DRAFT
Sustainability Internship Opportunity in Panamá Objective: To provide USF Patel Center for Global Solutions Graduate Students with a unique international experiential learning opportunity while helping Panama and the region reach a significant number of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300 Background: The Ministry of the Environment (Panama´s EPA), has launched a public-private n initiative called the “Alianza por el Millón” or an “Alliance for a Million”. The goal of this initiative is to have the public, private sector and civil society partner to reforest 1 Million hectares of land in 20 years. The deforestation especially in protected areas, in mangroves and in land close to the river basins has been of about 20,000 hectares /annually with a total of about 2 million hectares substantially degraded, while the reforested area has been of only 70 thousand hectares, therefore only about 14% of what has been destroyed has been reforested. This deforestation has caused many recent flooding in urban and rural areas and has been the cause of displacements and of public health issues of already vulnerable communities. Initiative Partners: The main NGO working on this initiative is ANCON. ANCON is a 30 year old NGO which main mission is to work on sustainable development projects to create awareness (via education) about the importance of preserving our water, land and biodiversity. http://www.ancon.org/ The main corporate partner is PFS. PFS is a company based out of Holland with a subsidiary in Panama with many years of experience in reforestation for the Panama Canal, food security, sustainable agriculture, climate change mitigation, green house studies, design of corporate responsibility projects, rescue of biodiversity and wildlife, project evaluations and feasibility studies all contributing to the sustainable development in Panama and the Pacific and Caribbean Region. http://www.pfs.com.pa/en.html Internship Opportunity The proposed internship opportunity is for USF (English speaking students) to work towards some of the main sustainability development goals while helping both ANCON and PFS in their efforts to make the “Alliance for a Million” possible. Students will be matched according to their interest to get involve in aspects of the projects that could relate to some of the impactful objectives of the initiative described below: Objectives of the “Alliance for a Milllion” (matched with United Nations Sustainable Development Goals):
Recover some of the degraded land areas in the country especially in protected areas and on critical river basins. (UNSD Goals 2, 3, 6, 8,11, 13, 14, 15)
DRAFT
Strengthen the rural economy of the country by developing sustainable activities (i.e linked to sustainable tourism and others) (UNSD Goals 8, 5, 4,12) Work with policy makers to better the hydrologic regulations to better confront and mitigate the effects of climate change. (UNSD Goals 1,2,3,4,6,12,13, 14, 16, 17) Work in creating solutions to improve the water quality of rivers and prevent sedimentation. (UNSD Goals 1,2,3,4,6,8,11,12,13,14,15,16)