Dickinson to Durban » Archive
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
World Climate Summit at Dickinson College!
Imagine if the title of this post were actually true! Not only would students, faculty, and other community members flock to our conference event, but international persons and other interested citizens would flock to our campus to have a say in the negotiations room! We, the students in the Africa Mosaic, obviously and luckily, have the privilege of actually participating in the real negotiations in Durban in a few months, but not every student at Dickinson does. To give a larger segment of the campus an opportunity to participate in a similar experience, the Africa Mosaic students and students from a similar-course of study in their first-year seminar acted out a mock-World Climate conference. The first thing I would like to comment on is that the initially feelings and anticipations I had … Read entire article »
Filed under: 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
And so it begins
Thursday, September 15 marked our first taste of the struggles of global climate deliberations. Our Global Climate Change Africa Mosaic class along with a first year seminar class attempted to navigate a simplified version of an international climate change negotiations. It was difficult. The painful balance of economic and environmental responsibility at times was almost too much to bear. Staying in character in a room full of first-years and close friends is exceedingly difficult, especially when almost everyone is environmentally aware. Awkwardness, coupled with a significant lack of information, left many negotiators arguing heatedly over negligible points. I have never realized how little I knew about the value of a dollar before this session. Propositions for “monetary donations” to a “global fund” jumped from a few hundred billion dollars to one … Read entire article »
Filed under: Climate Change
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