As a person who draws on pathos, I am personally touched by social movements and personal stories. This is best exemplified in my first research post in September when I discussed Richard William’s “I’m Sorry” spoken word piece. He addressed future generations that are forced to live with the consequences of their ancestors who had a  lack of concern for the environment and therefore caused deforestation, water shortages, food insecurity, and other environmental catastrophes.[1] This sparked my curiosity because of the desperate time crunch that environmentalist preach. I deepened my studies of environmental science, policy and thought throughout high school and in the past two years of my undergraduate career. I took environmental science classes in high school and then in college I have taken What is Suffering?, Chemistry, Environmental Science Lab and Environmental Sustainability. I want to work in the field of international environmental policy and therefore, I find policy extremely valuable because it effects not only my current and future family, but also the wellbeing of the entire planet. I want to understand where policy fails so that I can work with my future colleagues to correct these mistakes and ensure policy translates into direct action. Due to the urgency of climate change, it is in my personal interest and the interest of the future to conduct related research. Environmental studies is my passion because of the emotions that are evoked when discussing rising sea levels, displacement, soil erosion, and biodiversity loss. But now it has matured because the effects of climate change are growing and every aspect of this phenomena needs to be studied. Further, adequate policy needs to be agreed upon to slow down the anthropogenic causes. I proposed a discourse analysis in December 2017 and this is quite evident to the type of person, student, and researcher I am. I find it valuable to bring my personal experiences, ideas and thoughts to light. It is necessary to understand the researcher to grasp how they conducted their research and why they came to the conclusions provided. Furthermore, I believe that by examining specific instances and cases, we can get to the root causes, and that is where change is meaningful. My proposed research does have normative assumptions because it insinuates that the UNFCC’s REDD+ Platform is the actor that reconstructed the discourses surrounding land management policies. There are various pieces of legislation that still would need to be examined to conclude that REDD+ Platform was in fact the actor to do so. At this point, I am editing the question, and quite possibly the type of research to truly dig deep within the puzzles of environmental politics.

[1] ¨Dear Future Generations: Sorry” (YouTube, 2015), accessed September 1, 2017, web, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRLJscAlk1M