Environmental Internships in Beijing?

[xiaojiang216]

各位好，

I am currently a junior in college majoring in Chinese and World Politics and am interested in environmental protection and sustainability.

Is anyone aware of any internships available to undergraduates at an environmental organization in China, preferably Beijing?

I have been researching this but unfortunately with few results. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated! Thank you all so much for your help

[aristotle1990]

Princeton in Asia -- check this out. Also see here.

[xiaojiang216]

Thanks, aristotle1990 for finding these links! I have heard about the summer opportunity with PiA and it would be perfect, but unfortunately it looks like it is only offered to Princeton students! The academic year NGO fellowships look like an excellent experience upon graduation. I wonder which NGOs PiA is connected with and if I could contact them directly? I will take a look into that.

Anyway, thank you very much for your help!

[roddy]

Couple of sites for you (both of which in a former life I was involved with in one way or another) . . .

Greengo.cn appears to have changed considerably, but it should be a good place to get lists of environmental NGOs and see what's happening.

Chinadevelopmentbrief.com has an article somewhere giving advice for people trying to get internships on spec - you can find it easy enough. You may also be able to get an ad on there, although I'm not sure how much traffic the site gets now. See also the .cn version.

If you want to do an NGO internship, the environmental sector is actually a better bet than most as there are more, and more active, organizations here than in other fields. I think there's maybe also a more international dimension than elsewhere - Greenpeace and other NGOs work here one way or another, you've got in GEI (geichina.org) a domestic NGO that's actually focused on the environment outside of China, albeit only in so far as Chinese firms are ruining it. There are also cross-border alliances particularly on waterways, and there's a certain amount of Chinese civil society presence at, eg, climate change talks. It's perhaps the sector where the interests of central government, some of the people and international society more or less coincide

There's a Beijing Green Drinks thing (social networking for tree-hugging professionals) which I think has some kind of (Yahoo?) mailing list that might be useful. I wouldn't go weighing with 'I can haz internships?' but if you figure out who's working on what and come up with a relevant self-contained project you can pitch to them I reckon you might get a good response.

[Xiwang]

You might be interested in checking into some well-respected environmental organizations such as Jane Goodall's Root & Shoots or the Clean Water Alliance.

Here is a list of the vetted host organizations where the Australian Youth Ambassadors for Development send their young people:

http://www.ayad.com.au/partner-with-us/host-organisations/current-hos#china

[skylee]

The Hong Kong Government offers summer internship positions every year. You can take a look at the positions offered by Environmental Protection Department in 2010 for reference.

Usually these positions are advertised starting from late April / May. The pay is not too bad (about HKD6000-7000 per month for typically 44 hours of work per week). See if you are interested (though obviously you would need to be in HK for such jobs).