UC San Diego Students to Participate in UN Climate Negotiations in Cancun
School of International Relations and Pacific Studies Inaugural Delegation Engages Students through Social Media
11/22/2010
San Diego, CA – The School of International Relations and Pacific Studies (IR/PS) at UC San Diego will send its first delegation of students to Cancun for the Sixteenth United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP-16), which begins November 29. Students will attend in conjunction with researchers from UC San Diego's Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
“Leadership skills emerge from both theory and practice. IR/PS has a faculty and curriculum that provides the intellectual tools to analyze climate policy. Sending this delegation to COP16 allows our students to accelerate their march toward leadership by learning through doing,” said IR/PS Dean Peter Cowhey.
The delegation of four IR/PS graduate students recently launched the COPDialogue social media campaign, which encourages the UC San Diego community and students from around the world to participate in a virtual dialogue with COP-16 attendees. COPDialogue is an environment in which students can experience COP-16 through the lens of graduate students, while accelerating knowledge about relevant, topical climate issues at a peer-to-peer level.
During the conference, students and youth leaders will pose interview questions on various climate change issues to international diplomats, NGO representatives, academics, and intergovernmental organization members and will help facilitate dialogues among scientists, policymakers and the media. The dialogue will be exchanged in ‘real-time’ through the student-led blog, UN Cimate Dialogue, and on Twitter.
The IR/PS student delegation is made up of students in the Master of International Pacific Affairs (MPIA) program: Lila Petersen, Erica Jue, Tyler Petersen, and Jarrod Russell.
For more information about COP-16, visit http://unfccc.int/2860.php and http://cc2010.mx/en.IR/PS media contact: Erica Jue at ejue@ucsd.edu or (650) 804-5175.
