IRES Track 1: Nature-Based Solutions Research in Urban Latin America: International Research Experience for Students (NBS-RULA-IRES)

Cities all over the world are looking for innovative ways of envisioning and implementing nature-based solutions to complex urban development challenges in the context of global climate change. Latin American cities offer unique opportunities for North American students to build critical skills for working across diverse social and political cultures while learning from scientists and professionals about ways of advancing more resilient and sustainable cities.

In collaboration with the NATURA (NATure-based solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene) project, this International Research Experience for Students (IRES) project supports the training and development of 15 students in cross-cultural and international research approaches that advance a scientific and cultural understanding of the benefits of nature-based solutions in urban areas. For three years, this program will bring together a cohort of five U.S. undergraduate and graduate students annually to spend ten weeks learning from host city professionals and scientists about creative solutions that respond to local needs in Guayaquil (Ecuador, 2022), Santiago (Chile, 2023), and Hermosillo (México, 2024).

Furthermore, students will participate in an interdisciplinary, bilingual, online spring-semester course co-taught with faculty from their host country, to develop their research proposals and become familiar with the local context prior to departure. Training a new generation of students capable of tackling climate change and urbanization requires crucial social competencies not traditionally taught in universities, such as collaboration skills and the ability to communicate and navigate across different disciplines and sectors in society.

Students in this IRES project are developing these skills through direct field experience with a collaborative research team to understand and intervene in the environmental and social challenges of urbanization and climate change across diverse cultural contexts in Latin American cities.

In Latin America, where many cities face climatic and other environmental threats compounded by rapid urbanization and growth, the deployment of Nature-Based Solutions (NBS) offers an alternative development pathway with the potential to satisfy social, ecological, and infrastructural needs. Despite their promise, NBS have not been broadly incorporated into academic research nor into regional planning agendas.

We propose an International Research Experience for Students (IRES) program that will be linked to the NATURA (NATure-based solutions for Urban Resilience in the Anthropocene) project, focusing on working with local practitioners and scientists in Latin American cities to study, envision, and develop innovative NBS to urban challenges. The main objective of the proposed program is to help students learn to work across diverse social and political cultures so that they may be effective change agents in the Anthropocene.

This IRES program will bring a cohort of five undergraduate and graduate students each year for ten weeks to Guayaquil (Ecuador, 2022), Santiago (Chile, 2023), and Hermosillo (México, 2024), with Bogotá (Colombia) and San José (Costa Rica) as alternates. As part of their training, US graduate students will participate in an interdisciplinary, bilingual, online spring-semester course co-taught with faculty from their host country, which will help them to develop their research proposals and become familiar with the local context prior to departure.

Mentors at the host institutions, Escuela Superior Politécnica del Litoral in Guayaquil (ESPOL), Universidad Mayor in Santiago (UM), Instituto Tecnológico de Sonora in Hermosillo (ITSON), Universidad de LaSalle in Bogotá (ULS), and Universidad de Costa Rica in San José (UCR) are, or will become, collaborators of NATURA and are already leading research on NBS in these cities. In this proposal, we emphasize student creativity and fit with the local context; hence, each year potential research topics will change in response to specific needs.

Graduate students will write research proposals as part of their applications and further refine them in the course; undergraduate students will develop small projects within the context of graduate student or host research during their stay. As part of the IRES program, all students will have experience with transdisciplinary, collaborative research on environmental and social challenges in Latin American cities.

Ancillary benefits to U.S. students will include cultural understanding and language learning, and projects that potentially integrate with their dissertation or honors research and contribute to the overall knowledge-to-action efforts in the host city, all of which will contribute to the development of a globally engaged U.S. workforce in climate sciences research and practice.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.