We are creating a direct partnership between LISD and the Harvard International Relations Council, and offering LEAP as a perennial mentorship opportunity for Harvard students through the IRC, including through the framework of LISD’s developing T2 Project. More information on this exciting partnership here.

Past Fellows of the program include:

• Sarpong Hammond Antwi, a young Ghanaian who was an MSc Energy Policy student at the Pan African University Institute of Water and Energy Sciences (PAUWES) in Algeria when he completed an internship and fellowship at LISD, benefiting from LISD’s Remote Personal Tutorials Program. This was instrumental in Sarpong pursuing his PhD in Ireland in sustainable hydrology, after which he intends to return to his native Ghana. 

• Tufts and Fletcher alumnus Sookrit Malik, who founded Energeia, an Indian startup working on building smart microgrids which are cleaner, more reliable, and more cost effective

• Wellesley senior Jessica Ostfeld, who assisted LISD facilitated research at the University of Strasbourg with on water use and the hydrology of groundwater-fed streams in Alsace

• Wellesley graduate Annie Schnitzer, who as a senior conducted research on Germany's transition away from coal power. Annie then received a Masters of Science in Migration Studies from Oxford, and is now with the data analytics department of Norwegian energy company Equinor working on a North Seas oil platform.

Particularly exciting, both as a conceptual direction, and as a framework for internship and research opportunities, are LISD’s new T2 Programs: Terra 2 - Transformations for a Changing Planet, and the Global Engagement for Active Interns Project. T2 is a call to universities, agencies, institutions and concerned individuals to squarely focus on the habitability of a future Earth with a far different and more extreme climate than our current one, and to envision a permissive economic, political, social, and cultural environment globally that will nurture the breakthroughs we need.

Background

Peter Droege, my close friend of decades, is a world-leading expert on environmental issues, sustainable development and urban affairs. He is currently the Chairman EuroSolar, and moderated the virtual 2020 European Solar Prize.

He was a frequent collaborator with the Institute for Global Leadership, as an INSPIRE Fellow for the EPIIC program during the 2004-05 Oil and Water year, during which time he wrote The Renewable City and dedicated it to the Institute, and again during the 2008-09 Cities: Forging an Urban Future.

In 2010-11, he advised the Solar for Gaza and Sderot project jointly designed by Institute students, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, and his own graduate students at the Institute of Architecture and Planning of the University Liechtenstein.

“Solar for Gaza: An Energetic Framework For Renewable Peace and Prosperity for Gaza and Its Greater Region,” is now featured as a chapter 2nd edition of Urban Energy Transition, edited by Peter. We revived and published it as an example of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, penetrating the current self-defeating climate of anti-normalization, with hope in its message of "an alternative to war through alternative energy." My co-author with Peter is Cody Valdes, an Institute alumnus who was instrumental in developing Solar for Gaza at the Institute (Cody was also invaluable in helping me develop The Trebuchet in its infancy).

Also acknowledged is Hannah Flamm, one of my previous wonderful assistants who, as an Institute student in 2010, conducted a Solar for Gaza training workshop, “Assessing Renewable Energy Potential in Palestine,” together with Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed. They convened Palestinian, Israeli, and other international scientists, engineers, professors, and entrepreneurs.

We relied on the insights of Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and renowned Gaza expert, for the chapter introduction framing the current Gazan situation (her daughter Annie Schnitzer was the first LEAP Fellow while a Wellesley undergraduate student).

HARVARD IRC And LEAP

We have initiated a meaningful sustained relationship between LISD and Harvard’s undergraduate International Relations Council. The Trebuchet has successfully collaborated with the IRC in the past - we secured the IRC as a permanent host for the Oslo Scholars Program of the Human Rights Foundation, and helped them convene a College Freedom Forum in the Spring of 2019.

For LISD we have mediated a very exciting and promising initial exchange with Peter Droege and Davis Tyler-Dudley, the IRC’s President for the 2020-21 academic term.

Mindful the virtual learning necessitated by COVID in addition to the ongoing LEAP offerings of embedded internships, reverse internship coaching, and opportunities with the LISD network, Peter has proposed to provide thesis guidance and support for students conducting capstone research on sustainability issues.

Particularly exciting, both as a conceptual direction, and as a framework for internship and research opportunities, are LISD’s new T2 Programs: Terra 2 - Transformations for a Changing Planet, and the Global Engagement for Active Interns Project. T2 is a call to universities, agencies, institutions and concerned individuals to squarely focus on the habitability of a future Earth with a far different and more extreme climate than our current one, and to envision a permissive economic, political, social, and cultural environment globally that will nurture the breakthroughs we need.

LEAP at Tufts

We met on February 21st, 2020 with Professor Chris Swan, Dean of Undergraduate Education at the Tufts School of Engineering, Professor Douglas Matson, and a wonderful Institute alumna, Sarah Freeman. One objective of this meeting was to secure the naming of Tufts’ Engineers Without Borders in honor of our deceased wonderful common friend, Fred Berger. He was a long time member of the Institute’s External Advisory Board. The occasion also allowed us to introduce LEAP to Tufts Engineering, EWB, and Sarah.

In 2004, Institute Board member David Cuttino had introduced me to Fred, then the Chair of the Board of Louis Berger, Inc. An engineer by profession, Fred was an alumnus of the Tufts Department of Economics, and became a member of the Tufts Board of Trustees. He expressed to me his interest in the creation of what he termed an “engineering Peace Corps,” and his frustration at the lack of traction this idea received at Tufts. With his support, the Institute suggested creating an Engineers Without Borders chapter, and honored Bernard Amadei, the Founding President of EWB-USA, with a Dr. Jean Mayer Award.

Our vision, and the EWB mandate, was to encourage students to work closely with faculty mentors and field experts to provide engineering support to serve the needs of communities in developing countries. To ensure the sustainability of their projects, the students built relationships with the communities that they work in before beginning their projects, and developed a plan in collaboration with, and fully sensitive to the interests and concerns of, those community.

EWB’s very first trip to Tibet was led by Sarah, then an undergraduate engineering student under the advising of Doug Matson. The project created latrines and solar-powered cookers to destroy medical waste. Mindful that they were traveling to a Chinese-controlled zone, we sensitized the students to what it means to work in such a sensitive environment, providing orientation sessions on language, culture, and China-Tibet governance and politics.

I have reconnected with Tufts Shafiqul Islam, a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Professor of Water Diplomacy at Tufts University, a good friend, and the father of one of my wonderful former students, Maia Majumder. Shafiqul and I affectionately call each other “Bunky,” commemorating the time we spent as bunkmates during an EPIIC Outward Bound retreat.

For the 2005 EPIIC Oil and Water year, together we convened a professional workshop on “Water as a Source of Conflict and Cooperation: Exploring the Potential,” which then became the Water Diplomacy Project at Fletcher and the Water Systems, Science, and Society initiatives. These are part of the wonderful legacies that the Institute left for Tufts. Shafiqul will serve as a Convisero and LEAP mentor.

LEAP Fellows

Kate konschnik

Kate Konschnik, one of my wonderful alumni who we honored with the Institute’s alumni award, has joined as a Senior LEAP Fellow. She and Peter are creating a webinar event on energy and the environment.

Kate Konschnik is a former environmental litigator and energy policy expert focused on the challenge of climate change. Kate directs the Climate and Energy program at the Duke University Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and a Senior Lecturer at Duke Law, where she teaches Climate Change and the Law. A proud product of the American public school system, Kate earned her B.A. in political science from Tufts University, and a law degree from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law. Her mother was born in Queens, New York, to second generation Americans from Ireland; her father was born in a small coal-mining community in Northeastern Pennsylvania. Long road trips to National Parks and dinner table discussions of justice shaped Kate’s passion for environmental protection and politics.

Her Tufts experience deepened these interests, through biology and political science coursework, two tours of duty with Sherman Teichman’s immersive Education for Personal Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) program, study in France, and bilingual research with a botanist at the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Kate capped her senior year at Tufts with an invitation to the U.N. Development Program’s conference in Stockholm, where she presented her EPIIC paper on the ties between political marginalization and environmental degradation in the African Sahel.

Kate began her career as a community organizer at small environmental organizations in Washington, DC and San Francisco, California. Working alongside people of color and undocumented immigrants, Kate witnessed firsthand the inextricable linkages between poverty, racism, and pollution. In law school, Kate worked for three years under Karen Musalo, a groundbreaking asylum and refugee lawyer; spent a summer on Saipan helping the Attorney General of the Northern Mariana Islands make a case to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to clean up World War II era PCB contamination; and studied climate, human rights, and immigration law at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London.

Following law school, Kate was admitted into the prestigious Honors Program at the United States Department of Justice, to serve as a litigator in the Department’s Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD). For seven years Kate brought cases against electric utilities, aluminum smelters, cement plants and landfills for Clean Air Act violations. Her work earned her an EPA Gold Medal for Exceptional Service on a case, as well as two EPA Bronze Medals.

Kate then moved to Capitol Hill where she served as Chief Environmental Counsel to U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and managed his Oversight Subcommittee on the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. There, she worked extensively on climate change legislation and Deepwater Horizon oil spill response efforts, and represented the Senator at the 2009 U.N climate conference in Copenhagen, Denmark. In 2012, Kate moved to Harvard Law School, where she founded and directed the Environmental Policy Initiative (now the Harvard Energy and Environmental Law Program). There, Kate’s work led to greater transparency of hydraulic fracturing chemicals in the U.S. oil and gas industry, informed the EPA as it designed the Clean Power Plan to control carbon pollution from the power sector, and offered constitutional guideposts to states pushing for more aggressive clean energy policies. Kate also taught Oil and Gas Law at Harvard Law School for four years.

Kate now focuses on climate policy as it relates to the electricity sector and the oil and gas sector. Kate was the lead author on a climate policy study for Governor Cooper of North Carolina, and represented eight former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) Commissioners on an amicus brief in D.C. Circuit Court litigation over the Trump administration’s rollback of the Clean Power Plant. Kate also runs an inter-disciplinary, multi-university research effort into decision-making in U.S. electricity markets and implications for decarbonization and innovation. Kate spent three months at the International Energy Agency in Paris to study methane abatement policies in 2019-2020, and coauthored the IEA’s regulatory roadmap on the topic. In addition to her course on Climate Change and the Law, Kate taught a course on the Future of the Grid with Duke Energy CEO Jim Rogers, former FERC Chair Norman Bay, and Dr. Brian Murray of Duke University. Kate regularly consults with congressional offices and state and federal agencies on climate and energy policy, and is invited to speak to governmental, industry, and environmental audiences on these topics.

Sookrit Malik

My alumnus Sookrit Malik, from the 2013-14 EPIIC year on "The Future of the Middle East and North Africa," and recent Fletcher School graduate, joined LEAP as a young India-based practitioner. 

Here is Sookrit's description of his current venture, Energeia:

"We are working on building smart industrial microgrids which are cleaner, more reliable and cost-effective. I think these microgrids will have a fundamental role to play in India's energy and transportation future, especially, considering the limitations of our transmission infrastructure. We have an opportunity to leapfrog here and bypass the structural and financial limitations posed by aging and inefficient infrastructure. I am also working on collecting and modeling demand level data which could provide important insights for designing these systems in an Indian context. Recently, there has also been a spike in diesel cars, buses, and trucks being converted from Diesel to CNG. I can also delve deeper into these transitions and what challenges the future of the microgrid ecosystem (integrated with e-mobility) may have in store for us."

MARCY Murninghan

I introduced Peter Droege to Marcy Murninghan, who was an Institute INSPIRE Fellow during the 2007-08 EPIIC year on “Global Poverty and Inequality.” In her time at the Institute, she wrote a report on Fighting the Fury: Climate Change, Natural Disasters, and the Stewardship Ethic - building on her decades of experience in corporate social responsibility and ethics - which links the military services and civil and business sectors in a integrative framework to respond to climate disaster.

Fighting the Fury examines existing practice and opportunities for cultivating private sector and civil–military partnerships and leadership, opportunities that traverse the humanitarian community, and the overlapping arenas of corporate and investor social responsibility, as well as academe. It suggests how these partnerships might be strengthened and new ones created, while engaging, too, other actors such as social entrepreneurs, foundations, and the media.”

Marcy has developed a new Equity Culture / Civic Fiduciary initiative that encompasses the concept of a civilian disaster corps that she developed at the Institute. In addition to being an integral contributor to ALLIES - my Institute’s civil-military program - with her emphasis on civil-military collaboration on climate response, she is now a LEAP fellow, and with Peter and LISD’s insight will continue to develop and advocate for this framework.

Gregg Nakano

Gregg who I affectionately call the “Ramrod” of ALLIES has become part of the LEAP network. Peter Droege will help Gregg create an overture to UNESCO and its Small Island Developing States (SIDS) program, framed by “slow onset disaster” and the existential risk posed to the territory and cultures of Pacific island nations, and help secure a potential UNESCO delegation to the Festival of the Pacific (FESTPAC).

jess ostfeld

Jess is one of the students I had the pleasure to mentor in my role for the Albright Institute at Wellesley College. Given her interest and undergraduate research in environmental policy and sustainability, I introduced her to Peter and to LEAP, which sponsored her internship in water research in France’s Alsace region. Jess kept a journal to which she recollected the following in 2019:

This week was an introduction to the subject matter, study site, and my colleagues. This summer, I will be helping Agnes Lambardche collect data for her thesis on hydrology of groundwater-fed streams in the Alsace region. Last summer, Serge Dumont noticed that these streams reached such low levels that fish and plants perished. In the nearby areas farms use groundwater during the summer to water their fields, particularly maise. Maize, or corn, does not normally grow in France, but its production has been encouraged by EU policies, such as the CAP program. These dynamics show just how complex the issue is, how it is has been shaped by local geography and commerce, regional and national agricultural goals, and international policy. 

University of Strasbourg PhD student Agnes Labarchede, and her advisor, Geography and Development Professor Carmen De Jong, have done a wonderful job in working with governmental agencies so that there is minimum overlap and maximum collaboration. One of the main reasons why I wanted to work with Carmen and Agnes this summer was to learn how to work with policymakers and governmental agencies to shape policy through research. Given Carmen’s previous work on artificial snow, the resulting media stories, and her success in shaping policy at her focal sites, I have hope that their research will help improve Grand Est (the French Region within which the study is taking place) water management. Over the summer, I look forward to learning from them both about successful stakeholder involvement, media relations, and how to translate complicated scientific jargon into something everybody can understand. 

ANNIE SCHNITZER

Annie Schnitzer, a Wellesley junior, was the first member of LEAP. Annie studied German language and culture at Wellesley and investigated the German coal industry as Germany undergoes the transition to fully renewable energy resources.

The internship this summer taught me to think critically and analytically, offering me an experience that cannot be found in the classroom. With Dr. Droege’s support and guidance, I even had the chance to learn about various masters programs in the field of sustainable development and urban design. It was truly a wonderful summer and I am deeply grateful for each and every moment, they are ones I will never forget.”

Rachel Svetanoff

Rachel Svetanoff joins LEAP upon the end of her role at Johnson & Johnson. Currently, she oversees the research department of JB Dondolo, Inc. which works to remove barriers of access to water, sanitation and hygiene in water-scarce settings. Her background in climate change has included investigations on the private sector’s role on interventions, supply chain disruptions due to natural disasters, and the quantification of emissions.

Of the many projects Rachel has been a part of, 15 address climate change, 4 address sustainable communities, and 6 address innovation. Her involvement with LEAP includes developing a framework for an international tribunal devoted to environmental injustices (more details below) and advising Peter on LEAP’s REED renewable energy graduate scholarship program across 8 African universities.

Solar for Gaza Published

The Solar for Gaza research project that we began in 2009 as a collaboration between the Institute for Global Leadership, the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, and the Institute of Architecture and Planning of the University Liechtenstein, has been published in Urban Energy Transitions 2nd ed, edited by Peter Droege and distributed by Elsevier.

“Solar for Gaza: An Energetic Framework For Renewable Peace and Prosperity for Gaza and Its Greater Region,” is now featured as a chapter 2nd edition of Urban Energy Transition, edited by Peter. We revived and published it as an example of Israeli-Palestinian cooperation, penetrating the current self-defeating climate of anti-normalization, with hope in its message of "an alternative to war through alternative energy." My co-author with Peter is Cody Valdes, an Institute alumnus who was instrumental in developing Solar for Gaza at the Institute (Cody was also invaluable in helping me develop The Trebuchet in its infancy).

Also acknowledged is Hannah Flamm, one of my previous wonderful assistants who, as an Institute student in 2010, conducted a Solar for Gaza training workshop, “Assessing Renewable Energy Potential in Palestine,” together with Dr. Tareq Abu Hamed. They convened Palestinian, Israeli, and other international scientists, engineers, professors, and entrepreneurs.

We relied on the insights of Sara Roy, a senior research scholar at Harvard's Center for Middle Eastern Studies and renowned Gaza expert, for the chapter introduction framing the current Gazan situation (her daughter Annie Schnitzer was the first LEAP Fellow while a Wellesley undergraduate student).

For more information and to order the book, please see here.

LISD Feasibility on the Possibility of an International Tribunal for Environmental Justice

Julia Shufro, a Trebuchet team member, who will be engaged as a researcher for this project and expects to have an influence in her Tufts role as a Master’s student. Peter, Boaz Wachtel, Duncan Pickard, Julia Samson, and Rachel Svetanoff are beginning a project on the feasibility of an International Criminal Court on environmental injustices as described in Julia Shufro’s overview below.

There is an unprecedented and urgent crisis of environmental crimes and ensuing devastation that calls for the formation of an international coalition to pursue environmental justice with nonviolent action. National, regional, and international actors continue to fail to prosecute, hold accountable, and institute change within violators of environmental rights. As a result, we, the concerned citizens of the world, call for the establishment of the People’s Tribunals for Environmental Justice. We also call for an Environmental Crisis Summit, at which we will conduct a mock trial to establish the framework of the People’s Tribunal Movement to inform and equip local activists of the world to replicate and proliferate the movement rapidly.

We will act locally and aim for global impact, seeking global allies to empower our movement. Our strength and resolve is rooted within a strong moral commitment to defend the Earth and all living organisms hosted by it. Within our activism and People’s Tribunals, we aim to boycott, divest, sue, sanction, and prosecute heads of states, corporations, politicians, senior executives, individuals, and any damaging and endangering organized bodies and/or representatives of such to hold them accountable for their crimes against the environment.

Previous international attempts to seek environmental justice have proven insufficient and have not brought about the halt of environmental destruction. The International Court of Justice (ICJ), under the auspices of the United Nations (UN), fails to act on environmental issues. The ICE Coalition, an advocacy group in support of international laws and courts to protect the environment, describes the international community’s failure to enforce justice and punishment related to environmental crimes, noting that the ICC only had a specialized Chamber of Environmental Matters from 1993 until 2006, but it was closed due to lack of resolve to bring about cases of environmental criminality. In 2016, the ICC decided to add environmental destruction cases to its docket, but this has failed to prove global impact, thus demonstrating the need for a popularized civic engagement movement.

Now is the time for environmental activists, nature devotees, humanitarians, and dutiful citizens globally to unite and form an international alliance to empower citizens to form people’s tribunals aimed to protect their local and common environment for the sake of this society and future generations. We equate the rights of fauna, flora, biota, and soil as equal to human rights as defined by UN charters and the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Furthermore, environmental rights are human rights as we cannot exist sustainably without the protection of our planet on which we live.