BEIJING—People world wide usually come to Greece with a hope to experience romantic fairy-tales and amazing natural beauty. To many people, thousand years of history deposited on pillars in the Acropolis, sunset in Oia, and expensive meals on Santorini’s cliffs with a fantastic view of Aegean Sea are indispensable components in their journey. However, after one month’s travelling around Greece, I would say, those are not the true essence of travelling. Sigri, a small fishing village lying on the eastern part of Lesvos Island, has jumped into my heart becoming the first choice of getting the true experience of Greece.

After having graduated from MESPOM in June 2007 I started my PhD studies at the Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy at Central European University in Budapest. Currently I am in the very beginning of my second year in PhD program, successfully passed my comprehensive exams and have just defended my thesis prospectus.

While preparing MESPOM thesis, I decided to take advantage of our global network and focus on a topic that was not just environmental but also related to the social and economic dimensions of sustainability. Through a partnership between MESPOM, Stockholm Environment Institute, The International Institute for Industrial Environmental Economics and the Course on Energy for Sustainable Development, I was able to travel to Vietnam and study biogas enterpreneurship.

I have just received an offer with the CDM Registration & Issuance Unit under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The Unit is based in the UNFCCC's secretariat, Bonn, Germany, and is responsible for the registration of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects and for the issuance of certified emission reduction (CERs) credits, under the CDM Executive Board that oversees the whole CDM system. I will be working on the issuance side as much of my past year's experience with my current company, EcoSecurities, a market leader in the CDM field, relates to CDM project monitoring & verification.

I was recently invited to present to the membership of Bioenergy Australia on the topic of policy support and bioenergy systems. I talked primarily about experiences from Europe and Sweden, and what lessons Australia could learn, especially with the political committment to implement an emissions trading scheme in Australia.

I arrived in Australia (commonly called Oz) last week, but have only just started to recover from the jet-lag. Spending 24 hours on a plane will do that to you ...

But it's great to be here at Melbourne University again on a second ENVERA research exchange. The first exchange took place late last year. The purpose of this exchange is to continue to build relationships with Melbourne University, and begin developing concrete research proposals that engage both Lund and Melbourne in joint work.

I am currently working for UNDP Bolivia, writing for the Human Development Report (HDR) 2008. I do research and analysis on the environmental and local socio-economic impacts of biofuels expansion, mining activities and development projects in Bolivia such as road and hydroelectric dams development.

The sound of MESPOM and the dynamic nature of the international degree provide a comfort to me. For the past few years, after pursuing in a number of graduate programmes from Australia and Pacific, I feel this programme holds a value to anyone seeking international exposure in broader environmental issues. My life experiences from growing up in a small island environment, where adaptability to externalities is a constant demand of life, has influenced my interest in environmental issues. We have had many social and economic problems due to our reliance on limited natural resources and had varying priorities and constraints.

MESPOM volunteed for the Quality Assurance exercise by the European Commission and has been selected as one of six Erasmus Mundus courses (out of about 100 existing). The purpose of the exercise is to examine how the joint character of Erasmus Mundus courses contributes to their high quality. Here are some thoughts which I prepared for the first visit of the EC QA team to Lund.