RRU grad inspires environmental stewardship

Learn more about RRU’s Master of Science in Environment and Management program. 

Wasan Jema, MSEM alumni calls her time at Royal Roads transformative.  “It helps us tackle the complex problems we are facing every day.” 

Many people worry about environmental disasters. Wasan Jema has witnessed them – and these experiences have fuelled her new career in Canada and her passion for environmental leadership.  

In her home country of Iraq, she saw the destruction of a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A combination of drought and political conflict decimated the pristine marshland – once a paradise of floating islands. 

“The Indigenous people had to flee,” says Jema. “It made me think of the way disasters are connected to people.” 

A similar story played out in Libya, where she taught in the school of medicine. Again, she watched the environmental impacts as Muammar Gaddafi diverted a river. 

“These things encouraged me to study more,” says Jema. “I didn’t have the tools or knowledge to justify why we cannot do this to our environment.” 

Wasan enrolled in Royal Roads University Master of Science in Environment and Management program as a complement for her master’s degree in microbiology. She graduated in 2015, with the Governor General’s Gold Medal (awarded to Master's or doctoral students who have achieved the highest academic standing in their degree programs). Her thesis on the Iraqi marshlands also garnered the Arab Women of Excellence Award.  

Next, she landed a job in waste management, first with the City of Airdrie and later with the Town of Okotoks, Alberta. In 2022, she was promoted to waste-program specialist. 

In this role, she developed a Recycling 101 Workshop for the public. 

During the workshop, she presented photographs from the town’s waste audit, and then lead an interactive quiz. She passed around sugar packets and plastic bread-bag tags, and asked people if they belong in the garbage, recycling or compost bin. 

“We see these things everyday and many people just don’t know where they belong,” says Jema. 

The workshop was a hit. 

“They loved it so much,” she says.  “The key to education is passion.”

While cities across Canada experience contamination in the garbage, Jema’s current focus is on managing organics. Education is important, because organic waste can get buried in the landfill and make methane gas, explains Jema.

She later developed a similar presentation for school-aged kids, introducing them to the notions of systems thinking and circularity. Jema sees her work as embracing resilience. Resilience refers to suffering, but it’s also full of hope, she says.

“Resilience is what will help us to bounce back and be more sustainable,” she says. “But it’s also about finding the threshold. I don’t want to push anyone out of their resiliency, beyond where they can work comfortably.” - Wasan Jema

Jema is now piloting a number of projects, including an organics-dehydration project using restaurant food waste. The dehydrated food is then used as a source of energy. 

“We have saved thousands of kilograms of greenhouse gases,” she says. 

Soon, she will launch another project, teaching circularity through art. Each piece will have a description of its entire life cycle. For instance, an art piece made of textiles might include a description of the dyes and labour used in its production and ways it can be recycled. 

“I love having the flexibility and space to implement the ideas and values I learned at Royal Roads,” she says.  It was these shared values of environment, innovation and diversity that drew her to work for the Town of Okotoks. 

Jema calls her time at RRU transformative. 

Instead of holding on to old ways of thinking, she says she learned the methodologies to be more adaptive and accepting of change.  

“It helps us tackle the complex problems we are facing every day.”