CUCSD at UNFCCC Special Intersessional Meeting at Yale University November 2-3, 2012

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Columbia University Coalition for Sustainable Development have been invited to represent Columbia University at the COP18/CMP8 sessions of the UNFCCC hosted by the UNFCCC Executive Secretary at Yale University from November 2 – 3, 2102. We will be joining students from Yale, Duke, MIT, Tufts, and Georgetown at this event.Check out all the amazing people involved! 

Event Description

The negotiations of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, particularly at the annual Conferences of Parties (CoP), are vital discussions which promise to determine the ecological and economic fate of our world under the specter of global warming. In preparation for this important event, each year since 2009 students at the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies have sought to better understand this process by staging a negotiation simulation exercise mimicking the politics and policy underlying the UNFCCC process. In 2010, this event expanded to include participation by students from other universities. Every year, the exercise has been a notable success, hailed by faculty, outside observers, and student participants alike as a uniquely valuable learning process difficult to match in any other setting. With the expiration of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol (KP), 2012 marks an interesting point from which the next CoP, to be held in Doha, Qatar, may or may not lead to a stronger and legally binding process. While the earlier negotiations centered on country participation post-KP, the new discussions will focus on legal obligations of all the countries in the world leading up to 2020 and beyond. Hence, CoP 18 in Doha will continue to determine the rights and duties of developed and developing countries in our collective effort to mitigate and adapt to global climate change. These issues will be the central themes of this year’s Negotiation Simulation. As the core of this exercise, registered participants will be assigned a country and, over the course of two days, charged with representing their interests as they negotiate over the legal issues of a new international climate agreement, based on actual working texts from the UNFCCC. We invite any and all university students to participate.