I try go back to that thing I said about where it takes a certain person who understand both sides - who can see how preserving this animal or system can benefit the community more than killing them off. In an ideal world, you’d get paid for protecting your resources and it’d outweigh the loss incurred by the change in practices. If somebody else wants you to preserve this Jaguar that's eating your cattle, it has to be worth it.

Q: Describe your most recent or favorite project and how it embodies your core values.

This is my most recent– I did a saltwater intrusion study in Guyana with the Guyana Marine Conservation Society. Its goal was to engage indigenous community members with the science and to increase capacity to do this work in the country.

It was mainly focused on how changing sea levels and salinity were affecting these community members’ ability to farm and get drinking water. My degree program is really focused on Virginia, and a lot of the local agricultural research feels like it doesn't have any immediate impact on communities. I’m sure it’s environmentally important, but we have such an infrastructure here that those problems don't seem like they're directly impacting people. Doing that project was a good experience, since I saw a hydrological problem affecting the people that I care about and understand.

Q: Is that specifically what you imagined yourself doing in the future, going back and doing research in Guyana?

Yeah, but I think it's more about capacity building and making the incentives for people to want to stay in Guyana and protect their land and resources, not to outsource it to other countries. There's a way to improve the carbon crediting market, and it has to be done in the right way so that the whole cost of protecting these systems is accounted for. We have to include more people in this process which would have the effect of making people better understand the value of what we have, especially if they are receiving some of the benefits of conserving it.

This is a similar issue that is rising in Guyana with the oil industry too, there’s just such a disconnect between resource extraction/valuation and making sure there's a direct pipeline of benefits back to the people. And that’s the main principle of capacity building, to make sure that its Guyanese people managing the conservation/use of their resources. But there's many challenges with this.

Q: Is this in reference to the culture, the technology, or something else?

There's this somewhat regressive belief that these barrel flows will get us back on track, but this is a technology that is finite and one you can already see the end of. So, there’s a kind of antiquated mindset when it comes to resource extraction, and it's always been a problem, from bauxite to gold to now oil.

There are ways you could shift the focus to a more sustainable resource, and it doesn't always have to be an extractable one. Natural resource management is a way to provide a population with an income, if you do it the right way. So many of these more developed countries are willing to pay huge amounts of money to protect these resources, but they're not really focusing on making it worth people's time to keep them intact.