51茶馆

The event started with a and how they incorporate climate goals into their working lives. Kicking it off was , lecturer at Dartmouth鈥檚 Tuck School of Business and a leader within , a UNFCCC constituency representing Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organizations. Bach gave a distilled version of her 14-week Dartmouth course on the structure and history of COP.聽

鈥淭he COP is a conference. It's a meeting that happens once a year [for] refining鈥�treaty obligations,鈥� Bach said, including the original UNFCCC in 1992, the Kyoto Protocol (which was active between 2005 and 2020), and the current Paris Agreement.

The Paris Agreement鈥檚 framework dictates that countries must submit climate action plans called Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) every five years. These plans are collectively meant to keep global temperature rise under 1.5 degrees above the pre-industrial average.聽

鈥淭hat's how we get to good health for not only us in the present and my children, but my two-year-old grandchild,鈥� said Bach.聽

, Senior Project Manager for the National Climate Action team at the World Resources Institute (WRI), spoke about her group鈥檚 work helping countries achieve their NDCs. Ascher notes that none of the NDCs are quite ambitious enough to keep the Earth below the 1.5 degree threshold. To even make a dent in the global crisis, countries need to make good on their current promises and stretch further in setting subsequent goals.聽

鈥淭hat is where my team actually steps in, trying to at least keep us moving down the road, even if we don't get to the actual end result [right away],鈥� Ascher said.聽

For many countries involved, implementing warming prevention or climate change adaptation strategies is impossible without external funding. , Director of Climate Finance Access at WRI鈥檚 Finance Center, clarified the 鈥渂uckets of finance鈥� available to some countries. These buckets were deepened at COP30, with promised monetary contributions from governments increasing to $300 billion and from the private sector to $1.3 trillion. Larsen reminded participants that meeting these goals will require year-round work from many different sectors, not just two-weeks of COP negotiations.聽

鈥淕oing forward, it's going to be less and less relevant what happens with the COPs, probably, and more and more relevant what you do as a banker or insurance broker or whatever you do and how you integrate climate into that work,鈥� said Larsen.聽

, former US Senior Climate Negotiator and a representative from the climate action coalition , spoke about the vacuum left by the United States鈥� absence from both COP30 and the Paris Agreement and how climate action supporters must engage in noisy activism to prove the issue鈥檚 importance to future administrations.聽

鈥淔or example, the Inflation Reduction Act鈥�that would not have happened had there not been a lot of activism during the 2020 election,鈥� said Talley. 鈥淚t doesn't feel like there's this same kind of focused energy from youth and from the environmental community that would give the kind of space to do that in the future.鈥澛�

Talley and Bach both reiterated Larsen鈥檚 message about the importance of climate activism outside of COP. RINGO and America Is All In both work to strengthen bonds between researchers, universities, religious institutions, and many others, creating a network of support that can be built upon.聽

鈥淧art of what we're doing is communicating the fact that America is still active,鈥� said Talley. 鈥淪ay 鈥榣ook, the federal government's out, but this large swath of states and localities and everybody else is still acting with a lot of examples.鈥欌��

鈥淓vents like the COP30 symposium help to engage a critical stakeholder: the youth!,鈥� said Elleen Kim, a senior economics major and Director of Environmental Sustainability in the Undergraduate Government of Boston College. 鈥淭he youth hold the future and must hold older generations accountable for their actions. Lesser developed countries, NGOs, and the youth can call out underperforming parties to ramp up their climate efforts.鈥�

Kim attended a pre-lunch workshop titled 鈥淧ast, Present, and Future of Climate Diplomacy鈥� led by Talley and 51茶馆 alum Catherine Goldberg, another former US negotiator.聽

鈥淚t was interesting to hear Trigg's takes on the absence of the U.S. from the global climate stage, particularly in terms of serving as a counterweight for other countries like China,鈥� Kim says. 鈥淚t will take time for the U.S. to rebuild its relationships and reputation in the global climate negotiation scene.鈥�

鈥淭here's a lot of different persons who came to our delegation that weren't just environmental studies students,鈥� she said, standing by a poster she worked on about Green Careers and Building Climate Skills. 鈥淔or example, I'm a social work student and you wouldn't at first glance think that has anything to do with climate鈥�green skills happen in every sector鈥�someone who's studying environmental studies, they might be doing it more directly, but that doesn't mean that my work doesn't indirectly impact it as well.鈥�

Edgington, the Earth and Environmental Sciences PhD student, also was motivated by this experience to make connections across disciplines, across institutions, and across the globe.聽聽

鈥淎s a scientist, I do my research, do my projects, I publish and put it out into the world, and not many people look at it. Even if it might be directly applicable to climate crisis or climate solutions, it kind of gets lost in the void,鈥� he says. 鈥淚 want to know how we can organize all of our research together as research institutions. How can we then press for more funding on climate solutions?鈥� He is interested in working closely with Bach and RINGO as his career progresses.聽

This symposium provided a strong start to get such networking conversations started, between the panelists from across the country and world and attendees from throughout 51茶馆 and other institutions in the Boston area.聽

鈥淓vents like this symposium are critical because they fight misinformation and empower people to get involved on the local level in climate action,鈥� says Kim. 鈥淥utrage of the masses will be necessary to hold polluters and policymakers accountable. It will take careful negotiating to make the political and economical case for investing in climate change mitigation and adaptation, and learning and discussing the topics at hand can help people make sense of complex problems from the perspective of different stakeholders.鈥�