|
Rodrigo Ernesto Pizarro was an economist specializing in macroeconomics when his first employer, the Central Bank of Chile, assigned him to an environmental accounts project team. Rodrigo and his colleagues were forced to think about income as part of the ecosystem. What he learned completely changed his perspective.
"You can cut all your forests down, deplete your fish, contaminate your water, and there's no discount for the fact that you're not only diminishing your quality of life but also your future income," Rodrigo says.
He has focused on environmental issues since, working as an advisor and a consultant in both the public and private sectors of his native Chile. One notable pilot he directed for the nongovernmental organization Fundación Terram garnered the 2007 Intel Environment Innovation Award from the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose. The project, which involved bioremediation in Chilean salmon farms, has proven to be a sustainable win for the local economy. But while Rodrigo enjoyed his work immensely, he felt he needed to learn more about the scientific and biological issues that affected what he was doing.
"I felt that, to do my job well and round out my education, I had to go back to graduate school," he says.
Now, as a doctoral student in the Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources (E-IPER), Rodrigo is focusing on environmental policy in developing countries. He is also affiliated with Stanford's food security program, where he is examining the relationship between food systems and the environment. A recipient of the Sykes Family Fellowship, he says returning to graduate studies wouldn't have been possible without financial aid—generosity he suspects is particular to the United States.
"I don't know of anywhere else where people invest so much in other people," he says. "I think it's essential and absolutely wonderful."
E-IPER is part of the Initiative on the Environment and Sustainability. Find out more.
|
