At lunch time today, several NGOs partnered up and “walked out” of COP19. They express their disappointment by the unsuccessful negotiations. Instead of wasting their time at the climate talks here in Warsaw, they will focus on mobilising people to push their governments to take serious climate action.
This action has attracted a lot of media attention and let’s hope that the message will reach governments.
Even though some of us did join the symbolic walk out (but went back into the stadium later), I feel that we as students of the University of Bayreuth are not doing anything. We’re here at COP, talk to a lot of people, learn a lot, are overwhelmed by the size and complexity of the conference and negotiations, but in the end our presence does not make any difference. What can we do to change that?
Global Change Ecology M.Sc. is devoted to understanding and analyzing the most important and consequential environmental concern of the 21st century; namely, Global Change. Problems of an entirely new and interdisciplinary nature require the establishment of innovative approaches in research and education. A special program focus is the linking of natural science perspectives on global change with approaches in social science disciplines.
