After graduating with an honours degree in botany and ecology from the University of Cape Town in South Africa, I was looking for a chance to improve my understanding of the environmental field outside of South Africa. MESPOM has been a great opportunity to meet other people from all over the world and gain new perspectives on what the environmental field is really all about. Through the programme I have been exposed to a multitude of different cultures and concepts which I cannot imagine I would have gained through any other programme. My interests lie essentially in natural resource management in the developing world. Reconciling human needs with environmental sustainabiliy and conservation is becoming increasingly important as climate change and increasing human populations create increasingly complex management problems within the environmental field. Previous experiences left me feeling that there was a lot of miscommunication between scientists and resource managers/owners. Through MESPOM and my colleagues on the course, I have been able to gain some insight into all of the different aspects involved in resource management which will be invaluable to me in the future.