Students join professor's work studying clean development
“In-depth research helps students gain a true appreciation for the challenges and rewards associated with intensely analyzing a topic and becoming immersed in a specific question,” said professor Mary Finley-Brook, the coordinator of the University’s geography program who also teaches in the environmental science and international studies departments.
Over the past year, Finley-Brook has involved several of students in her research on clean development and carbon markets. The collaborative research effort has benefitted professor and students alike.
This summer, Finley-Brook and three students worked on projects that were extensions of her previous research—an analysis of global environment management that addressed international development policy and sustainable forestry projects in developing regions.
The notion of clean development emerged from the Kyoto Protocol, which resulted from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The protocol was adopted in 1997 and entered into force in 2005. Its goal is to reduce greenhouse gases in an effort to prevent anthropogenic climate change. By April of 2008, 1,000 Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects in 49 countries had saved 135 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, and are expected to save a total of 1.2 billion tons of CO2 by the end of 2012, when Kyoto's first mandate period ends.
“The Clean Development Mechanism allows industrialized countries interested in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions to invest in offset projects in developing countries as an alternative to more expensive emission reductions in their own countries,” Finley-Brook said. “At the same time, this mechanism provides much-needed funding to developing countries to implement energy, agricultural or environmental projects with the overall goal of advancing sustainable development. Unfortunately there are limitations to the social benefits that have been achieved through carbon markets to this point. It’s necessary to critically assess where improvements need to be made in order to more evenly distribute the benefits across social groups and locations.”
Thus far, Finley-Brook’s students have worked with her to analyze clean development programs located in the Caribbean, Costa Rica, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Tanzania. The focus of her own research is Central America, but she says that comparing the various regions has been fruitful for everyone. Finley-Brook believes that the countries that have established carbon markets quickly can provide lessons for countries that are just now starting these projects.
“As a geographer I am interested in spatial patterns between areas, such as identifying where carbon markets are well-developed or underdeveloped and looking for reasons for similarities and differences between locations,” said Finley-Brook. “There are a wide range of climate change mitigation and adaptation programs being experimented with around the world, and comparing different national portfolios helps us to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the priorities being set in particular locations.”
This past summer, Finley-Brook and her three students spent eight weeks researching carbon markets in developing countries. Charlie Kline, ’09, Carolyn Doherty, ’11, and Agatha Mushi, ’09, had all been students of Finley-Brook’s during the previous academic year and jumped at the chance to launch their own projects in conjunction with Finley-Brook’s work.
As part of the research process Kline, Doherty and Mushi applied for School of Arts & Sciences travel grants to conduct first hand research in Washington D.C. The funding supported them as they visited development agencies and environmental think tanks and consulted documents in the Library of Congress.
“What was great about this summer research experience for my students was that they were able to move past secondary sources of information and instead spoke directly with development experts or project participants,” said Finley-Brook. “They learned to critically assess international environmental programs on social and economic terms.”
Doherty, an environmental studies and geography double major, worked on a project called “The Analysis of Climate Change Mitigation Measures in the Caribbean Region.” Her interest in climate change and its effect on the socio-economic status of developing countries was peaked in an introductory environmental studies class led by Finley-Brook.
“My research this summer assessed the steps that international institutions and legislation, such as the World Bank and the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol, have taken in the Caribbean,” said Doherty. “My preliminary research showed that a surprisingly small number of projects are located in the Caribbean, despite literature that is focused on the region with respect to climate change.”
Kline, an environmental studies major, worked on a project, “The UNFCCC’s Article 6 in Costa Rica and Nicaragua.” The UNFCCC’s Article 6 requires that countries participating in the convention promote education and awareness about climate change. Kline’s goal was to find out if there was any concrete system or plan for enactment of Article 6.
“There are major constraints to many of the programs in place, such as funding and differing priorities in climate change mitigation and adaptation,” Kline said. In his research, Kline looked at efforts to include this article in development projects via the CDM and national projects.
“Dr. Finley-Brook brings much of her real-world research experience to the table in her classes and it made me interested in doing similar things,” said Kline, who has now spent two summers doing research with Finley-Brook.
“I was abroad in Costa Rica for a semester, and while I was there I did research with Dr. Juan Aguirre on climate change perceptions. Without a doubt, it helped formulate my research topic for this summer,” he said. With graduation in his sights, Kline is looking to put in a year of work at an NGO and then go abroad to grad school.
The three students will be presenting their results at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Las Vegas in March of 2009 and are working with Finley-Brook on a combined publication that incorporates the results of their summer research.
“Doing independent research as an undergraduate provides excellent training for graduate school and for internships and jobs because students are designing projects and implementing their own creative ideas,” said Finley-Brook. “They follow a line of reasoning that they develop and feel intense pride when they begin to pull together their results and a huge sense of accomplishment when they finish the final draft of their report. In the end they make recommendations that are valuable to other academic researchers and to development advocates and practitioners.”