As I reflect on my experience attending COP27, there are several key takeaways I would like to discuss. My first takeaway is that I believe this experience is invaluable for both UConn graduate and undergraduate students and provides a transformative real-world component to their experience at UConn. Specifically, the UConn@COP Fellowship Program provides students direct exposure to learn about international policy negotiations, network with diplomats and business leaders, and connect with people from cultures around the world at an unparalleled scale. In 1995, COP1 had just under 4,000 attendees but this number has continued to swell with almost 50,000 attendees at COP27 making it by far the largest diplomatic gathering on earth. The scale of this conference reflects the overwhelming consensus by over 190 countries for the need to address climate change and the tremendous opportunity for students to derive value from attending this event as a springboard for professional development.

Additionally, as UConn continues to increase its role as a national leader in sustainability and climate tech innovation, the UConn@COP Fellowship Program is a critical piece of this equation. UConn’s recent announcement to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030, the creation of the UConn Climate Venture Studio in 2022, and the inaugural Global Business Leadership in Sustainability Summit held at UConn in 2022 are all important recent developments which send strong signals about the future of climate innovation and leadership at UConn and the cascading effects that will have for the state. These developments at UConn also coincide with recent legislation (Public Act No. 22-5) approved by the state of Connecticut in May 2022 which requires that the state achieve a zero-carbon electricity grid by 2040. As commitments to address climate change continue to rise globally, in our state, and at our university, this experience provides students vital access to cutting-edge knowledge and innovations that will enable students to become leaders at the forefront of this transition to deliver on these ambitious targets. Therefore, I highly encourage the University of Connecticut and its state partners to allocate additional resources and further develop the UConn@COP Fellowship Program to invest in our students as a means to empower climate innovation and leadership in the state.

Another key takeaway from this experience is that I came to realize quite clearly the United Nations COP is not just about the collective fight to address climate change, but it is a critical mechanism for fostering collaboration and dialogue with countries around the world, including those engaged in rising tension and conflict. Neglecting to participate in this dialogue is a massive setback which stifles relationships and economic ties with countries around the world. Also, while the formal negotiations are often a central focus of these COP meetings, the COP continues to play an increasingly impactful role for addressing climate change by acting as a conduit for creating agreements, facilitating the flow of capital, and disseminating innovations between countries, businesses, and NGOs. Therefore, the COP helps precipitate a much greater climate impact beyond merely the outcomes of the formal negotiation process.

If you are interested in supporting UConn students to attend future COP meetings, please consider donating to the UConn@COP Program Fund. Additionally, if you would like to become a business or organizational sponsor of the UConn@COP Fellowship Program, please contact the UConn Office of Sustainability (sustainability@uconn.edu).

Echoing my thoughts from earlier in the week, my gratitude as well as my perspective has only grown after participating in a full week of discussion, presentations, and negotiations at COP27. The Conference of Parties allows for a unique insight into the forefront of climate conversations and innovation. While it may seem as though people are acting independently in regard to sustainability and addressing climate change, ideally there are larger frameworks behind the actions of individuals, nations, and actors.

The major framework present at COP is the goals set by each country, which are self-determined and administered in the form of Nationally Determined Contributions, NDCs. NDCs are living documents that each nation in the Paris Agreement draft that outline their individual goals in regard to their reducing their contributions to climate change. I had the opportunity to hear further about the opportunities for partnerships between the U.S. and developing nations while attending events that included speakers from the NDC partnership. While there are mechanisms for support associated with the NDCs, there is no true accountability. This can lead to the creation of ambitious goals, with little action. Especially when nations in the Global North seem to be offsetting responsibility, by aiding developing nations that ultimately have much smaller carbon footprints rather than minimizing their emissions and recognizing their massive contributions to the climate crisis. To date, the NDCs have been the most successful framework for climate action than a climate conference, but there are flaws that stall progress.

Another framework that I was able to see was the urban implementation cookbook. On the last day, I attended “Taste Test: a First Look-back on the Urban Implementation Cookbook” at the UN Global Innovation Hub. It explained urban planning and creating sustainable cities through a cooking metaphor. The metaphor is intended to be an accessible and universal framework that can be applied at various scales. It includes conceptualizing the menu, accessing kitchen capacity, selecting an adaptable recipe, shopping for additional ingredients, creating the dish, sharing the recipe, and updating the menu. The framework itself is cyclical in nature, so it can be applied no matter the stage of the project. I found the presentation fascinating, but there was a lag between the creation of this framework and having access to true resources. There also seemed to be minimal pathways to collaboration and implementation. When I had a chance to speak shortly with one of the panelists following the event they mentioned building intercity collaboration as a next step. Within the presentation itself they highlighted that they hope to have further scaling of the framework itself by COP28. While there seems to be a commitment to progress and advancement there needs to be a greater sense of urgency and immediate action.

I found that these two examples of frameworks are indicative of the larger outcomes of the conference, while there is a large amount of discussion of potential pathways and determination of potential options there need to be subsequent, and rapid implementation. Now there are comprehensive frameworks in place, and we are now in a position where there needs to be collective international action to make true progress. As someone who is interested in the intersections of environmental science and policy, these frameworks seem to lack a regulatory structure or mechanism to ensure compliance or measure progress. That is a challenge with a wicked problem, like climate change. There are many different actors and since it is a global problem, there is no one enforceable regulatory body, with legislative capacities, that can ensure compliance. We are reaching a critical point that will hopefully lead to action and compliance on the part of individual nations. I have left the conference with a greater sense of urgency, but also a better understanding of the truly complex nature of international relations. Attending COP27 will be an experience that will undoubtedly impact the rest of my life and has encouraged me to think about sustainability in a broader context, but also to be critical of the current structures in place and expect more of world leaders.

COP27 was a whirlwind of inspiring and deterring feelings that left me both excited for my environmental work in the future, yet extremely worried about the state of the Earth. It’s no secret the outcome of COP27 was disappointing – many countries neglected to take on full responsibility to decrease emissions in an effort to keep our warming climate at 1.5°C – the necessary temperature to stay at in order to ensure we don’t reach a climate tipping point where the effects of climate change will become irreversible. 

My hope for the future faltered originally on the very first day I attended the conference and listened to a panel about how corporations are resilient in the face of climate change. In this, there was simply no talk about the corporation’s plan for the future, or even what they’re currently doing to help reduce emissions and take part in the fight against climate change. Instead, all the speaker said were empty words that had no real meaning that fell along the lines of ‘we need to de-risk a small solution’ and that we must be ‘resilience multipliers,’ but what does that actually look like? What does that really mean? I remember being baffled at how little depth there was to the presentation, and walked out wondering if this was what the entirety of the COP27 discussions would be like. Thankfully, for the Earth and my sanity, it was not. 

Unfortunately, though, the second day followed along a similar path. I attended the Emissions Gap Report, hosted by Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Program, and Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of UNFCCC. During this report, they spoke about how critical it is for us to reduce emissions by 30-40% by 2030, as this will be one of the only ways we prevent irreversible change to our Earth and climate. However, they followed this information with the fact that while this reduction in emissions goal has been set for the past ~10 years, we have only reduced emissions by 1% and we are currently on track for a warming of 2.8°C. I quoted Stiell saying that we are currently at 1.1°C, and many are already “in living hell” as a result. This reality hit me like a truck, that while it may seem as though the world is doing something to try and fix our climate issues, like hosting conferences, it really is not as productive as many may think. What really stood out to me, though, was the lack of humanity in the reporting of these devastating facts. As Inger said we have only reduced emissions by 1%, and as Chief Scientific Editor of the Emissions Gap Report 2022, Annie Olhoff, stated that we are on set to reach a warming of about 2.8°C, there did not seem to be any sort of falter or fear in their voices. It felt as though this information was nothing new to them, and at this point they seemed as though numb to it. What I want to bring back to UConn and share with my fellow students, friends and really anyone that will listen, is the humanity to this discussion. These are not just numbers that will someday a few years down the line maybe impact us. These are already impacting us. I listened to a representative for Pakistan speak about how ⅓ of his country is currently underwater, 8 million houses are destroyed, and there are millions of people living on the streets because of catastrophic weather events brought on by climate change. Disastrous events are already happening, and they will only get worse. We need to bring a sense of urgency back into the discussion because it is so much more than a simple worry for the future. 

I know it may be hard to come back from hearing that, but I do want to shed some light on the more positive discussions I sat in on that made me feel as though not all hope is lost. On the second to last day of the conference, which was dubbed “Solutions Day,” I attended a discussion called 1,000+ Clean Solutions to COP27. In this, a handbook called the Solutions Guide for Cities Booklet was presented, which contained 1,450 solutions to climate change and emissions. Not only were they just solutions, they were companies that have researched and are currently implementing these solutions – and they’re working! For example, the CEO of Turbulent Hydro discussed what his company has been doing. Basically, they put turbines into waterways that create whirlpools within the water, which then turns the moving water into electricity, and provides energy to anywhere between 60 – 350 houses. They currently have 25 turbines working in 13 different countries, getting clean energy to houses without the use of fossil fuels. A second solution that was presented was by the VP of Sustainability at a company called UBQ Materials. This company takes waste that cannot be recycled and turns it into plastic and wood substitutes. The point was even made that UBQ Materials could have created all of the buildings Egypt had put up to hold the conference out of waste, using items that otherwise would have ended up in a landfill. This was the discussion that when leaving, made me feel extremely inspired and gave me hope for a future. There are people that are devoting their lives to helping combat climate change, and the number of those people is only increasing.

Located in Egypt, people referred to COP27 as the “African COP” with the hope for a focus on  equity and supporting developing countries who will be disproportionately impacted by the climate crisis.

Let’s look at what we achieved during COP this year and what remains undone. 

COP27 achieved the first ever “Loss and Damage” Fund in history. Big developed nations, like the US and those in the European Union, are major contributors to the climate crisis as they have released the largest amounts of greenhouse gasses. Thus, G77 members, which is a coalition of developing countries, amplify that those most responsible for emissions should pay for the cost of damage for nations most affected by climate impacts. However, who will pay into this fund, how much, and which countries will benefit was not established and pushed off until COP28. On a positive note, agreements confirmed to operationalize the “Santiago Network”, which is a platform that connects developing countries to technical assistance and resources to address loss and damage. 

Developed countries previously committed to providing US$100 billion by 2020 to developing countries to finance mitigation projects, to reduce nations’ greenhouse gas emissions, and adaptation projects, to build more resilient infrastructure to climate impacts. However, this goal was not meet with countries only providing US$83.3 billion in 2020. COP27 had plans to double the adaptation finance; however, no new goals were developed, and the commitment for doubling adaptation finance was pushed till 2025. Additionally, studies have shown that developing countries actually need US$1 trillion in 2030 to support external finance – far off from current commitments. 

COP27 failed to get a commitment from all parties to phase out fossil fuels – the main cause of global warming. Vague language was included instead to  “[accelerate] efforts towards the phase-down of unabated coal power and phase-out of inefficient fossil fuel subsidies”. This is included in the Sharm el-Sheik Implementation Plan which summarizes the main decisions determined during party negotiations. The words “unabated” and “inefficient” allow for interpretation and loopholes that continue the use of these high carbon-emitting resources.  

Many firsts did occur at COP27. Negotiators acknowledged that the “transformation of financial systems and its structure and processes” is necessary to deliver climate finance – which recognizes the current inadequacies of capitalism to address climate change. Language about human rights, such as the right to clean, health, and sustainable environment, was written in the final COP text. The importance of nature-based solutions and ocean-based action was recognized. More holistics approaches to agriculture that include food systems, food security, nutrition, role of Indigenous peoples, women, and small-scale farmers was recognized through a 4-year work programme. The first-ever youth envoy was adopted at COP27 to highlight the need for children and youth representation in decision-making! The first work program on Just Transitions was established to build workforce development opportunities for communities in need – a major demand with indigenous, labor, youth, women and gender, and disability justice advocates

The honesty and power of climate justice leaders keeps me sustained and empowered in this movement. While this is a global issue, the solutions are local – and we need to listen to frontline communities and support community-based work. Transformative action to keep global temperatures below 1.5 degree Celsius continues to stall due to interests of big fossil fuel companies. We need to hold our leaders accountable to supporting the well-being of people and recognize the power we have to enact change. 

Over the next 7 years, we need a rapid deployment of clean energy technology to achieve the United States emissions reductions of 45% by 2030. I want to be a part of work programs that center Just Transitions and create job opportunities for low-income communities and communities of color. I call on all students at UConn to imagine, believe, and become the future you want to see. We cannot let the 1.5 degree Celsius goal slip. Start to envision how you can align your personal, academic, and career goals with climate action, and join us in community as we transform our culture to a more just, clean place. 

Sources:

1. https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/cop27-ends-announcement-historic-loss-and-damage-fund
2. https://www.escr-net.org/news/2022/cop-27-delivers-progress-loss-and-damage-fails-fossil-fuels
3. https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/the-glasgow-climate-pact/cop26-outcomes-finance-for-climate-adaptation#developed-countries-have-pledged-usd-100-billion-annually-to-developing-countries.-how-much-of-this-is-destined-to-go-towards-adaptation?-
4. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/d28f963c-en.pdf?expires=1669824599&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=F66741C6CA5F8EFA514700BB75E45393
5. https://www.reuters.com/business/cop/cop-27-developing-countries-need-1-trillion-year-climate-finance-report-2022-11-08/#:~:text=%22The%20world%20needs%20a%20breakthrough,summit%20hosts%2C%20Egypt%20and%20Britain.
6. https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cop27_auv_2_cover%20decision.pdf

https://twitter.com/arthurwyns/status/1594301617947418626?s=48&t=PFfKSTOHIxL1nSn-yotpPQ

I can’t pinpoint the first time I ever learned about climate change. I don’t recall it being mentioned in my education before senior year of high school and it didn’t seem to show up in my early exposure to pop culture. But I can pinpoint the many times I have heard generations before mine apologize for leaving us with the climate crisis. The week before leaving for Egypt, I overheard a teammate remark on how they “think climate change is a conspiracy theory”. I was taken back by such a statement, but also took it as a moment to check my reality. While I hoped at least all young people would see the severity of the climate crisis, my teammate reminded me that this is not the case.

As a young student at COP27, I felt a great heaviness being a part of “the generation that will solve climate change” (or at least that’s what every other generation seems to be saying). Such a responsibility brings with it a lot of pressure. In the 27 sessions of COP, this year was the fi rst time there has ever been a youth pavilion. That is about a whole generation’s worth of time, just to include a youth pavilion. But such a phenomenon shows us that it takes a whole generation’s worth of time to get new perspectives in the conversation. I wondered how this process could be sped up. One of the most frustrating positions to be in at COP was the position of the observer. Some negotiations filled up too fast or were closed to observers all together. I physically could not be in the room that was making choices about my future well-being and that of my children and my grandchildren.

On the other hand I did get to hear about many amazing ways youth were being involved locally. Leslie Shultz – a member of the Ngadju Community in Australia – highlighted their Indigenous Rangers Program. There they train people to care for the Great Western Woodlands and the Nullarbor plains. Shultz especially emphasized how they focus on bringing in youth to this program so they may sustain these efforts in the future. Similarly a representative from the Zimbabwe Farmers Union presented on their efforts to create a new school curriculum on sustainable land use. This led me to reflect on my early school curriculums and realize, they hardly included lessons on climate change, environmental injustice, indigenous perspectives and a variety of other crucial topics that relate to the climate crisis.

After my initial frustrations about not being able to contribute to international agreements, I realized change does not have to come about in such extravagant gestures. While the COP was a place for parties to meet internationally, it was also a place to share smaller successes that can be duplicated throughout local communities. I witnessed how youth were being involved in various spheres which made the problem of climate change not seem so daunting. Throughout my time at UConn I have been so focused on policy as the way to solve the climate crisis. What COP has put into perspective for me is that policy may be written and implemented by policy makers, but it is the attitude of the people that shape it. One way to shift such attitudes and accelerate the inclusion of new perspectives is through youth involvement and education. When kids can grow up learning about, experiencing and understanding our planet there is greater room for change. I always told myself I wouldn’t go into education. But I have since seen how influential my role in educating generations even beyond mine could be. Climate change is a crisis that my generation has inherited from generations before mine that did not deal with it. It is inevitable that the generations that come after mine will inherit the crisis however we choose to deal with it (or not). Climate change most likely won’t be solved in the next 30 years and even if it is, the Earth needs time to heal. One thing I hope I can do is leave the next generation with the adequate tools to continue on the work my peers and I are doing today. While this isn’t a path for myself that I have explored indepth, my time at COP has contributed to this new avenue.

COP27 was one of the most meaningful weeks of my life. Full of dynamic challenges, I feel my worldview of climate change vastly evolved and broadened. COP27’s goals were to implement policies on adaptation and mitigation and loss and damages: two concepts I only tangentially worked with. I realized the importance of these missions when I heard this quote at the Ocean Alliance pavilion: “conservation without funding is just conversation.” Spending so much of my time at UConn connecting with the land, I feel I dismissed the financial aspect of climate change. It seemed unimportant when I could listen to the trees and the animals. But hearing the cries from people for the implementation of loss and damages, awakened me to the importance of finance. I attended a panel discussing financial changes since the adoption of the Glasgow Pledge during COP26. It was a contrasting panel: people from the global south passionately and desperately asking for progress at this COP and people from the global north indifferently talking about frivolous roadblocks to reparations and justice. So distributing that funding is immensely important to conservation work. Without that action, we are simply engaging in tedious conversations that don’t further climate policy whatsoever. COP27 opened my world to a whole new sector of sustainability.

Alternatively, it expanded my perspective on a sector I thought I understood. At UConn, I help submit the greenhouse gas inventory. I collect data from the university’s departments on emissions and then submit those statistics to an online platform that pulls it all together into a coherent distribution. I had the privilege of attending a panel on the Emissions Gap Report 2022 at COP27. The report looks at humanity’s current emissions relative to where we should be based on the promises of the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. In the context of my work, I found their report to be innovative and inspiring. The collective intellect of the group yielded a holistic report that is used as a foundation for so much climate policy and activism – you have to appreciate its ingenuity and utility in the emerging world. But a quote from the panel set in the gravity of our situation: “The reality is that we are currently in a 1.12°C warmer world and it is already a living hell for many communities.” Reconciling my appreciation for the numerical analysis of climate change with my understanding of climate change as a human rights crisis is something I haven’t confronted to this point. Academia can be somewhat isolating, I think. It can feel theoretical reading about the climate crisis, and I think as a result, a sort of naivety developed with regards to climate change. So, it makes sense that my undergraduate degrees (Mathematics and Environmental Science) have felt separate. Moving forward, my task is to marry these two to strengthen my environmentalism.

I think I’ll use the words of author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie to capture my closing feelings after COP27: there is no single story on climate change. To buy into this narrative of doom and guilt is unfair to all the meaningful climate work done by people like those at COP. It erases their stories and discourages others from ever wanting to improve the world. Of course, climate work is upsetting. I sobbed multiple times throughout the week and had to excuse myself from the room. It means I have empathy: that I understand this is a living nightmare for our plant friends, our animal friends, and of course, our human friends. But to let those feelings consume yields nothing. Instead, I feel a buoyancy I didn’t possess before the conference. COP27 was a further call to action for me. I will always devote myself to helping the plants, the animals, and my fellow humans. I care for the Earth, and I know it does the same for me.

Throughout the week of UN COP27, I attended panels and discussions ranging from coral reef restoration to net-zero technologies to climate finance. One that stuck with me was Voices of Indigenous Rights Defenders: Cases of Criminalization Across The Globe at the Indigenous Peoples’ Pavilion. The panel highlighted that the development of renewable energy requires
increased extraction and mining of transition minerals, which leads to violations of Indigenous rights and criminalization of Indigenous rights defenders. I heard from Yana Tannagasheva of the Shor people from western Siberia, Russia. She comes from the Kazas village, which was burned down by a coal company nearby because the Indigenous people residing there refused to sell their houses. In her video series Ten Stories About Coal, she described the grave impacts of open-pit coal mining: black rivers, black snow, polluted air, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, cardiovascular and respiratory illnesses. Tannagasheva had to flee her homeland and seek asylum elsewhere due to prosecution and threats from both the coal companies and the government for speaking out.

But that is only the coal industry, right? Renewable energy will be different; renewable energy is clean and green. At the same panel, I heard stories from human rights defenders from Nepal, who were arrested, detained and tortured for opposing a hydropower project in their sacred rivers. Another speaker detailed that Indigenous rights defenders who opposed lithium extraction in the Salar de Atacama salt flats were arrested, detained, and brutally beaten under police vigilance in Argentina, and many were murdered in Chile. No free, prior, informed consent was obtained from the communities from the mining operations.

Is renewable energy an equitable solution to climate change? The global demand for lithium carbonate, and as a result lithium mining, is projected to increase sixfold between 2019 and 2030 for clean technologies such as electrical vehicles and solar panels. Neodymium mining for wind turbines will have to increase by 1000-4000% in coming decades. Indium mining for solar semiconductors will need to increase 8000%. Cobalt for energy storage batteries will increase by 300%-800%.

While the sun will always shine and the wind will always blow as long as we are alive, the development of renewable energy infrastructure and green technologies requires more materials and minerals than we are currently extracting from the Earth for coal, oil and natural gas. That is not to say that fossil fuels should be a part of our future – fossil fuels must be phased out entirely. At the same time, we cannot operate under the illusion that climate justice will be delivered with continual overconsumption and waste of energy, even if that energy is coming from renewable sources. The global demand for energy and thus materials will have to decrease significantly in order for renewable energy to be sustainable. Indigenous rights violations from mining of transition minerals is only one issue that comes with renewable energy. The climate crisis is the most pressing issue of our generation, but climate action cannot come at a cost to human rights. Solutions to the climate crisis must be rights-based, community-based and equitable. Corporations involved in mining operations should be obliged to conduct human rights due diligence, risk assessments and seek free, prior, informed consent from potentially impacted communities. Renewable energy can be a solution to climate change, but we need to consider more than simply the technical aspects, and human rights need to be prioritized.