My Jamaican Summer

Alright I got behind on my posting again (about two months) so I am going to be rushing to get some stories out while they are still fresh in my head.

One of the benefits of studying at St Andrews is that I have covered many more topics of study between William & Mary and St Andrews. One of the things that few students will cover at William & Mary is the topic of the environment, but it is one of the key concepts at StAs such as environmental collaboration between states within conferences or institutions like the UN. This has turned out to be really beneficial to me as I have accepted an internship with the United Nations Environmental Programme, the best part is that it allows me to live in Kingston, Jamaica for three months.

I work within the Specially Protected Areas and Wildlife (SPAW) Sub-Programme within the over-arching Caribbean Environmental Programme’s Regional Coordinating Unit. Other sub-sections within the same office are the Communications, Education, Training and Awareness Programme, and the Assessment (CETA) and Management of Environmental Pollution (AMEP) Sub-Programme. The office is located in downtown Kingston and something that I am oddly excited about is that the headquarters of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) is located on the floor right below us, something that we studied in a fair amount of detail at StAs.

So far my responsibilities within the office have been reviewing reports and updating the resources that SPAW distributes to raise awareness on its actions and projects. This includes updating the SPAW website, a daunting task, but at least I am learning a lot about SPAW as well as a little bit of programming and image editing.

Finally! Now that that post is out of the way I can get to writing about some of the more interesting topics like my experiences in Jamaica since arriving here at the end of May.