Social Innovation Projects (SIP) is an on-campus internship program that gives students an opportunity to make a real-life impact in their local communities while receiving teamwork experience. Four students—Emily Meadows, an environmental science major from Alpine, Utah; Brad Allison, a chemical engineering major from Mesa, Arizona; Becky Fuller, a chemical engineering major from Denver; and Nathan Guzman, an economics major from Washington, DC—signed up for SIP and were paired together on a team during Fall 2018 semester. Their team was given the project of working on carbon credits accountability with Greening Youth, a brand-new SIP class partner.
Fuller didn’t know what to expect when she signed up for the class. However, the environment is her favorite social issue, so she was excited about the content of the project. “For me, a highlight was being the voice of those unheard,” she says.
GREENING YOUTH
Greening Youth originally began by providing environmental education to the Youth Conservation Corps. Greening Youth began working with students from diverse backgrounds and soon transitioned to an international platform. “We look for what is needed and add the most value,” says James Ezeilo, Greening Youth vice president of strategic partnerships and development.
The mission of the Greening Youth organization is to promote healthy lifestyle choices to empower a healthy community. Greening Youth helps underprivileged, underrepresented youth by organizing high school internship programs. Through the program, high school teens are given exposure to the outdoors and a pathway to a full-time job after graduation if they choose. The program provides youth with an opportunity to participate in vegetation surveys and other real-life skills in the environmental sector.
One of Greening Youth’s first projects addressed flooding in Lagos, Nigeria. Lagos is Nigeria’s largest city and most densely populated area. The organization looked for ways to better utilize green infrastructure. As explained by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), green infrastructure “uses vegetation, soils, and other elements to restore some of the natural processes required to manage water and create healthier urban environments.”
Excess rainwater often causes damage such as erosion or flooding to urban areas because the rainwater can’t soak into the ground as it normally would in rural areas. Green infrastructure utilizes natural elements to create natural opportunities for excess water to be used to decrease the negative effects. By introducing green infrastructure to parks, Greening Youth reduced urban flooding and employed young people at the same time. Prior to this project, no large swaths of green space existed in Lagos because the city is so densely populated.
Yero Winbourne, Greening Youth digital content manager and executive assistant to the vice president of strategic partnerships and development, became involved with the program in 2013. His personal interest in environmental awareness drew him to the organization, where he found that the work he was doing was unlike any of his previous experiences. Winbourne is particularly invested in what nature means for the human body and overall well-being. “Understanding the water cycle is one of the most important things for youth to learn,” Winbourne says.
CARBON CREDITS
Companies are given permits to emit a certain amount of CO2 emissions. When companies produce more emissions than they have permits for, they can either buy or trade to receive more permits. This practice is referred to as carbon-credit trading and is a multibillion-dollar industry with most of the trading currently occurring in Europe or California.
To decrease their carbon footprint, many corporations participate in projects such as planting trees and providing clean water and clean stoves. As companies engage in these types of projects, they decrease the negative effects of fossil fuels and receive carbon credits and tax breaks for doing so. Carbon credit programs are designed to help increase companies’ awareness of the impact that their businesses have on local communities and the overall environment.
THE SIP TEAM’S ROLE
Over the course of the semester, the SIP students created a database that tracked the projects implemented in certain areas of the world. They also conducted a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis that detailed how Greening Youth fits into carbon credit trading.
The team members’ goal was to discover the impact of carbon credit trading on the communities and to determine if the results of carbon credit trading were positive. The SIP team found a gap in the current system and discovered that there was little to no follow-up once the carbon-decreasing projects were put in place. Last semester the team discovered 120 carbon credit projects in Africa and 300 carbon credit projects in Brazil, even though far fewer projects were reported and recorded.
The team found that corporations aren’t accountable when it comes to the effects that carbon credits transactions have on developing countries. The students proposed that companies measure the impact that they have and evaluate whether the environmentally friendly project actually had a negative or positive impact.
“We wondered if the projects took away from the land where the local people typically grow food,” Meadows says.
The team members found a general lack of information regarding this question even after searching extensively through existing data. This is notable because these types of projects have existed for approximately twenty years.
Ultimately, the SIP team recommended that Greening Youth work in a consultant role between the corporations and the members of the community in which these projects are taking place. Essentially, Greening Youth would act as an accountability partner to measure and follow up on real-time results of how the corporations affect communities. Ideally, Greening Youth would ensure a system of checks and balances to standardize the amount of carbon sequestered across industries. The overall goal would be to standardize these reporting measures so comparisons can be made more easily across organizations.
SIP provided students with the opportunity to research carbon credits, develop a partnership with Greening Youth, and provide meaningful recommendations to the company.
“For me, it was rewarding to see the progression. Day one I felt like I couldn’t do it, and by the end, I was confident in my abilities,” Meadows says.
“I appreciated the real-life impact and the teamwork experience,” Allison says.
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Writer: Ballard Center