Baker Institute Energy Forum sends volunteers to work on sustainable development in Lesotho

Baker Institute Energy Forum sends volunteers to work on sustainable development in Lesotho

BY FRANZ BROTZEN
Rice News staff

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A group of Rice students and scholars is in the southern African nation of Lesotho this summer developing cost-effective integrated approaches to sustainable development and energy.

The project aims to assess the needs of the communities around the capital, Maseru, to identify local resources, match the needs to climate-change adaptation impacts and recommend integrated ways to meet community needs in the most cost-effective manner. The trip is sponsored by the Energy Forum of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy.

Lesotho was judged to be an ideal site for the project because of its political stability and relatively high standards of education. In addition, Rice’s Beyond Traditional Borders initiative established a successful undergraduate internship program in Lesotho last summer. That initiative resulted in good working relationships with the Lesotho Ministry of Education, several local primary and secondary schools as well as with nongovernmental organizations working in the country.

	COURTESY PHOTO
	Rice students and faculty are traveling to Lesotho to assess strategies to promote sustainable development in the country.

The faculty members overseeing the project in Lesotho are Rebecca Richards-Kortum, the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Bioengineering and professor of electrical and computer engineering; Pedro Alvarez, the George R. Brown Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Amy Myers Jaffe, the Wallace S. Wilson Fellow in Energy Studies at the Baker Institute; Eugenia Georges, associate professor of anthropology; Maria Oden, lecturer on bioengineering; and Deb Niemeier, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California at Davis.

Seven Rice students are on the trip: undergraduates Mark Hoffman, Matt Wesley, Scott Steger, Joanna Cummings, June Liu and Amanda Hu and graduate student Guyton Durnin. Several of them are blogging about their experience in an online journal, http://owlsbeyondborders.rice.edu/.

“We are traveling to Lesotho with a multidisciplinary team of students and faculty to carry out a community assessment designed to support sustainable development,” Richards-Kortum said. “Our team brings faculty expertise in energy policy (Baker Institute), environmental engineering, bioengineering and anthropology.”

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