News
On July 16, Professor Richard Peña presented “Silvered Water: A Syrian Self-Portrait” by exiled filmmaker Ossama Mohammed at the Paris Center. A conversation with Mohammed and Professor Madeleine Dobie followed the screening.
Ensuring “availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” is a target outlined by the Sustainable Development Goal #6. Yet how do we measure access to clean water and sanitation globally? And how has India fared on the issue of water rights? As part of Columbia Global Centers | Mumbai's Water Security Lecture Series, Dr. Zachary Burt, a Research Fellow at the Mailman School of Public Health, Columbia University, and a Visiting Research Fellow on a Fulbright-Nehru scholarship, addressed these questions and presented his research on water and sanitation services in tier-II Indian cities, focusing on the Hubli-Dharwad belt in Karnataka.
On July 19th, 2018, the Director of Columbia Global Centers |Nairobi – Dr. Murugi Ndirangu, was invited by Equity Foundation to speak to a group of students who were attending the 2018 College Counseling boot camp at Brookhouse School Karen. The group comprised of 100 scholars – these being those who were going through the application process to IVY League Schools abroad including Columbia University, and over 15 mentors – these being those with some experience abroad.
Dr. Ndirangu engaged the students by covering a wide range of topics that addressed all matters from the point when they depart from their home country to landing and adapting to their new life as students abroad. She provided tips on how to adapt well for example by connecting with other foreign students as well as integrating with local students in equal measure. She also emphasized the importance of utilizing counseling services on-campus as a key resource while navigating and learning to cope with the new life away from home.
Dr. Ndirangu also educated the students on the foreign academic system – most specifically, the American system. This included information on the American academic calendar, course credits, and grading system.
Overall, the students were encouraged to plan ahead and strategize on their academic goals and careers as a helpful move in determining which courses to take and to which level. In the end, the scholars engaged Dr. Ndirangu with questions aiming to learn from her vast experience abroad both as a student and a college Professor.
On July 17th, 2018, Columbia Global Centers Nairobi hosted China House in the screening of the documentary film “The Ivory Game” which featured the organization’s CEO – Hongziang Huang.
The documentary featured the unfortunate Chronicles of the African elephant. For the past five years, over 150,000 elephants were killed in Africa for the purpose of ivory trafficking - creating one billion U.S dollars in illegal trade between Africa and China. The documentary, filmed undercover for 16 months across three continents, filmmakers Kief Davidson and Richard Ladkani followed a team of intelligence agents, wildlife activists, and frontline rangers as they infiltrated a global network of ivory trafficking. With the Executive Producer Leonardo Dicaprio, the Oscar-shortlisted film has won numerous awards including the WWF Golden Panda Award (Wildscreen Festival 2016), International Green Film Award (Cinema for Peace Award 2017), and the Best International Documentary Feature (Beijing International Film Festival 2017).
Mr. Huang, a Columbia University alumnus conducted extensive investigations on the environmental and social impact of Chinese investment and trade in Latin America and Africa. In 2014, he launched “China House” in Nairobi, Kenya - bringing young Chinese to Africa for research, wildlife conservation and community development projects. He hopes to create a bridge between the Chinese global investment activities and the global sustainable development agenda. This event is a joint collaboration between Columbia Global Centers | Nairobi and China House on the basis of Africa-China Sustainable Development.
Since the movie was released there has been a profound impact in the illegal trade industry. Before the movie, the price of ivory was $3000 but after the movie, the sale price declined to $700 a kilo. A positive outcome has been that the elephant population has increased.
The panelist determined the following;
- That the government must find ways of creating conservation reserves for elephants. This will reduce cases of increased human-elephant conflict.
- Local communities will need to be involved in conservation efforts.
- Young people need to take the leadership mantle in conservation efforts.
- Online Interventions should be done in order to reduce poaching.
- Local filmmakers should film such documentaries to highlight the plight of these endangered species.
- Studies need to be done in trying to understand cultures that emphasize the need to use ivory. Perhaps this sort of interactions would lead to more opportunities to educate people about conservation.
- We need to determine how to make ivory worthless in our efforts to protect it.
Zak Dychtwald, CC '12, is the author of Young China: How the Restless Generation Will Change Their Country and the World (St. Martin’s Press; Feb 2018).