Associate Professor Jessica O’Reilly took 16 Indiana University students to the United Nation's 28th Conference of Parties last semester.
(Courtesy of Indiana University)
Indiana University students and faculty joined the international climate discussion at the recent United Nation’s 28th Conference of Parties.
COP28, held in Dubai last month, included leaders and negotiators from more than 200 countries, according to NPR. The conference ended with calls to transition away from fossil fuels — the leading cause of climate change.
Jessica O’Reilly, associate professor in the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies, led 16 IU students of all levels to the conference. She began taking students to the meeting in 2018.
She said she encourages students to learn what they’re good at and think about how they can contribute to climate change solutions.
“There's not one path of study, or one way to solve climate change,” O’Reilly said. “This is a global problem caused by global systems that we all participate in. And therefore it requires diverse solutions.”
This year, O'Reilly selected 16 IU students. She said she usually takes 14-18 students. (Courtesy of Indiana University)
Though O’Reilly has taken students to past meetings and attended alone for her research, she said this is the first year with an official class and a full delegation. The class, International Climate Governance, drew about 100 student applications. O’Reilly plans to offer the class and trip again next fall.
Students apply with a specific research topic in mind, O’Reilly said. Though students can come from any academic background, selected ones usually have leadership or extracurricular experiences and have taken classes on the climate or environment. Students studying the language of the conference’s host country also have a leg up on the competition.
“I'm trying to build a delegation that's representative of our intellectual endeavors here at IU, as well as the different kinds of research projects and career career trajectories that the students are interested in pursuing,” she said. “And I'm trying to cover all sorts of climate topics.”
The trip was funded by six IU colleges and schools as well as the Center for International Business Education and Research.
About 85,000 people attended COP28, the UNsaid. These conferences are like circuses, O'Reilly said.
Each day students started by amping themselves up with their playlists as they woke up early in the morning, O’Reilly said. From there, the class spent 10-16 hours at the venue, visiting events based on their research topic.
She said sometimes attendees might cross paths with the likes of Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton, or they might end up at a dance party hosted by Indonesia. At the main negotiation meetings, countries debate documents line-by-line.
The conference, which began Nov. 30, ended a day late on Dec. 13 after “intense overnight negotiations” on fossil fuel language, according to a UNrelease. NPR reports activists and leaders from countries most likely to be impacted by climate change were outraged by their lack of input and the final document.
There were a lot of steps forward, O’Reilly said, but sometimes these steps lag behind local and regional climate efforts. Still, these conversations and consensus are important.
“It was the first time that fossil fuels were named explicitly as something that our global economy, our global society needs to move away from,” O’Reilly said. “That's really significant, particularly coming from the United Arab Emirates and that presidency.”
This year's meeting was held in Dubai. In the second week, IU students had dinner and cultural exchange at the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Centre for Cultural Understanding. (Courtesy of Indiana University)
In addition to calling for the transition away from fossil fuels, COP28 ended with a plan to direct millions of dollars from richer nations to developing countries suffering from climate change, NPR reported. Nations agreed to create a loss and damage fund and pledged $700 million.
“This is a big deal, especially for the least developed countries that are most impacted by anthropogenic climate change,” O’Reilly said. “The funding that went into it is significant. Of course, it's not sufficient, and this is a pattern we see around these climate negotiations.”
In the background of conversations about major climate issues, people share ideas, network and form collaborations, she said. While international policy is being developed, students — along with academics and local or regional leaders from around the world — discover ideas to bring home.
Along with students, each year IU faculty and staff working on climate change issues attend the conferences. Staff from the Indiana Economic Development Corporation attended this year. Last year at COP27 in Egypt, Gov. Eric Holcomb tagged along.
“A lot of the big numbers of people who are there, they are there to work on bringing ideas home, and hopefully building climate resilience from the ground up as well,” O’Reilly said.
Aubrey is our higher education reporter and a Report For America corps member. Contact her at aubmwrig@iu.edu or follow her on Twitter at @aubreymwright.
