Christiana Agustin finds herself a tad homesick these days.
About 13,600 kilometers from Toronto, the fourth-year international development studies co-op student is currently working in Bangkok, Thailand. If Agustin, who is also working towards a minor in environmental science, travels an hour out of the city she can explore national parks and islands full of lush trees, wildlife and see the occasional snake slithering by her.
“You’re in this beautiful place and I realize why I’m studying environment and development,” Agustin says. “I strongly feel that these are places we need to preserve. It reminds me why I do the work that I do. Community Forestry empowers people, and preserves both their culture, and the environment.”
Agustin is interning at The Centre for People and Forests (RECOFTC), where she is blending her passions for social justice and environmental science. The international organization works to enhance capacities for stronger rights, improved governance and fairer benefits for local people in forest landscapes in seven Asia–Pacific countries through community forestry.
“Without community forestry, there are no specific titles or property rights to specific land,” Agustin says. “It’s argued that people won’t take care of their land as much or create any sustainability and exhaust resources.”
Community forestry is an approach to land management that emphasizes land is best protected when locals have the right to manage it, as opposed to private companies or governments. Agustin’s work as a monitoring, evaluation and learning intern involves research and collecting data, but she says the goal is community empowerment.
“Giving local people rights and mobility and independence is something that we need to keep pushing forward to achieve environmental sustainability and curb poverty,” she says.
The year-long internship will include the opportunity for her to conduct research toward her undergraduate thesis, which explores the participation of women in land governance in the Mekong region. She has her sights on Nepal or Laos as possible locations because of their rising women’s movements.
“I would like to identify the challenges they face, and possibly come up with solutions or tools to help them better navigate these spaces so they can make a greater impact in the sustainability of their communities and forest landscapes.
Her advocacy ties back to her time in politics. Agustin worked as a constituency assistant for her MP Gary Anandasangaree (Scarborough-Rouge Park), then in the Prime Minister’s office in Ottawa this past summer. With a background in outreach, specifically with Filipino and Indigenous communities, she worked with the provincial and federal governments on how to ensure concerns of marginalized groups are considered in policy-making.
“As a person of colour, as a woman and as someone who is young, you don’t always have a voice and there are so many challenges and barriers that are completely out of my control,” she says. “I want to see at a more local level if women have those same barriers.”
Having worked in the local, national and now international spectrums, with help of the Global Learning Travel Fund and a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Scholarship, Agustin encourages students to take a risk on stepping out of your comfort zone.
“It’s only in discomfort where you’ll grow,” she says. That in itself not only speaks to growing professionally but also as an individual and to broaden your perspectives on the world.
