What began as two internships without an end goal in sight, has officially concluded with two publications. Though my internship has wrapped, my work with the Navy is continuing, unofficially. I have been invited to join calls with the city of Monterey and NPS to discuss climate resiliency efforts and public-public partnerships going forward. At the end of my internship, I produced a small report for the best practices for military installations to consider when pursuing public-public partnerships for climate resiliency. My report has already been presented to the NPS executive leadership team and disseminated to the Naval officers around the country who I interviewed in the process. The report will also be published in NPS’ journal and newsletter. With any luck, this report will provide guidance for military installations around the country as they begin to discuss the mandated inclusion of climate, energy and cybersecurity resiliency.

My work with the Ocean Conservancy ends this week after we had our final in-person discussion of my report and professional review. I spent all summer researching the relationship between climate change and plastics with the intention of presenting an in-depth report highlighting the major contributions and ultimately, advising Ocean Conserving how to realign their campaigns. My 40 page report discusses the entire life-cycle of plastics, policy intervention points, recommendations for OC and what areas of research they should pursue in the future. My bosses seemed extremely pleased, as am I.

I am incredibly happy with the work I produced this summer as well as how much I learned. I’m grateful to both organizations for taking me on and giving me the opportunity to produce meaningful work, as well as to CBE for funding the experience because without my grant, neither option would have been possible.

Anyone interested in seeing my reports can contact me directly as I would be happy to share them. steagalljames@gmail.com