On 19 November 2024, to coincide with the United Nations COP29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan, British Council Northern Ireland will host a COP29 climate negotiation simulation event in Belfast, Northern Ireland. We are delighted to partner with British Council Northern Ireland to support 6 students from 3 schools in Ireland to attend the event for the first time. Students from Ireland will join approximately 150 students from schools in Northern Ireland for this special event which gives young people the opportunity to experience negotiating a climate deal. Playing the part of world leaders, Non-Governmental Bodies (NGOs) or Media, students will be tasked with taking part in a real-life climate simulation, aiming to produce a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Students will be given a brief in advance of the event which they are to work on in groups throughout the day. Find out more here and see below for a video and pictures from last year's event in Belfast.
This event comes under the Climate Strand of our work in Youth Connect, British Council's global youth leadership programme which supports young people to develop the skills, inspiration and connections to tackle major challenges, such as climate change, employability and inequality. See the link below to find out more about our work in this area.
About British Council COP Climate Negotiation Simulation Events
During COP29, the world’s attention will again focus on climate change. Young people from across the UK will gather together to think about and discuss the challenges that key leaders face on this global issue. Working with local partners, the British Council will organise a series of climate negotiation simulation events for students across the UK, coinciding with the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 29), which takes place in Azerbaijan from 11 - 25 November 2024.
These simulation events offer a face to face role-playing exercise based around the UN climate change negotiations using materials developed by Climate Interactive, part of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative.
Students (aged 16-18) will take on the different roles of those people who are actively working in this field: world leaders, non-governmental bodies (NGOs) and the media. Working in groups which represent a country, a region or a lobby group, the students will take part in a simulation of a real-life climate negotiation. While each group looks at the issue from a different angle, they will come together to produce a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep the global temperature from rising above 1.5%.
Through the simulation, participants explore the rate of change and level of action that nations must take to address global climate change. During the negotiations, the students’ proposals are fed into a computer programme, which uses real-life data to model what the consequences of the proposals would be. This gives them the opportunity to better understand how climate negotiations, such as the UN Climate Change Conferences operate. It also allows them the opportunity to work with students from other schools to reach a consensus on the issue.
In 2024, British Council will run four new simulation events: in Edinburgh (31 October), Cardiff (6 November), London (7 November), Baku (17 November) and Belfast (19 November). Similar events took place across November-December 2023 in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Manchester, Belfast and London. Find out more here.
