Environmental Protection

As I mentioned before, my cousin’s work deals with the environment and carbon emissions. Her company deals with the Clean Development Mechanism under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. The idea is that since developed countries, which have already caused their environmental impact through their earlier industrialization, should help developing countries as they struggle to maintain economic growth using sustainable methods.

Therefore, developed countries can play a role by funding alternative energy sources in developing countries. This aid counts as if the developed country itself cut down on its own carbon emissions. For example, a company in a developed country could fund the construction of a hydroelectric power station in China and therefore lower its own carbon emissions count. So far the U.S. has not signed onto this program so it is mostly European countries that participate along with the developing countries.

There are about 2000 such projects around the world. My cousin’s company works with about 29 of these projects. At work, my cousin deals directly with all the logistics, reports, and paperwork. She travels a lot to different sites in China. According to her, one such exchange takes at least one year because of all the bureaucratic work. It is also really stressful because her company only has about 10 employees. Still, she finds the job really meaningful.

Her fiancé is also in the field of environmental protection, though through a different aspect. He travels around the country to different factories to help them install and construct technology that removes some of the harmful chemicals in the air pollution such as sulfur dioxide

I’m not too familiar with the UNFCC or my cousin’s work so if you are interested you should definitely do some reading online, at http://unfccc.int/2860.php/, the homepage of the UNFCC, http://cdm.unfccc.int/about/index.html, for general information about the Clean Development Mechanism, or at my cousin’s company’s website, http://en.hncdm.com/.