The second half of my time at COP went by much faster than expected, largely due to unforeseen circumstances but also because of my general familiarity with the venue. One of the largest aspects of this conference was networking, exercising communication skills, and maintaining professional relations. While in the Green Zone—the section of COP30 dedicated to interacting with civil society and businesses on climate-change action and showcasing developing solutions—I attended a COP and Coffee event hosted by Deloitte.

The global business management corporation held a morning discussion led by Dr. Freedom-Kai Philips, leader of the Global Deloitte Center for Sustainable Progress; Dr. Pradeep Philip, lead partner of Deloitte Access Economics; Maria Emilia Peres, Brazil Sustainability Leader; and Victoria Paz, finance lead of the Mangrove Breakthrough Hub. This discussion focused on funding sustainability efforts and effectively allocating finances to satisfy both investors and communities; financing mangrove agroforests was used as a prime example.

The conversation placed significant emphasis on collaborating with the private sector and navigating ways to receive or utilize funding, such as requesting business loans. Dr. Philips emphasized that it is critical to consider the way finance is deployed, what capital is put into, and how to ensure that the asset has “high integrity” in the eyes of insurers. While attending these discussions is essential to furthering my understanding of sustainable development, I find it equally important to engage in the discourse as well, and I held myself to a high standard of involvement as both a scholar and a delegate of UConn.

After the discussion, I reached out to Dr. Philips for follow-up on the measurement of “high integrity” environmental assets. He explained in depth how these resources benefit communities on the grounds of their permanence, additionality, and transparency in reporting.

Not only did this interaction provide valuable insight, but he also resonated with me and the other UConn COP students, and he was kind enough to provide us with a guided tour of the COP30 Blue Zone. I established connections and gained insight on many diverse fields and topics I likely would never have encountered otherwise. Although my Thursday and Friday explorations were unfortunately cut short due to the fire, I still made use of pre-established connections to further my COP experience. Earlier in the week, I had attended the Thailand Pavilion youth-led “Regeneration Generation” panel. Most of the students were from Washington University, and my engagement in their panel allowed me to follow up with an informative and engaging lunch discussion on Thursday.

All of these immersive opportunities and connections fueled my professional and academic growth in ways I never would have anticipated. COP30 provided me with invaluable opportunities, meaningful connections, and a deeper understanding of the global climate landscape—insight that will continue to shape my path as a student and a professional.

Toriana Grooms is a junior majoring in political science and English with a minor in German.

My final days at COP were filled with a lot of learning and cultural immersion. On Tuesday, I attended a “COP and Coffee Chat” at the Deloitte pavilion in the Green Zone. After the talk, I introduced myself to Dr. Freedom-Kai Phillips, the Director of the Deloitte Center for Sustainable Progress. I was impressed by his expertise and approached him after this talk to learn more about his professional journey. Dr. Phillips greeted my classmates, and I with immense kindness and openness. He invited us to meet with him in the Blue Zone the following day for a longer discussion on COP.

On Wednesday, we met with Dr. Phillips and were provided with an experience that I will forever appreciate. Dr. Phillips walked us around the Blue Zone Pavilions, introducing us to his colleagues and friends who work at different climate organizations. He gave us a proper lay of the land and made COP feel smaller and manageable. We met leaders working in the Ocean, Digital Innovation, and World Green Economy Pavilions. We got the exclusive opportunity to talk with a secretariat at the United Nations, in the restricted section of the Blue Zone. This experience framed my perspective for the last two days I spent at COP. It reaffirmed the idea that everything is about the connections you have with individuals in and outside of your field. As we parted, Dr. Phillips reminded us that, in 10 years when we are growing professionals in our respective fields, we need to share our experiences like he did.

Unfortunately, my time in the Blue Zone was cut short on Thursday due to a Pavilion fire, but my classmates and I embraced the disruption as an opportunity for culture immersion in Belém. We visited the Museum of the Amazons, where I learned about the rich and historical culture of the Amazon Rainforest’s Native tribes. The exhibit emphasized the threat that climate change poses to the livelihood of Indigenous Groups. We also visited the Mangal das Garças, which is a bird sanctuary with free admittance. The predominant bird species there are cranes, who are free to come and go as they please.

Although hearing about all the amazing things that organizations are doing to mitigate and adapt to climate change during my tour with Dr. Phillips and my explorations in Belém filled me with hope; I was still disappointed by some of the outcomes of COP. In the concluding agreement, countries that profit greatly from petroleum production and largely polluting states, removed language that provided a roadmap away from fossil fuels.

It is great to learn about all these organizations doing amazing work, but if the majorly polluting countries do not care and refuse to make concrete actionable plans away from the use of fossil fuels, will the climate crisis ever be solved? If the United States does not re-join the Paris Agreement, will countries that typically follow suit ever support the sustainable energy transition? There are so many questions that I was left with after concluding my time at COP30. Although the final agreements left me questioning the avenues forward, the hope given to me by the local and professional organizations that challenged these dominating countries remained.

Madelyn Kelly is a senior environmental engineering student.

Overall, COP30 and my time in Brazil served as a transformative experience that will continue to influence my life in the years to come. Since my first blog post, the last three days of COP have been extremely unique opportunities to learn from people around the world.

On Wednesday, I started the day by attending a talk titled “No Green without Blue,” which focused on how the connection between the Oceans and the Amazon Forest influences climate change. From this talk, I was able to learn from experts in the field from Brazil’s government and universities about how a healthy ocean is necessary to preserve both marine and land ecosystems. After this talk, I was able to meet up with some of my COP fellows to take a guided tour through the Blue Zone by a member of a delegation they had met the previous day. This was one of my most rewarding experiences at COP, as I was brought to pavilions that I had not yet visited and learned more about their goals and perspectives on the climate crisis. From this tour, I learned more about how technology is being used to address the climate crisis and more about the growing focus from the COP process on protecting our oceans. I finished on Wednesday by attending a talk put on by the UK Government addressing scalable investment for sustainable agriculture. At this talk, I heard from the UK Government’s Minister for Nature, Mary Creagh, about the nation’s partnership with Brazil in the RAIZ initiative, aimed at restoring degraded agricultural lands around the world.

On Thursday, I was able to attend a talk that I had been looking forward to attending all week, put on by the International Bar Association that addressed how lawyers and law firms can advance climate mitigation and adaptation through pro bono work and beyond. While it is no secret that there are lawyers out there fighting for the environment, I find it extremely important that all lawyers, no matter what their practice, are conscious of the effects their work has on our natural world. I found this talk so interesting because it stressed the importance of that idea, and the speakers provided actionable steps to help achieve those goals. For instance, the speakers emphasized providing non-governmental organizations and civil society groups that protect vulnerable groups and mitigate climate change with free or reduced-cost legal services. I will surely take back what I learned from this talk and apply it to my future career as an attorney.

Lastly, on Friday, we decided to explore the city of Belém more. We visited the Mangal das Garças Ecological Park and the Museu das Amazônias. At the Museu das Amazônias, we were able to see the work of the late Sebastião Salgado, a renowned Brazilian photographer, whose work showcased life and nature throughout the Amazon region. At the Mangal das Garças, we were able to see local wildlife and the sunset on our last night in Brazil. My time at COP and in Brazil was extremely well spent, and I cannot wait to follow the negotiations at the next COP in Turkey and visit Brazil again.

Brett Hurley is a second year law student.

The second half of COP30 flew by with a literal smoky haze of hope and action in the air.

Walking in on Thursday morning was surreal, as tensions were high and the environment around us clearly called for concrete climate action. I began the day with a discussion on how to maneuver access to climate finance. What surprised me was the use of creativity in their solutions– artists in the Northern Brazil region using their gifts to decode where the impacts of regional crises (agriculture, and land rights) could be supported by innovation hubs with marketing techniques that connect Green Financing Lenders from Banks to credible small-medium enterprises who didn’t initially have the toolkit to access funds without falling into severe debt.

Afterwards, I had the honor to participate in the Higher Education as a Critical Global Partner for Enabling and Accelerating Climate Action panel alongside Valeria Soto (Tecnológico de Monterrey), Phoenix Boggs (Yale University), Javiera Cabezas Parra (Northwestern University), and Fernanda Muraira (Universidad Iberoamericana, Ciudad de México). We exchanged insights on unique ways youth have felt both empowered and faced barriers when getting involved in climate action. It was incredible to witness the administrators and delegates in the room break down their plans to combat those barriers.

Many concerns arose that institutional frameworks for adaptation are in the works but do not provide the institutional mechanisms for knowledge transfer to younger, future climate leaders; let alone the pre-existing disparities within marginalized groups across the Global North and South. The Commonwealth Youth Climate Change Network (CYCN) put together a statement calling for 1) Institutionalized youth participation in climate governance, 2) Scaled-up climate education and capacity building, 3) Sustainable finance and support for youth-led initiatives, and 4) Stronger pathways for youth inclusion in climate negotiations. I believe these are incredible steps, as so many young people, from the rivers of South America to the farms in the United States’ Midwest, possess the energy and creativity to innovate solutions in their local communities. They simply need institutional platforms, resources, or technical terminology to advance those solutions.

Around lunchtime, we gathered at a table with fellow university students from St. Louis, San Diego, Boston, and Storrs, Connecticut. Exchanging perspectives about how our communities fit into the context of the Climate Crisis. We learned about unique strategies to continue engaging and upskilling civil society members who are curious about climate action but don’t know how their specialties can contribute. Simultaneously, to our left and right, there was an outpour of delegates balancing the long queues for the Amazonia-inspired cuisine and doubling down on their nation’s target agenda items. Locally sourced fish and fresh-cut fries bore witness to the thunderous pounding of shift, right-click, and backspace buttons on keyboards that unlock promises of a better tomorrow. Every table spoke a different language, and yet the message was the same. The anticipation was harmonious and, just as I internalized these surroundings, a man in a yellow shirt walked up to our table and said, “Fogo.” Bug-eyed we sat, as this word was not in the travel booklet. We cautiously followed a herd of what looked like thousands of environmental change agents to safety as a section of the Pavilions in the Blue Zone caught on fire. Thankfully, no one was hurt, though all 1000+ of us were reminded of the importance of building climate-resilient infrastructure in our buildings and in our homes. We witnessed the environmental manifestation of urgency for implementation.

While policies are crafted, we must enable the technical education and communication of these systems to advance equitable and healthy conditions for our communities.

The next day, we were allowed to visit the Green Zone, where I reunited with a Swedish delegate who shared how interdisciplinary his work has been. By his side was another from South Korea who was excited to see students participating. They both agreed that, while this work can be intense, it pays off to uplift voices and continue learning with each assignment. From the perspective of being a student in Real Estate, this means remaining nimble enough to learn about risk & regulation from the perspective of people and planet. Knowing where to invest so that not only communities but also agricultural ecosystems and land can see beneficial returns, avoiding the degradation that leads to unstable construction sites, food deserts, and potential increases in housing disparities.

COP30 may not have delivered on all its promises, but it certainly had the spirit to empower this generation’s solution-makers with the right dots to connect. The first step is converting the work from pen to action.

Aminieli Hopson is a senior studying Real Estate and Urban Economics.

As I reflect on COP30, I keep coming back to one central idea: climate work is about people. When I say people, I do not mean it in the Bill Gates way. I mean people in the human sense. People with stories, cultures, memories, and lived experiences that shape how they move through the world. People whose lives are touched by climate change long before it ever becomes a headline or a negotiating point. People who carry knowledge that does not come from textbooks but from daily life, from land, from history, from relationships. These are the people whose experiences define climate reality, far beyond the technocratic lens that tries to manage suffering instead of transforming the systems that create it. One of the most meaningful parts of COP30 was realizing how my own lived experiences shape the way I see the world and the way I understand this crisis. The values I grew up with, the communities I have been part of, and the moments in my life when I felt both supported and unheard all influenced how I responded to what I saw in Belém. In many ways, COP30 made me more aware of how personal climate work is. It touches everything from where we come from to what we care about to how we show up for each other.

Our cohort played a huge role in shaping that understanding. We came from different places and were drawn to different aspects of climate work. Some of us focused on justice, others on technology, international systems, or environmental health. We had different academic backgrounds, cultural perspectives, and personal motivations. What made the experience powerful was the way we all brought our full selves to it and I learned how climate change intersects with identity in ways I had not fully appreciated before. COP30 also taught me that lived experience is not something separate from climate work. It is part of what shapes climate justice, resilience, and policy. People who live through storms, displacement, heat, or pollution carry knowledge that cannot be found in reports or negotiation texts. People whose lives intersect with social, economic, and cultural challenges understand the complexity of transition in ways that academic theory alone cannot capture. Any meaningful path forward has to center those voices and bridge the gap between policy and lived reality. Looking ahead, I want to build spaces where people feel heard and supported. I want to work in ways that respect different perspectives and value the power of community. I want to make room for lived experience in every climate conversation I am part of, whether big or small. COP30 reinforced that climate action is not only a global responsibility, but also a human one, shaped by the connections we make and the communities we build. That is the lesson I am taking with me, and the one I hope to honor moving forward.

Andy Zhang is a senior studying environmental economics and environmental sciences.