Abstract describing the UNEP Internship, Winter 2003
Zachariah Schreiber

An internship at the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific (RRC.AP) offers a multi-faceted view of what it means to work at the international governmental level in the context of a non-Western culture. The RRC.AP focuses on capacity building, early warning for potential environmental problems and environmental assessment for the Asia Pacific Region. The Centre's mandate comes directly from the UNEP Asia Pacific Regional Office in Bangkok and UNEP Headquarters in Nairobi, whose mandate in turn comes from the more than 150 member Nations of the United Nations General Assembly. The projects that were conducted during the internship are readily traced back to very visible conferences and international meetings. During the winter of 2003, the projects were motivated by the outcomes of the World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, by the Millenium Development Goals established in 2000 and by the recommendations of the Global Environment Ministerial Forum. The projects involved writing a proposal dealing with cooperative environmental strategies for the South-Asian Sub-region, assisting in finalizing the RRC.AP's guidance documents for environmental assessment and reporting and development of a prototype database of sustainable development indicators for North-East Asia. These projects were varied in the skills and background one needed to conduct them, and therefore offered a representative view of what type of work is conducted at the regional level and a unique opportunity to develop new skills and to learn about the structures of international government.

The office where the work was conducted in Winter 2003, RRC.AP, is located in Pathumthani, Thailand and employs people from all over the Asia-Pacific region. The opportunity to come into contact with such a variety of cultures and people was fulfulling and challenging on both a professional as well as a personal level. The working and social cultures are predominantly influenced by the Asian employees and confront the Westerner with a very different world than experienced at home. Understanding the challenges and benefits of such work is invaluable to young students considering a career on the international level.


Contact
May Ann M. Bernardo [May.Bernardo@rrcap.unep.org] is the head of the Capacity Building and Servicing component of the RRC.AP, and can be contacted for information pertaining to an internship (UNEP RRC.AP, Outreach Building, AIT P.O. Box 4, Klongluang, Pathumthani 12120, Thailand
Email: info@rrcap.unep.org Phone: (66-2) 5162124, 5160110 Fax:(66-2) 516 21 25, 524 62 33). The internship application form can be found at http://www.rrcap.unep.org/services/intern.cfm. Zach Schreiber (zach.schreiber@eawag.ch) conducted this internship in Winter 2003, and can provide information about the experience. He conducted the internship during his PhD Studies at the ETH Zürich. The Internship, sponsored in part by the programme Echanges Universitaires, was high quality working and learning experience.