Nia Cambridge

This month's Sustainability Champion is Nia Cambridge, a senior majoring in Environmental Studies and Global Studies, with minors in Geography and Brazilian Studies. Read about Nia's interest in sustainability and national planning, and her experiences mapping sustainability issues in The Bahamas, Peru, and Chile in our full interview below.

Why did you choose the subjects you're studying?
I came into UR knowing that I wanted to be a Global Studies major, I was really interested in the development and change concentration. I'm from The Bahamas, which is a developing country, so I'm interested in who gets to define development. Development can be a loaded a term and a lot of people view it in a lot of different ways. But when you're thinking about what you want to accomplish, you have to consider climate change because it can have so many impacts on things like disaster planning and infrastructure. My interest in that environmental perspective is what led me to an Environmental Studies major. I'm also a chemistry nerd, so I like the science components of the program. 
 
What does sustainability mean to you and what aspects of it are you most interested in? 
To me, sustainability means all of us working together to produce a world that we're proud of, a place we don't mind living. At the end of the day, it also means knowing that we haven't ruined the place and making sure we've preserved something for future generations. I'm most interested in sustainable national planning. I've always intended to go back home to The Bahamas to work after graduation. I want to think about how we continue to grow as a small country and be self-sustaining, while being conscious of our environmental impact. 

How have your study abroad experiences impacted you?
My junior year, I spent a semester abroad in Brazil. That experience complicated sustainability for me in the best way. Right now, the Amazon is prime real estate for agriculture. That's obviously not good for the environment, but many people need to grow food to support their families. Sustainability is all about balancing human and environmental needs, so what do you do in that situation? While I was in Brazil, there was also an election going on and I got to see how politics influence environmental issues, as well as how geographers and indigenous peoples reacted to a far right candidate who wasn't really interested in the Amazon. 
 
This past summer, I also got the chance to go on a trip with the Geography Department to Peru to work on maps of the country's border with Brazil. When you fly over the Amazon, it's all green, we think of it as just a big forest. But there are towns, cities, and indigenous territories. People are everywhere, and some have been there for thousands of years, so that complicates things. 
 
Most recently over fall break, I was on a trip with Dr. Salisbury’s class to Chile. I am constantly surrounded by people who engage with the topic of climate change, but in Chile it was powerful to witness the impacts climate change has had in person. We walked on a dried-up lake bed and counted dead animals there. That emphasized for me how significant these topics are and how important it is to talk about them. 

Can you describe a couple of the mapping projects you've worked on?
During the mapping workshop in Peru this summer, I got to collaborate with a lot of people who work with GIS every day. That workshop was really enriching because it taught me the capability of GIS software. While I was there, I worked on a map that looked at areas vulnerable to climate change, logging, and deforestation. It was one of my first times mapping with a participatory process and it was really powerful to see how the mapping process was impacted when people who live in the area are involved. The maps we see don't always reflect what's actually on the ground. The map of the Amazon looks all green but, like I said earlier, there's a lot more there than plants. 

The project that was probably the most fun for me to work on was a map examining the effects of Hurricane Irma on The Bahamas. Ragged Island was completely destroyed and I was looking at why very little was being rebuilt even a year later. I got to do a lot of interviews on how the hurricane and climate change had impacted people’s lives, and I loved talking with people. My map ultimately showed how long it takes to get to different islands. Larger, more populated islands can be reached by regular flights, but the only ways to reach smaller islands are mail boats, private boats, or chartered flights. Mail boats can take up to three or four days to reach some places, so it's hard to get things in and out of many islands. When I was doing research, Ragged Island still had no administrative or medical services. If anyone over 65 needed their monthly pension check, they had to travel days to the capital to verify that they were still alive and eligible to receive it. People told me that if they got sick, they couldn't even call an emergency plane for an airlift to a hospital, because a nurse had to make the call and there were no nurses on the island. 
 
How has being from The Bahamas influenced your understanding of sustainability?
The Bahamas is a small place and it's all islands. Coming from The Bahamas has actually made me really optimistic about sustainability. I can easily see where sustainability can be applied, where it can be useful, and it feels feasible, especially considering the government's current national planning initiative. Every island in The Bahamas has a unique identity and you can see how important local knowledge is when you go from island to island. In the capital, all the houses look like something out of a magazine and they weren't designed for the local environment. But if you go out to other islands, you see houses designed to catch the wind so they don't need air conditioning. 
 
One issue that's big right now in The Bahamas is the queen conch, a local delicacy that people put in all kinds of dishes. It’s going extinct. That drives home the desire for me to preserve something for future generations. It's hard imagine that I may not be able to eat conch salad in 20 years. Again, this is a complicated sustainability issue. They're discussing a closed season for harvesting conch, but some people cook with it daily as part of their livelihood. 
 
What advice would you give to students interested in learning more about sustainability?
Sustainability is a wide topic. That can be scary, but it can also be good because there are so many ways in. If you're interested in business, you can start thinking about how to make businesses more sustainable. There are lots of opportunities if you're interested in science. You can talk to anyone in the Geography Department, and you can always reach out to the Office for Sustainability. There are so many ways to get involved. 

Thank you, Nia, for all you do to support sustainability on campus! Do you know someone who should be featured as a Sustainability Champion? Let us know at sustainability@richmond.edu.