Anjali Taneja, 2016, Geosciences

Anjali Taneja ’16

The International Climate Team within the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) is working on informing the implementation of policies and markets for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation (REDD+). The economics behind deforestation are structured such that in terms of carbon content, living trees (carbon sinks) are worth more than dead ones. The REDD+ initiative lays the foundation for structuring policies to reduce deforestation on a country-specific basis. The Open Source Impacts of REDD+ Incentives (OSIRIS) model, which was co-developed at EDF, creates a strong market for reducing deforestation and informs the integration of deforestation policies with decisions by major commodity-sourcing companies in Brazil and other countries. Over the course of my internship, I helped to provide research assistance in analyzing and compiling deforestation data using spatial analysis methods (ArcGIS, R computing language). I also learned about the implementation of carbon markets and the resultant effects on supply chains; I contributed a draft of a writeup on the results of a similar econometric simulation for deforestation in Mexico. I really enjoyed working on the International Climate Team and this internship confirmed my interest in the field of environmental law with a particular focus on climate change and deforestation issues.