Climate Change Negotiations for schools

Von Haug / Kaegi / Wetzel

The Climate Change Negotiations activity: simulating a world climate change conference

The Royal Meteorological Society developed a new partnership between climate scientists, educators, social scientists and dissemination experts to provide teachers with an accessible, innovative, interactive and long lasting resource to engage pupils in a topical debate on climate change. Primarily aimed at supporting secondary geography, the Climate Change Negotiations Pack will also help engage students with wider societal issues and encourage interaction in which negotiating skills, critical thinking and political debate can be explored. Specifically, the resource will teach about the complexity of climate change science as well as about geo-politics and negotiations and their intersection with climate change, investigating the rationale of different countries, their emissions, vulnerability and potential for action. 

This project will develop a stand-alone climate change negotiation resource for UK schools, bringing together rigorous climate science and good pedagogy. To maximise use of the resource, it will be tailored to meet the requirements of specific GCSE and A level specifications, as well as the Scottish Curriculum for Excellence. It will differ from other climate change negotiation events which have already been developed for schools in that it will be a classroom resource, for use during standard lessons, without the need for expert input or previous preparation. This should allow its widespread use, widening participation and giving far more students ownership of the question of our response to climate change, whether or not they already have an interest in debate or climate. 

The resource will be made available on the Royal Meteorological Society’s websites and access will be both free and unrestricted.

This work was funded by the Royal Meteorological Society and is supported by Rimini Protokoll, based on their theatre production for Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg: World Climate Change Conference, 2014.