Life Onboard LAST UPDATE  July 8, 2009
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June 16, 2009 Baltic Univeristy International Students – Working Towards a Sustainable Future Now
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Baltic University Program International Students enjoying a tour of the captain’s bridge onboard Peace Boat. The Baltic University summer programs often provide the opportunity for students to experience ship-life, including naviagation and sailing techniques. The experience onboard Peace Boat gave the students yet another look at navigation through international waters on a larger scale.
Joining Peace Boat from Stockholm until Reykjavik are a group of 13 university students and lecturers from the Baltic University Program (BUP) as part of Peace Boat’s International Students initiative, which allows groups of students from different nationalities to meet onboard to discuss and think about ways of acting upon matters of social and global importance. Students from Sweden, Poland, Russia, Latvia and Ukraine joined the 66th Global Voyage to discuss issues related to sustainable development.

The students' time onboard Peace Boat is part of a larger series of events coordinated by the BUP in association with the Uppsala University based Centre for Environment and Development Studies (CEMUS) under the moniker of Bright Climate Future (BCF). As a means of granting students the capacity to change and the self belief to take responsibility for their own education, BCF is a platform designed to work within policy conditions and framework, that all students involved with BUP have the opportunity to experience. The main goal of the programme however, is to create a broader student base around the concept of sustainability, particularly in regions of historical cultural differences, such as the former eastern bloc nations of Belarus and Latvia.
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International Students at their final presentation for participants onboard, using workshop methods to find ways to implement sustainable change into daily life and the community.
Ultimately, the Baltic University International Students programme exists because the students are genuinely concerned about environmental issues and the increasing effects of global climate change. Bright Climate Future co-ordinators painted a grim reality of the current situation facing the planet and its population, stating ‘human civilisation is at the crossroads – sustainability or collapse.’ The group wants to stress the positive social impact that sustainable development can have, and feels that the current issues and problems currently facing the world have been known for approximately the last 50 years, yet still to this day little action has been taken. They believe the current global trends are tending towards planetary collapse, and want a change in action now.

The group of students shared with Peace Boat participants that climate change is a generational issue that will affect almost the entire lives of the current generation. Therefore it will have to be this generation that realises the transformation to a sustainable society. Despite the graveness of the situation the group acknowledges the world is facing, they remain optimistic about the possibilities and hope to have fun realising their objectives of building a sustainable world. According to BCF coordinator Jakob Grandin, as soon as we lose optimism in face of these huge global challenges, ‘we have [already] lost. So, we need to stay optimistic and keep focused on our goals.’
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Russian international student Olga Galanina learning about Japanese culture from Peace Boat participants.
Onboard Peace Boat, the students were extremely busy carrying out their own study sessions, engaging in dialogue to realise how different factors of sustainability affect their respective countries differently and ways to enact a co-ordinated approach towards a sustainable future.

They have also been busy participating in ship life, giving Peace Boat participants an introduction to their respective home countries, languages and cultures, before participants reciprocated the gesture by educating them in the ways of traditional Japanese culture such as calligraphy, karate, tea ceremony and the wearing of kimonos. The students have also been an active component of Peace Boat’s onboard Eco-team, helping to discuss ways of implementing various eco-friendly ideas and solutions around the ship as well as playing a large role in preparations for the onboard Earth Day festival. The students feel they have learnt a great deal about Japanese society and culture from their time onboard, and feel they have learnt from their time with Peace Boat how they can change their lives to effect change on a local level from within.
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Students campaigning locals in Bergen, Norway, about the impending COP15 conference to be held in Denmark later on this year.
In the ports of Copenhagen, Bergen, and Reykjavik, the International Students campaigned for local citizens to lobby their governments to favour the adoption of an emergency pathway at the ensuing COP 15 conference on climate change, to be held in Copenhagen this December. The conference will discuss the current state of CO2 emissions and climate change trends around the world and should culminate with a protocol to supersede the Kyoto Protocol, which is due to expire in 2012. The students are recommending citizens pressure their governments to adopt an emergency pathway immediately in order to avoid passing the point of no return into ecological chaos.

As a base for creating solutions to the problems currently facing the planet and avoiding this predicted ecological chaos, BCF proposes a revolutionary new way of learning. As the issues at hand will be affecting everybody, BCF proposes an interdisciplinary approach to sustainable education is required in order to understand the issues at hand in a more holistic sense, with the students at the centre of the education. They believe that in order to resolve the huge inequalities in the world, an ethical approach must be adopted - a natural approach where we let our human values shape our aspirations and desires.
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The official logo of the BUP is a satellite spreading light over the Baltic region. This stems from the initial goal and principle of the BUP, to build up the capacity of the universities in the region with the aim of promoting democracy and sustainable development, via courses and satellite lectures.
The Baltic University Programme (BUP) network incorporates around 200 universities and over 10,000 students across the Baltic Sea region and aims to promote peace and sustainable development. The Baltic Sea has united the various Baltic nations as regional neighbours through their future wellbeing as an ecologically related community. The present state of the Sea is quite poor due to years of toxic waste leaking into it. Every summer, blue-green algae forms over the Baltic Sea, starving the sea of sunlight essential for marine life and slowly depleting the biodiversity of the region. The initial goal of the BUP was regional sustainable development, however it was soon realised that any actual progression in regional sustainable development must have a global focus owing to the global implications of a shared ecosystem.

The Baltic University Program is active in maintaining and initiating educational programmes in sustainable development whilst maintaining an interdisciplinary approach to learning through the variety of programmes and courses it offers students across the network, such as Bright Climate Future. BUP endeavours to create a rich learning environment, and in doing so remain active in the production of their own educational material and continually conduct teacher-training programs.