Climate Talks Attendees Discuss Life After Copenhagen

Sustainability@BU and the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future co-hosted a panel discussion on Monday, April 5, 2010,  to offer an inside look at the roads leading to and from Copenhagen, featuring Boston University faculty and students who attended the UN Climate Change Conference. Speakers from the Pardee Center included Dr. Miquel Muñoz, Pardee Post-doctoral Fellow, and Prof. Cutler Cleveland, Pardee Faculty Fellow. Prof. Adil Najam, Director of the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future, was the moderator.

Boston University had sent a large contingent of students and faculty to the global climate change summit held at Copenhagen last December. This included BU students whose attendance had been supported by the BU Provost’s Office, the Office of the BU Dean of Students, and the Pardee Center. The Pardee Center which is a designated UN observer organization for the United Nations Convention on Climate Change had organized this participation.

This set of panels allowed BU faculty and students who had been at Copenhagen to analyze what their experience from attending these global negotiations. The panels focussed on the expectations that the participants had gone with to Copenhagen and also the lessons they brought back. In particular the student participants highlighted that the biggest surprise and lesson they brought back was about the importance of adaptation. A lot of the discussions in the two panels centered around the role played by the United States and by China in these negotiations. Further coverage of the event can be found here.

The first panel was titled “The Road to Copenhagen,” while the second maintained a focus on “The Road from Copenhagen.”

The program of the Seminar was as follows:

Panel 1: The Road to Copenhagen
Nalin Kulatilaka, Professor, School of Management
Cutler Cleveland, Professor, Geography & Environment
Rachel Szakmary, Graduate Student, Metropolitan College
Adam Peltz, Graduate Student, School of Law

Athena Laines, Senior, College of Arts & Sciences

Panel 2: The Road from Copenhagen
Paul McManus, Lecturer, School of Management
Miquel Muñoz, Post-doc Fellow, Pardee Center
Tom Nagle, Graduate Student, International Relations
Andrew Morgan, Graduate Student, Geography & Environment
Rachel Weil, Senior, College of Arts & Sciences