Students map their skills to solve coastal, human problems

The term “environmental justice” seems less abstract when you’re talking with people whose coastal homeland is eroding away in front of their eyes. Or to those displaced from the Cancer Alley area of petrochemical plants in Louisiana.

And of course, there is the nearby dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River, where it empties into the Gulf of Mexico.

Augustana students visit those areas as part of the January term course “Louisiana: Water and Environmental Justice.” They have come away with a good idea of what the problems are, and a plan to address at least some of them.

Losing a football field of land every 100 minutes

Students have been working with the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw tribal community to develop a spatial database for use in planning how to restore the coast and mitigate rising water.

The community lives by trapping, fishing, hunting and farming. However, their livelihood is jeopardized by environmental changes from oil and gas exploration, erosion, salt water intrusion and climate change. The land loss in the 7,000-square mile Mississippi Delta, while slowing, is still a football field every 100 minutes, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The database project comes out of a relationship with the tribal community that has been established over the years, said Dr. Christopher Strunk, associate professor of geography.

Making the geographic data accessible

To get started, the students met with Devon Parfait, chief of the Grand Caillou/Dulac Band, to find out how to help. He suggested compiling geographic data in a way that would make it useful to the tribe. A lot of data is publicly available, but scattered.

“It's very hard to get access to and to get it in one place,” said Dr. Strunk. “And so, what we did was design this project where students would find all the data and put it in one place where the tribe and other community members would have access to it.”

The information can help the tribe decide where to put its restoration and mitigation efforts for the most impact.

The project was sparked by the J-term trip, but not everyone who goes on the trip works on it. And some students on the project have not traveled to Louisiana yet. It's a rolling effort that Dr. Strunk hopes will continue.

Usually about 15 students go on the January trip. Most are geography or environmental studies majors. They meet on campus for a week to learn about the social and environmental characteristics of the Louisiana Gulf Coast and then meet with coastal planners and environmental lawyers, among others, while in Louisiana.

The visit to Louisiana can be eye-opening.

“There's a lot going on here for students,” Dr. Strunk said. “They might know a little bit about Hurricane Katrina or about New Orleans. And I think there are a lot of connections to Rock Island, and that's one thing we focus on in the class.

“The way fertilizer and nutrients are dumped in the water here, and then that contributes to the dead zone there. I think students are surprised that we are so connected.”

He said that seeing firsthand the environmental degradation is a challenge from a teaching perspective, and for students, too.

“So a lot of what we try to do is try to get students thinking, not only understanding the problems, but understanding the solutions and still being able to feel hopeful,” he said.

Senior Gracie Benstine certainly is.

“Interacting with Chief Devon and seeing the devastation of his community and the negligence of the federal government inspired me to want to pursue a career in which I could work closely with marginalized communities,” she said.

She said the database project and the trip have had a major impact on her goals.

“I've always been an environmental studies and geography major, but after this trip I discovered my intense passion for environmental justice,” she said. “I am now applying to grad schools, hoping to pursue research within the field of environmental justice.”

Chief Parfait, who recently graduated from Williams College with a geoscience major, knew about the possibilities of using GIS (Geographic Information System) to help his community. Augustana offers a GIS minor.

Junior Ian Empen likes seeing that their GIS project has a purpose. “Having the information you need is the first step to advocacy, and this project provides that for leaders in Louisiana to quickly and easily access it,” he said.

Chief Parfait had Zoom calls over the summer with the students and talked through the project as they worked on it.

“This is a way for students to see that people are, even in the face of these big challenges, still trying to build resilience," Dr. Strunk explained. "And having access to this data is going to be part of that."

Connecting students' skills to the tribal community's needs

First, students had to find out where the geographic data was and what was relevant. They had to figure out how to build it and how to organize everything on a website. That work dovetails with their GIS minor studies.

Dr. Strunk said they hope to continue and build on this community geography project by listening and thinking about how student skills can intersect with what the tribal community needs.

The benefit of returning to this area of Louisiana is that he and students can study the issues in depth.

“The hope is that we are building up these relationships and letting students do research and connect with people,” he said.

And they have connected. The media-savvy Chief Parfait — featured for his environmental work in Harvard Public Health, Rolling Stone and Teen Vogue — immediately gained Augustana followers on Instagram.

“Students have done fundraisers to support him and his work,” Dr. Strunk said. ”It has really been a very impactful experience.”