Dickinson to Durban » Mosaic Action
Low Expectations Results in Satisfaction
By Christine Burns ’14 Each year when the Conference of the Parties takes place, the world holds its breath, waiting for the delegates to come to an agreement in which all the important nations of the world have cooperated to come up with a plan, a part two to the Kyoto Protocol in which everyone takes part. Unfortunately, these expectations are too high. There are too many important parties, with too many different goals. I cannot say that I find a lot of hope from either the Cancun Agreement or the Copenhagen Accord, but maybe I am simply being too pessimistic. After reading both documents and reviews of both documents I fail to see enough concrete plans in either one. To start at the beginning, the Copenhagen Accord was inconsequential. After all … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Key COP17 Issues, Mosaic Action
What got done?
Both the Copenhagen Accord and the Cancun Agreements, products of COP15 and COP16 respectively, are important documents in climate change negotiations. They are lacking though. Neither at any point have anything about what countries need to do to keep the global average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius. Each document, in its own right, provides some good steps in helping the climate change negotiations move forward, providing different mechanisms to allot financial support and information transfer between the Parties to the Conference. I understand the need for these mechanisms and they are good things to have come out of the past two Conferences. These financial and other mechanisms can only help the future Conference of the Parties move forward and make some kind of significant move in addressing climate change. Again, they … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Mosaic Action
The Fight: Development and The Battle That Ensues
When dealing with an issue such as climate change, how do people from different parts of the world, with different views and different needs, come together and find a common ground? What do they need to do to make a global challenge work for everyone? These are the things that the students participating in the Climate Change Africa Mosaic and students from a First-year seminar had to address on Thursday, Sept. 15th. We were placed into a world climate negotiation simulation, where we, the students, represented a country, then the countries were divided into block groups. Within 3 hours we had to come to an agreement with the other nations which both set forth climate reductions and still benefited our own represented country. This was a goal tat proved to be rather difficult, but … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change, Key COP17 Issues, Mosaic Action, Summer Reading Responses
From Friend to Foe
By: Christine Burns ’14 On September 15th the Mosaic students and a first-year seminar participated in a climate change negotiations simulation. Each student was given a country to represent and we were placed into three categories: developing (EU, US), rapidly developing (China, India), and other developing (Sub-Sahara Africa, Bangladesh) countries. We then attempted to negotiate a climate change agreement between the three groups. I now have an understanding for how difficult climate negotiations truly are. I always get annoyed when global negotiations do not produce results, but after heatedly arguing with my friends and peers for three hours, I have a much better appreciation for how complex international negotiations are. Countries come from very different backgrounds making it difficult for them to see eye-to-eye and therefore come to a consensus that incorporates … Read entire article »
Filed under: Carbon Markets, Climate Change, Key COP17 Issues, Mosaic Action
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