After two weeks of studying abroad in the Netherlands, I have gained a different outlook on topics like sustainability, city design, and work-life balance. Beyond these observations, I have realized the importance of global collaboration and learning from other countries by spending time abroad. The United States is a global powerhouse, but there are still many areas where it is outperformed by countries like the Netherlands. We can learn so much by spending time in another country and trying to replicate their successes. It is one thing to read a New York Times article about sustainable policies in the Netherlands but is entirely different to look at how they are implemented on the ground and experience their effects.

One of our site visits was to Delta Works in Rotterdam, which is a massive flood barrier that keeps the surrounding area safe during storms and high tide. This was a huge undertaking by the Dutch after traumatic flooding in the 1950s, and they put a lot of time and resources into the project. Thus, after Hurricane Katrina hit the US, Louisiana turned to the Dutch and asked for assistance creating a storm barrier of their own. Now New Orleans is home to a flood barrier that is almost a carbon copy of the one in Rotterdam. Engineers and governments all over the world continue to visit this Delta Works project in hopes of gaining insights about water management in their countries.

This showed me how critical global collaboration is. After an extreme natural disaster, New Orleans didn’t have to assemble a team of engineers to draw up plans from scratch. Instead, they learned from a project across the world that was already successful and modeled their work after it. Not only does this save on a lot of resources and avoids potential mistakes, but it also strengthens alliances and improves global cooperation.