Climate Interactive

Pakistan Hosts Competitive World Climate & World Energy Simulations

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By Omer Akif

Pakistan is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change in the world. It is the world’s sixth most populated nation, however, a significant portion of its citizens remain oblivious to the magnitude of the challenge that we face. In order to bridge this gap of knowledge and action, I started COP in My City Pakistan (a local chapter of the international youth project, Climates) in partnership with the Ministry of Climate Change and the Friedrich Naumann Foundation of Freedom. We organised a two day World Climate and World Energy simulation workshop for university students from across Pakistan.  “COP in My City Islamabad 2017” took place on the 14th and 15th of October 2017 with around 50 participants from 22 universities representing diverse academic backgrounds from law to environmental science to business, and from undergraduate, graduate and doctorate levels.

The simulation was structured in a competition style with the participants being judged by a number of experts on their negotiation skills. My team was instructed by the Ministry of Climate Change to put together such an event to mobilise Pakistani youth on Climate Change as a lead-up to COP 23 in Bonn. Two of the best performing participants would be sponsored to attend COP 23 alongside the national delegation.

I first came across the World Climate and World Energy simulations during my junior year at college while searching for ideas for an interesting class activity for a sustainability course. Even though I was unable to run the simulations at that time, they gave me an idea for a grand event for university students to raise awareness about climate change and mobilise them towards climate action. Since, this was the first simulation in Pakistan, we anticipated that participants would be understandably uncertain and a bit confused about the purpose and format of the simulation. In the weeks preceding the actual event, we assigned participants different negotiating blocs/regions for World Climate and World Energy simulations and sent them the briefing statements. In order to contextualise the simulation to the local context, we added another negotiating bloc of Pakistan to the mix.

The event began with a brief opening address by Pakistan’s Federal Secretary of the Ministry of Climate Change, who highlighted the importance of climate change action and the role of youth in this process. Participants were then provided a comprehensive overview of the World Climate simulation and given detailed instructions on the rules and structure of the simulation.

Amidst all the excitement and ambiguity leading up to the event, it was great to see participants quickly settling into the role-playing mindset and actively engaging with their fellow negotiators in discussions regarding their positions and negotiating points.

What followed next was two days of intense debate, fluctuating emotions, solid arguments and a heavy dosage of climate change jargon that not many were familiar with until recently.

Despite many students having little or no prior knowledge of climate change and the UN negotiations, it soon became apparent that everyone had carefully read their briefing statements and thoroughly researched the positions of their respective countries/blocs. After a long and tiring first day of intense negotiations with sessions of plenary statements, moderated and un-moderated negotiations and final pledges, the parties were able to limit global warming levels to an ambitious 2.3 degrees Celsius, which was further reduced by another 0.2 degrees in the final round of negotiations on second day.

The simulation undoubtedly, turned out to be a great success and arguably proved to be a far more effective and exciting tool for communicating essential aspects of international climate negotiations compared to some sort of a lecture series or conference which would not have been half as interesting as this. Organising and moderating the World Climate and World Energy simulations, has been one of the most rewarding and great-learning experiences of my life. Not only did the participating students get educated on various aspects of climate change such as adaptation, mitigation, Green Climate Fund etc., I personally found the exercise to be extremely useful to learn about unique perspectives on existing issues from people belonging to different fields. The whole experience has also strengthened my commitment to exponentially increase efforts to promote the World Climate simulation in small communities throughout Pakistan and to educate the youth and encourage them to initiate projects on climate change that are both meaningful and transformative in their own capacities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The following are some of the experiences shared by the participants as shared in the post-surveys.

“It made me feel more responsible for climate change and made me understand how my actions have great impact on climate change”

“It made me feel like I was actually advocating for the countries I was assigned to and I felt empowered in a sense that I actually can or might be able to make a difference in something so important, globally.

“I am happy and felt engaged as I had to negotiate with different team members in each round”

“It feels great. It increased my sensitivity to the issue and updated my knowledge in this regard. I strongly felt that we should force the rest of the world to realise the need to take some serious step”

“I was actually surprised by just how many people feel strongly and are passionate about addressing climate change”

“I was surprised that despite realising climate change is a threat, nations are not taking any serious stance to address it

“The simulation demonstrations were surprising, particularly the results we got by inserting values of our proposals”

“Best part about the simulation was coordination, team work, and attempt to hear different points of view and bring practical solutions without sacrificing self-interest”

“It increased my sensitivity to the issue and updated my knowledge”

Tips on how to Customize World Climate for Different Audiences

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Laura Tucker, from Jefferson County, Washington, shares her tips of facilitating World Climate with middle schoolers and adults in 2017. 

Participants at a past World Climate event.  © Bindu Bhandari

I was asked by the local Unitarian Church to offer a climate change class for their adult learning program.  After watching an introductory video about C-ROADS, I thought World Climate would be the ideal way to start the class.  I agreed with Climate Interactive’s assertion that you can run the simulation without having all the science behind climate change.

1st Tip: Test

I decided to try out the simulation with high school students first before using it in an adult class since the students would give me honest feedback about how it went.  It would also allow me to adapt the simulation to my adult audience as well as get some good practice before teaching it to a group with high expectations.

I ‘borrowed’ three 10th-grade classes who would study climate change later in the year.  I was amazed at how well it went with no prior instruction.  It took a little while for them to figure out how to negotiate, but once they got the hang of it, and had the right students in charge, they did exceptionally well.  There wasn’t enough time in the class to allow for a second round of negotiations, so the pressure was ‘on’ to get it right the first time.  The students all rose to the challenge. I was fascinated at some of their ideas.

One group representing the European Union decided that deforestation was a huge issue and offered the Developing Nations $1 per tree not to cut them down.  I suggested they get some data about the number of trees that would be cut to get a dollar figure.  They hit the internet.  It was billions.  The next thing I heard was that they were offering $33 billion to The Green Climate Fund.  I asked where they were getting that figure and they responded it was what the EU spends on defence.  They felt the Green Climate Fund was a much better ‘buy’. That took my breath away.

Of the three classes, two got their emissions down to just over 2°C of warming.  One group actually got their emissions low enough to ‘save the world’ with only 1.75°C of warming!  In soliciting their feedback during the debrief session, I asked the students what they thought the adults would do when they played the simulation the following week.  The students were worried that the adult group wouldn’t get serious about negotiating and would let the world ‘cook’.  I reminded them that the adult group was a bunch of Unitarians, and I would let them know if their prediction was accurate.

2nd Tip: Animate the roles

The next week, I started the adult climate change class with the C-ROADS simulator.  As a way to get to know one another, I made name tags for the participants with the name of their country or countries and the relative CO2 footprint per capita of that group in a coloured bubble with relative size to the others. For example: –

  • United States – 17 tons
  • Other Developed Countries – 10.5 tons
  • China – 7.7 tons
  • European Union- 6.9 tons
  • Other Developing Countries – 2.5 tons
  • India – 1.9 tons

It was a great way to identify what country each person represented and also see the relative carbon footprint per person in that country or group of countries.  Great visual!

3rd Tip: Customize the slides 

I also edited the slide show and used some of my own slides to augment points I felt were important to this audience.  I always include a visual of the Greenhouse Effect to make sure all participants understand that fundamental part of climate change.  One the negotiations started, the group jumped right in to the negotiations and the room was very animated from the start.  I found the adults were taking their roles quite seriously.  Some were unwilling to budge on what they perceived to be the country or countries’ perspective.  The confidential briefings provided by World Climate were extremely helpful.

4th Tip: Allocate time for deep dive

One addition I found necessary was to have some networked computers available for fact-checking and information gathering.  They were used extensively during the simulation.

After two rounds of negotiations, it turned out that the students were right.  The adults held on to their country’s (countries’) needs and wouldn’t back down, keeping warming at 4+°C.  In our debrief, it took the whole group to come out of their roles and reach some conclusions about emissions in order to keep warming under 2°C.  Mostly, that involved the U.S. capping their emissions quickly and drawing down even faster.  They were amazed at how much that made a difference, and how little a difference the European Union made.  The idea of relative CO2 output was made real!

I will use this simulation again!  It seems to work beautifully as a stand-alone activity, or as the kick-off to a course on climate change.  I deeply appreciate all the hard work Climate Interactive has done  in order to make this so successful!

Join the Creative Learning Exchange for World Climate @DynamiQueST

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On March 16, the Creative Learning Exchange is hosting a World Climate Simulation at the DynamiQueST event at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.  Each year, DynamiQueST showcases the use of systems thinking and system dynamics tools in K-12 education.

Last year, the World Climate Simulation made the event accessible to those who have not had experience with systems thinking, as well as continuing to showcase our students who are already using systems tools to enhance their critical thinking.

At DynamiQueST, students and their teachers will work together to chart a course to reduce emissions.  Employing current climate change science and a computer model, they will see the effect of proposed policies in real-time.

The morning will be spent running the simulation. A system dynamics expert, George Richardson, will highlight several of the basic systems take-aways from the simulation. During lunch, student projects will showcase how utilizing systems tools can create deeper thinking. During the afternoon, the students will use metacognitive systems tools and skills to reflect on the morning’s experience.

The student projects explore complex social problems like the opioid epidemic and the destruction of the cod fishing industry. You’ll hear directly from the students as they share their understanding from using tools that helped them develop their skills in

  • Critical thinking
  • Navigating dynamic complexity (when cause and effect are separated by time and space)
  • Communicating effectively
  • Understanding balancing and reinforcing feedback processes. 

How To Sign Up

Register at the CLE website or email the director, Lees Stuntz.

  1. All students and teachers are welcome. Cost for the day: $25 per person, including lunch. Bring a full car – $100 for 5 participants.
  2. Students wishing to present a project should email Lees Stuntz at (stuntzln@clexchange.org)

Future Sustainability Leaders negotiate Climate Change in St. Gallen, Switzerland

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By Kathrin Zirn, Reutlingen University On 9 October 2017, a World Climate workshop was held as part of a student-driven Responsible Leadership Seminar of Oikos International in St. Gallen, Switzerland. The facilitator, was Kathrin Zirn, an International Business student from Reutlingen University, who had previously participated in World Climate simulations as part of her System Dynamics class with World Climate Ambassador Prof Florian Kapmeier. Her Oikos LEAP (Sustainability Leadership) scholarship gave her the opportunity to play this insightful game with future sustainability leaders from all around the world.

After the introduction of the C-ROADS simulator, some scientific background on recent climate change science and a briefing on the respective delegations and interest groups, the participants from a total of 27 countries dived into their roles as party delegates at the UN climate summit. Once the negotiating groups had agreed on their strategy, the head of each delegation presented their pledges to the plenary. When all pledges had been made and the simulation results were visible on C-ROADS, the goal of keeping global temperature rise well below 2 degrees was still far from being achieved and the discussions, especially between developed and developing nations heated up. At the end of the workshop, the 20C goal had not been achieved, but the simulation exercise made all participants come to a crucial conclusion about the complexity of climate science and politics and the challenges that the UN states were facing.

All participants were members of Oikos International, a student-driven organization for sustainability in economics and management with chapters in 45 countries all over the world. Thus, the interest in sustainability and related topics such as climate change was extremely high and kept the participants very motivated throughout the session. Here are some quotes from the participants.

“I loved the World Climate Simulation! It was a lot of fun and gave a good picture on how the UN climate discussion works and which parts of the world would need to do what. For the next time, I would suggest further insights on what the impact of forestation/deforestation is and, after we put in the numbers into the simulation, which numbers were most harming, maybe with color codes on each column.”  Svante Bengtsson, Chalmers Students for Sustainability, Sweden

“This simulation is great to open our eyes. It shows us how urgent it is to change our current lifestyles. In my opinion every high school and university should implement this game in their education in order to teach us something which is really important!” Paula Heeß, Oikos University Bayreuth, Germany

Sharing is caring, thus many participants concluded the session committing that they would definitely run the simulation in their home countries in the near future to spread awareness on climate change and the need for immediate action.

World Climate teaches Climate Negotiations to Economics Students at University of Pretoria

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By Roula Inglesi-Lotz, Associate Professor, Department of Economics

In October 2017, for a second consecutive year, postgraduate students of the module “Economics of Energy and the Environment” offered by the Department of Economics, University of Pretoria, negotiated towards a global agreement on climate change aiming at keeping the increase of temperature at 2oC compared to pre-industrial levels.

I came across World Climate in 2016 when developing the above-mentioned module and needed alternative assessment opportunities that would engage students with the taught material and allow me to evaluate their deeper understanding of topics such as climate change, emission reductions, energy efficiency etc. I got excited not only by the idea of a simulation exercise, but also by the plethora of information, guiding documents, and resource materials available online.

The introduction of the session in both years was relatively short as the students were already knowledgeable about climate change issues and consequences which we tackle throughout the module. In the 2016 session, the students received their briefings on the day of the simulation. Some gave feedback afterwards that they would have preferred to have more information beforehand to be prepared. Thus, in 2017, I separated them into groups and gave them the information a couple of weeks before.

The discussion took place in a lecture room adjusted to serve as a boardroom, with I being the facilitator of the mock negotiations. A 3-region mode was selected (six students in 2016 and nine in 2017). In order to illustrate the differences in resources among the different country groups, snacks and water was served for the Developed countries, dried fruit for the Developing A group and nothing for the Developing B group.

The twist I introduced to get them out of their comfort zone was to assign them to country groups, opposite to their backgrounds and the beliefs and opinions they had expressed during the semester. Since now the students had to negotiate in favour of countries that they did not believe, they had to put themselves in the other side’s shoes and learn to argue both ways. That resulted in a few interesting discussions but it was remarkable to observe how aggressive and strict the negotiators were.

For example, a student from DR Congo that traditionally during the semester, expressed opinions against the developed countries and stressed their responsibility to the dire conditions we experience now, had to support the developed nations’ opinion of not having to carry all the weight of the emissions reduction. The disadvantage to this was that the delegates were more eager to give up their initial pledges and positions. Jokingly, we all agreed at the end that maybe this is the future of climate change negotiations: US negotiators representing developing countries, developing countries negotiators representing China, and Chinese negotiators representing US. In 2017, this effect was not as prominent, although some students showed difficulties in representing a group not so “close to the heart”.

One of the students described the simulation as follows:

“What this session taught me though was how negotiations work. I really tried to imagine that I was acting on behalf of my group of countries and that the consequences were real. What I saw was that, even just thinking the money was real, I was more concerned with “beating” the other countries and not conceding as much as they did than actually stopping climate change. I can see how in real climate negotiations, where the stakes are exponentially higher, how this would happen with world leaders with huge egos. Which is why nothing will ever come of these debates unless there is a crisis that forces action (even then the countries with the highest stake will dominate the proceedings).”

Another student continued:

“…I would have rather split the countries up by continent but in the same manner. By this I mean, developed in Europe, developing A from Africa and so on, leading to more participants as well as having to formulate ideas beneficial to each specific continent.”

Another student added:

“Although we all had the best interests at heart, particularly in the first round of negotiations, we focused and argued on financial pledges that actually do not have bit impact, if not followed by emissions reduction commitment and action. As such, we did not achieve the goal temperature as much as we should have. To move from 4.5oC to 2oC [where we only moved down to 3oC after the second round of negotiations], we should have actually spoken more about the effects of our annual emission reduction rates and there should have been more urgency in terms of the years we take to stabilise, particularly the Developing A nations are guilty as charged. I do wish we could also see in the simulation the effect of technological improvements of the developing nations in that time, such as energy intensity improvements, and how that could have amplified our pledges in terms of moving towards the target temperature”.

One of the participants summarised the simulation as follows:

“Four factors appear to quicken mitigation efforts towards climate change; 1) The earlier the countries attain their GHG emission peak levels the more significant the effect; 2) The sooner they commence their reduction in GHG emissions the more significant will be the effect; 3)The higher the rate of GHG emission reduction rate per year the higher the impact in reducing global temperatures and finally 4) reduction in use of oil and coal has a higher impact than reduction in deforestation”.

The World Climate simulation is the most interesting session of the whole semester for me as a lecturer. I observe in action all the knowledge I have transferred to my students. I am particularly proud of moments when I hear the students using theories and arguments from the taught literature and materials to support their opinions. I consider the exercise a valuable tool to respond to comments such as “but all countries agree that climate change will have extreme negative consequences, why don’t they all agree to help?”. Now my students comprehend fully the mechanisms of international climate negotiations and they have experienced in action why they are not fruitful most of the times.

Being students from primarily low economic backgrounds, their focus in the negotiations has been primarily the Fund, the possible effects on economic growth (for instance, “China” argued with the Developed countries “let us grow to your standard of living and then we will come to the table to deal with environmental concerns”).  The simulation exercise will definitely continue being party of the module in the coming years not only because the students love the experience, but also because it provides an excellent assessment tool on the understanding of the topic of climate change. You can watch our 2016 session here.

German High Schools to Learn about Climate Change using World Climate Tools

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We are inspired by the tireless efforts of our World Climate Ambassador, Florian Kapmeier, to ensure that World Climate becomes one of the tools for teaching climate change in high schools in Germany. At a side-event at COP 23 in Bonn, Florian presented the outcome of this collaboration with the Ministry of Education of the State of Baden-Württemberg see slides below).

The translated materials can be found on the Ministry’s website. They have also been widely shared with various stakeholders across Germany including the national sustainability platform, the German UNESCO Commission, Greenpeace Germany, Ministry of Education of Northrhine Westfalia among others.

Florian has also been running World Climate and World Energy with university students, teachers, sustainability opinion leaders among others.

World Climate Ambassadors Florian Kapmeier and Eduardo Fracassi  and Prof John Sterman facilitate a WC at COP 23

 

This is great news to the World Climate Community as it confirms our firm believe at Climate Interactive that indeed our interactive tools can be adapted by different actors to fit their needs for climate education, advocacy, research, development and many other facets of climate change action. We hope Florian’s effort will inspire you to seek ways of adapting and improving these freely materials for your audiences.