CLIMATE STUDIES IN ACTION

Protected Areas Fund describes her as having, “extensive project management, stakeholder consultation and government relations experience, as well as a proven track record in developing and managing partnerships with NGOs and local community members.”

Shenique Albury Smith ’03 has a frontrow seat to the impacts of climate change – and she’s not taking it sitting down.

According to an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report in 2022, human activities have caused a 1.1-degree Celsius increase in global temperatures above pre-industrial levels. That increase is expected to reach 1.5 degrees within the next two decades and facilitate the rise of sea levels and its associated impacts. The study lays out five projected pathways for the future. In the worst case (the high-carbon pathway), global temperatures would rise by 4 degrees Celsius before the end of the century.

We’ve all read these statistics. Maybe you’ve even internalized them and understand their general importance. But for Shenique Albury Smith, those storms hit a little closer to home. When you live in a nation of over 700 small islands and cays, with most of its land mass near sea level, rising sea levels and impacts on critical coral reefs are tangible and visible changes happening right now.

Shenique is the recently appointed deputy director of The Caribbean Program of The Nature Conservancy, following seven years as director of The Bahamas Program, and a respected voice for both conservation and adaptation efforts in her country. The Bahamas

But when she came to Saint Ben’s from The Bahamas, she just knew she liked science … and didn’t want to be a doctor. “Somewhere along the way, I decided I wanted to work in the environmental field,” she says. “I was in the ecology club at my high school, and I really loved learning about native trees and plants.” So she majored in biology, with a minor in environmental studies.

Addressing climate change in the Caribbean, “We are dealing with small island states who make a very small contribution to the global challenge of greenhouse gas emissions. They don’t really have a big factor to play in solving that problem,” she says. “But they’re on the front line of the fallout from climate in terms of feeling things like more frequent and more strong hurricanes, ocean warming, rising air temperatures, ocean acidification, sea level rise. … These are things we’re grappling with.”

Shenique is excited to see climate studies growing as a field of education, like the new climate studies minor that will be offered this coming fall at CSB and SJU. “This is one of the greatest challenges affecting us today globally. And it’s cross-cutting. I’m an environmental professional. But it’s an issue for social development. It’s an issue for health. It’s a substantive issue that requires all hands on deck and attacking it from all sides with various kinds of expertise and skill.”

The opportunity to add a climate studies minor to nearly any major is one more step toward bringing those skills and influences to the table.