some videos for your enjoyment

I was reviewing some of the videos I made throughout my trip that I did not post. Here we go :).

Final Reflection 1 : My internship

Aw so the last fourth months. Life has moved extremely quickly and I have not taken the time out of my life to continue writing this blog. Unfortunately, life moves too fast to capture every moment and feeling.
 I should probally start with the last two months before I really start analyzing what these last four months mean for the rest of my life.

There's so much to say and so much that has happened. I don't know where to begin. But let's start with my internship.

IUCN:

So my internship was a really great experience. I can only look back on it with fond memories. I truly learned a lot and my environmental perspective was sincerely altered as a result of my internship. Here's a little paper I wrote about the main dilenmas for China regarding the environment: I wrote my Capstone project on why China invested in billions of dollars in Reforestation projects within the last decade. This thirteen page paper detailed the environmental problems that led to reforestation projects, inefficiencies in the Chinese government's policies, and why

Economic Growth v. Environmental Protection

Throughout my internship, my organization was involved in different conferences, projects, and initiatives that served to raise civil society's environmental awareness and collaborate with various organizations to rehabilitate and protect various important and  high density biodiversity ecosystems and local communities. Severe environmental damage has been done to the China's ecosystems through the last thirty years of economic development. Some of this damage is irreversible and it will have long term effects on the Chinese people, economy, and society. Throughout China, desertification, floods, air and water pollution, sandstorms, and land degradation and destruction are problems that the Chinese people deal with on daily basis in their respective provinces. Pollution has caused hundreds of thousands of premature deaths throughout China. China's economic prosperity has been powered by significant coal reserves and the type of coal that China uses is extremely dirty. Burning Coal releases carbon into the atmosphere as well as many hazardous chemicals. Coal mining sites in China substantially damage the local ecosystems and local communities suffer from various chronic health problems. Coal miners working conditions are horrific.
I complained about the inactivity of the coal industry to a NGO participant at the Clean Coal Series.He replied that without burning coal millions of people would not have access to power. He asked me how else they would acquire energy and I did not have a viable answer.China's economic development and prosperity has also led to millions of people rising out of absolute poverty and the development of a middle class in China. The average Chinese citizen is so much more well off than they were 50 years, 25 years, or 10 years ago. The same economic prosperity has led to a completely degraded environment and many (un)natural disasters have occurred as a result of Chinese environmental negligence. The environmental degradation has also resulted from foreign companies operating in China with little to no environmental regulations. China has implemented policies throughout the last decade that strive to reverse the damage such as reforestation projects and traffic controls in order to control air pollution. These policies fall short on some accounts for various reasons ranging from corruption to a misunderstanding of the root of the problem. Too often is money thrown at a problem instead of dealing with the real issue at hand.
One of the most significant lessons that I learned through my internship is that all of the elements of an ecosystem are connected and equally important. One of my colleagues addressed this issue as one of the main problems in the Chinese government's environmental policies. She stated that all these elements of the environment (water, forests, etc.) are all connected and that a multi-dimensional approach is needed to really tackle the problem. She discussed how the Chinese government wants to solve a problem and will invest a lot of money in one element. They want to combat desertification so they plant trees when really the desertification issues stems from a variety of different environmental problems not just deforestation.
I found a heightened sense of environmental issues in Beijing compared to Kennesaw, GA. These environmental problems have a daily impact of the lives of Beijingren and it is something that they cannot get away from. Climate Change and increasing energy demand is a global problem that most Americans are unconcerned with. Social awareness and apathy about environmental issues is relatively low in the United States because these issues do not have a direct impact on the average American. The environment is undervalued in American and Chinese society and short-term economic benefits often outweigh the long-term consequences of environmental unfriendly practices. These practices are not sustainable and will lead to huge economic and costs.
These issues are truly complex and have a tremendous impact on Chinese civil society. Environmental preservation are vital to a sustainable economy, but food security, political stability, and economic development cannot be disregarded in Chinese communist party's policies. It is a balancing act that the Chinese government will need to work efficiently to properly tackles these pressing issues.

This is my internship journal from Asia Pacific Forestry...also if you want to read more articles google my name: Kristen Carusos IUCN. I had six articles published regarding asia pacific forestry week. Check em out if you are interested.

 

Asia Pacific Forestry Week

Asia Pacific Forestry Week was fantastic. I wrote a page for each day and was extremely busy the entire week. It was really great experience in which I learned a lot before, during ,and after the conference. Before the conference, I listened to several different podcasts about forestry to give myself a basis for the conference because I knew little to nothing about forestry. It still did not entirely prepare me for what was in store. The first day was my favorite session because I learned a lot about forestry organizations throughout Asia. The session was called Community Forestry Enterprises for Livlihoods: The Way Forward. I was really impressed by the people first method of implemented reforestation and sustainable forest management. INBAR really blew me away. Throughout the whole conference, there were good and bad speakers. There are so many different ways in which organizations can help alleviate poverty in these forestry communities while also implementing policies that benefit the environment.

On the Second day of the conference, I attended New Challenges , New Opportunities for Forestry Business's Green Development Road. It was mostly in Chinese but they had a translator. They discussed respsonsible business practices and how due dilligence was being implemented in the EU to track where timber was being harvested. One man from Thailand gave this hilarious presentation about the sustainable forest furniture. His use of photos might not have been the definition of proffessional, but it definitely kept our attention. I also went to the Bali plus 20 conference. There were different views about how to control illegal logging. Some were extraordaniraly politically correct while other views were extremely controversial and critical. Generally speaking, it was Western viewpoints vs. Asian perspectives. Second day blog:

Some presentations were really compelling presentations and sometimes I could not understand what someone was saying. During one of the session's coffee breaks, I met one Martin and Jesse. Jesse works at the Clinton Climate Change Iniative and he is from San Fransciso. Jesse worked in Jakarta and Martin was from the Czech Republic. We all went to Asia Pacific Forestry Week Happy Hour where I networked and met other foresters. After happy hour, I took Jesse, Martin, and Rebecca (from Spain works in Cambodia) out to dinner at the jiaozi restaurant. We had a great time and they shared a lot about their careers and lives It was a really nice break spending time with proffessionals instead of college students.

Friday was our presentation. It went very smoothly. I finally got up the nerve to ask a question about how foresty managements projects take into account carbon management and biodiversity. I learned a lot about how IUCN works throughout Asia. Not enough attention is brought to this project. It's really sad because it helps to manage the water supply and tackle some fundamental environmental problems that have a huge impact on the millions of people who live in/around Beijing. I went to houhai with at least ten of the Forestry partipants and none of them spoke Chinese. I ordered everything for them and guided us around Beijing. I acted as some kind of tour guide and I think my ability to speak Chinese ( at whatever level that I may or may not be at) came off really impressive to them. Even though, I was an intern- I was still shown respect. It was a really good feeling.

I also learned a lot about networking. I met a man named Dhanush at the conference who had recently taken some classes at BLCU. He took me under his wing and guided me through the proccess of what to do after I got business cards and introduced me to LinkedIN. A week later, he introduced me to the chief economist at the World Bank in China at a High level Dialogue regarding Ecosystem management and Green economy. I walked away from Asia Pacific Forestry Week with 15-20 business cards. 5-10 of which I sent email corresponses and added them on LinkedIN. It was a wake up call for how important networking was and how I need to be constantly networking and meeting people. I am graduating soon and I really need focus on my future and getting my foot in the door.