Eva Krueger ’24
The following conversation is a product of efforts by GEO’s Green Advisors. The post was adapted from an interview with Emmy Li ’25 and was edited by Jiho Shin ’26.1
Eva is a senior double majoring in Engineering and Environmental Studies. She studied abroad in South Africa in Spring 2023 through a program offered by the Macalester-Pomona-Swarthmore Consortium at the University of Cape Town (UCT) called South Africa: Globalization, the Environment and Society.
What does sustainability mean to you?
Sustainability encompasses a lot of different spheres. Initially, I was very concerned with environmental sustainability. I’ve come to see that sustainability relates to much more, including the economy, cultural and social values, and gains and losses of a society. For example, sustainability intersects with logistics and practicality. What financial means does the group of people have to address [these challenges]? Do the suggested solutions help meet the needs of the community that they are meant to serve?
Tell us about your coursework or extracurricular activities related to sustainability.
My directed study project in South Africa was very much centered around sustainability. My project was on medicinal plants and the medicinal healing community in Cape Town. I interviewed a healer to learn which specific plants are essential for the community. Then, based on the interview, I made a map of locations where those species could be planted in an effort to demonstrate their potential to be used in conservation and restoration projects in Cape Town.
This project was an expansion of the notion of conservation planning. Planning often only entails the identification and planting of endangered species. However, I focused on the community and all of its valued plants, which included but encompassed more species than those at risk of disappearing.
What positive experiences did you have with sustainability during your time abroad?
Because of their experiences of droughts, people are very conscious of their use of water. And since the city is a biodiversity hotspot, there is a lot more discussion about preserving nature than in other places in the world.
What challenges related to sustainability did you encounter during your time abroad?
The biggest challenge that I observed is with electric power. Schools, malls, and some other public places have generators because there isn’t enough power on the grid.
The city has a power distribution system that involves load-shedding, which is the deliberate shutdown of electricity in different parts of the city for the purpose of avoiding excessive load on generators by restricting consumption until the demand is safely low. Neighborhoods wouldn’t get electricity for multiple hours at a time. There are also different stages to load-shedding. The higher the stage, the more frequently power shutdowns are experienced within the area.
During my time, unprecedented stages of load-shedding were reached within the area in which I was staying. Other students at the school told me that electricity used to run out for just a couple of hours every two weeks. When I was there, there were days when we didn’t have electricity for twelve hours straight. The situation had worsened.
The city has undergone rapid development and urbanization. Its power grid has not adequately developed alongside the growth of its population. In order to source renewable energy in houses, such as by getting solar panels, residents need to go through a drawn-out procedure for acquiring permits. Renewable energy is also expensive and only affordable to rich people with both the means and the motivation.
How has your time abroad deepened your knowledge of issues related to sustainability?
Striving toward a sustainable society by developing a stable grid based on renewable energy requires the extraction of resources. Cape Town is at a medium stage where it has been fairly developed but does not yet have the infrastructure to support its vision and initiatives for sustainability.
I became grateful for the infrastructure we have in the United States. Because we have infrastructural privilege, we tend to believe that it is easy and simple to stop extracting resources. In doing so, we overlook the fact that in places like Cape Town, disengagement from extraction results in destabilization or deprivation of energy for lengths of time for vulnerable populations. Through my time abroad, I’ve realized how much we take for granted the ability to have stable sustainable energy.
- The views and/or opinions represented in the GEO blog belong solely to the student(s) and do not represent Swarthmore College; students are not liable for any errors or omissions in the personal experiences they share. ↩︎