I carry two continents in my suitcase.
Growing up in Zambia, I learned early that the environment is not abstract. It is the Zambezi flooding or failing. The soil that determines whether the village eats. Sustainability was never a development concept to me; it was life. Now, as a University of Nottingham Law student preparing to cross the Atlantic for an exchange at Western Law School in Ontario, I carry that understanding as both inheritance and obligation.
Travel has a cost. A return flight from London to Toronto emits approximately 2.1 tonnes of CO₂ per passenger (https://flightfree.org/calculator/). I cannot disregard this. However, the question is not whether to go. Legal education is a climate tool. What you do with the going is what is material. I will offset my flight through Atmosfair (atmosfair.de), verified against Gold Standard. Further I will track my ongoing footprint with My Climate and Capture apps. In Canada, I will use Transit to navigate public transport across London, Ontario, refusing the reflexive car culture that defines North American campuses.
But the deeper work is legal. Law is infrastructure for sustainability. SDG 13 on climate action and SDG 15 on life on land are not self-executing (https://sdgs.un.org/goals). In contrast, they require legislation, litigation and lawyers who understand both. At Western Law, I intend to volunteer with the Indigenous Law branch of the community legal clinic. Here, questions of land stewardship, resource sovereignty and ecological rights are not theoretical. Indigenous legal orders in Canada, many of which embed relational responsibilities to the land, offer frameworks that Western environmental law has long ignored (https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20230809-how-indigenous-guardians-are-protecting-canadas-environment). They are urgently needed. As someone from a continent whose resources have been extracted under the banner of “development,” this conversation is in my bones.
Moreover, I will also continue legal aid volunteering, building on my experience with Citizens Advice in the UK. Access to justice is an environmental issue. Friends of the Earth note marginalised communities bear the greatest burden of climate change and have the fewest legal tools to resist it (https://groups.friendsoftheearth.uk/resources/anti-racism-and-environment-movement). SDG 10 (reduced inequalities) and SDG 4 (quality education) are climate goals too (https://sdgs.un.org/goals).
Being of black heritage in these spaces carries its own weight. Environmental movements have historically centred white voices. Similarly, international law has often treated African nations as recipients of sustainability agendas rather than architects of them. I intend to bring Zambia’s perspective, not as a cautionary tale, but as lived expertise. The Global South built no significant portion of the carbon debt it is being asked to repay.
In addition, I will utilise WWF Together and Global Goals apps to stay accountable to the SDGs and connect with Western’s Sustainability office and student environmental societies (https://www.worldwildlife.org/resources/activities/educational-apps/wwf-together/).
Travel, done correctly, does not contradict sustainability. It is how we build the understanding that no border contains a crisis. Success of this exchange will not be measured by distance travelled, but by impact created.
