Brack Hale

In the past decade, sustainability and global citizenship have emerged as two of the most prominent themes in contemporary higher education. Literature that specifically merges the two themes has, however, lagged behind. This paper integrates the literature from the fields of sustainable tourism and educational travel in order to articulate relevant concepts and to summarize theoretical and empirical approaches for improving the sustainability of educational travel programs. While most of the literature focuses upon carbon-related issues, a more comprehensive assessment and implementation would focus on the three dimensions of sustainability: economic, environmental, and socio-cultural. This paper advocates several practical measures, such as the incorporation of sustainability into program mission statements, the training of travel leaders in all three dimensions of sustainability, and the implementation of sustainability-related assessment measures for educational travel programs. Further, we argue that maintaining critical scholarly engagement with broader theoretical frameworks is necessary to contextualize these practical and empirical approaches, and to reassess the potential benefits and negative impacts associated with educational travel.

This study seeks to assess the role that sustainability concerns currently play in educational travel within higher education. Although sustainability issues and initiatives have become popular on campuses across the globe, little has been written specifically about efforts within higher educational travel programs.

This essay explores the changing representations of ‘nature’ and ‘the native’ in the specific context of New Zealand by examining the evolution of two notable and markedly different representations of urban nature in Christchurch: the Christchurch Botanical Gardens and Riccarton Bush. In the context of this volume, and as you will read below, both sites are interstitial spaces--literal and symbolic grounds on which the urban and wild, natural and synthetic have come into constant contact and articulation. Our analysis, situated in the literatures of postcolonial conservation/nature studies, explores colonial and postcolonial mindsets, practices, institutions and discourses as they have transformed the ways in which nature is represented in two important public landscapes in Christchurch.

This paper explores the development of scholarship examining invasive alien species and
their impacts from an environmental justice perspective. As the scope of the environmental
justice field grows to encompass considerations of ecological integrity, invasive alien species
should be part and parcel of this discourse, because they have the potential to harm human
health directly and interfere with ecosystem services upon which vulnerable groups
sometimes rely. Further, invasive alien species might cause environmental justice issues at
the international level, as developing countries are likely at greater risk from their impacts. 
We propose that research should investigate the distribution of direct impacts from invasive
alien species, as well as those via changes of ecosystem functioning and services, across
different socioeconomic populations. We highlight the need for a holistic approach to
understanding these impacts that includes environmental justice concerns and recommend
the development of a framework that would enable consideration of cultural, ecological,
economic, and social issues involved in the management of invasive alien species.

Educational travel programs (e.g. study abroad) have long been an integral part of the higher education curriculum. As interest in internationalization and the development of students into global citizens has grown in recent years, so has the popularity of education travel. However, institutions of higher education often find themselves at odds between the desire to internationalize campuses and curricula and the growing movement to make them more sustainable. This paper provides a case study of the practices at one institution where educational travel is an integral and required part of the curriculum, known as Academic Travel. First, it briefly reviews some of the current thinking about educational travel and sustainable development. It then examines the experiences of several professors who integrate themes of sustainability into the curriculum and design of their Academic Travel programs.

Heritage is at once a hobby, a call to arms, an industry, and an impetus for policy organizations and initiatives the world over. Nowhere is this trend more evident than in Switzerland where issues of cultural and natural heritage are part of the political and cultural landscape. Heritage discourses are founded upon binaries, used pervasively in both identification (e.g. native/non-native) and management actions  (protection/eradication). This article uses a discursive approach to examine two recent controversies in Switzerland—the “invasive” Windmill palm and the recently banned Muslim minaret—in terms of the binaries used to contain and police each perceived “outsider.”  Recent scholarship acknowledges the impossibility of these binaries in a world as dynamic and complex as our own. Building upon this literature, this study demonstrates that binary -thinking may have encouraged ineffective and inappropriate policy actions toward so-called non-natives in our Swiss case studies. We advocate the re-conceptualization of belonging as “interstitial” and assert that its use will facilitate more nuanced definitions of belonging and, hopefully, result in policy actions better suited to our times.

While recent decades have seen the construction and circulation of several new approaches in ecology and the environmental sciences-including sustainability, resilience, novel ecosystems, and the Anthropocene-the shape and boundaries of a this new environmental imaginary are as yet obscure. At once a celebration of the ideas central to spaceship ecology and a sobering acknowledgment of its inherent limitations for grappling with, and responding to, the gravity of our current environmental epoch, Gravity is a befitting 1 It is difficult to locate this discourse in any meaningful way, except to say that it is both firmly rooted in Western/Enlightenment science, economics, industry and culture and also, given the global nature of much of this planet, embedded in geographies and cultures around the world.

Background and Aims
Geotagged photos posted to social media provide a potential source of information on the biodiversity of landscapes. This study examines the flora documented in publicly-available, geotagged photos posted on the website Flickr in northern Ticino, Switzerland between 2015 and 2020. Specifically, it seeks to assess the taxa of plants documented in the photos and the users’ understanding of the flora, using user-identified information as a proxy.

Methods
Using the Flickr API and a GIS project in QGIS, the study collected photographs taken in and above the subalpine zone (defined here as starting at 1500 masl) in Northern Ticino between 1 April and 31 October (in 2020, only until 20 July); we sampled up to ten photos per user. The authors performed a content analysis to categorize the main subjects of the photos. For photos containing plants as visible subjects, we further identified plants to genus or species, when possible. We also collated user’s comments and tags related to plants. Lastly, we examined the spatial trends of photos with plants and those without with respect to hiking trails, roads, and huts.

Results
Of the 540 photos in the final dataset, 80 (14.8 %) photos contained individual plants that could be visually identified. In contrast, only 28 (5.2 %) photos contained plant-related tags. Identifiable plants came from 26 genera, the most common being Larix, Epilobium, and Eriophorum. No plants were on the Red, Black, or Watch Lists in Canton Ticino. Conspicuously missing were Orchidaceae species and two “symbolic” floral taxa of the Alps (sensu Schirpke et al. 2018): Gentiana (acaulis and clusii) and Leontopodium alpinum. Users rarely identified taxa (5%), but were generally correct (100%), when they did. Photos with plants were significantly closer to huts and and further from roads.

Conclusions
Our initial findings demonstrate that a visual content analysis captures more taxa than a simple analysis of user-generated content would; however, it did not identify any plants in need of management. This could relate to the sampling methodology or the social media platform. Overall, it shows that visitors, while not always specifically recognizing it, appreciate the flora of mountain areas. This highlights the need for continued conservation and education efforts.