Exeter students get hands on with global sustainability challenges

Students from around the world – including more than 50 from the University of Exeter – have begun to tackle real-life sustainability challenges as part of a global experiential learning programme.

Future17 is bringing together 250 students from across five continents to work on a host of real-time issues and opportunities focused on the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

From addressing tire and plastic bottle pollution in Cameroon to supporting rewilding and biodiversity in the UK, the students will work across geographic borders and academic disciplines to deliver insight and recommendations to partner organisations.

The programme has been developed by the university with higher education analysts QS (Quacquarelli Symonds) and provides an online platform for students from member universities to learn and work together while generating real-world impact.

Exeter students, for example, teamed up with counterparts at Stellenbosch and Sao Paulo, to assist Green Rebel, a regenerative agroforestry farm in Catalonia. Together, they produced a scoping paper that examined the feasibility of a pick-your-own farm comprising multiple crops designed to benefit the local community.

Students from Exeter also helped Climate KIC, the EU’s main innovation pipeline, to create an analysis of the timber value chain with scoping to help it transition to a more circular economy model. By contrast, students also took on a challenge set by an Indian zero-waste grocery delivery service called Refillable, to formulate a proposal for the use of novel and more sustainable packaging material.

Alongside Exeter are nine other universities, including Arizona State, Auckland, the American University of Sharjah, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Future17 is one of the educational initiatives of Exeter’s Global Classrooms programme, which promotes the use of common virtual spaces to enable exchanges and discussions between students, academics and institutions around the globe. Its aim is to promote collaboration, global citizenship, sustainable virtual mobility, cultural competence and democratic learning.