As part of a Northeastern University Dialogues of Civilization course this spring, Odessa Sanchez traveled to Indonesia to study how small island states confront climate change. But nothing prepared her for the mountain of trash in Bali that dozens of families call home. Sanchez, a senior international relations major, was one of 24 students in the course, “Small Island States: Climate Change Vulnerability, Adaptation and Resilience,” who visited the Suwung landfill — known locally as “trash mountain.” There, they watched children scavenge through piles of waste, collecting plastic bottles to sell.
“You have a 2-year-old child picking through trash,” Sanchez says. “There are multi-generational families living in these dumps, and that’s their livelihood.” Side by side with poverty are the Balinese organizations implementing innovative strategies to cope with pollution and climate change — strategies that the students spent five-and-a-half weeks exploring deeply. From providing hotels with equipment to compost food waste to supporting small farmers to filter waste water for irrigation, nongovernmental organizations on Bali are attacking environmental issues from all sides, says Northeastern student Liam Cmok Kehoe, who is pursuing a master’s in environmental science and policy.
