Africa, Central and South America, South and Southeast Asia, most of the Middle East, and the island nations of the Pacific, Indian Ocean, and the Caribbean

When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt…

tense, uncomfortable, and even helpless. All the countries were asking for us to do more, like decrease our emissions per person), even though the developing countries have the second-lowest carbon emissions per person (2.5%). 

How did your reaction, comments, feelings; and shifts (if any) in negotiating positions evolve across the rounds and discussions?

In the beginning, I did not feel as threatened. However, during the second round, all the other nations seemed to be frustrated with us because we had little to contribute towards lowering global warming below 2°C. Even though the other developing countries did not cause the problem, we seemed to be attacked, especially by the United States. 

How did your group change their ideas?

After the second round, and with much pressure from the other nations, we decided to annual reduction rate from 0% to about 1.5%, but even that was not enough to lower the rate to 2%.

What prompted that change?

All the other nations pressuring us prompted that change. 

In the end, do you think that emissions can be cut?

I think it will be possible if all the nations made it a priority and if all the nations would join together instead of arguing with each other about the cost. However, I do not know if this will actually happen because each nation has its own concerns.

What were the major costs and barriers to implementation of participant proposals?

As the other developing countries, we needed money and therefore, could not contribute to the costs for the global fund. We could not significantly cut emissions because the nations are still developing and progressing. Furthermore, the carbon emissions per person were already so low, it was hard to lower it even more. Being composed of many different countries made it hard for us because we had to worry about so many people and how these implementations would affect them.

How can we catalyze change in the US?

I think the best way we can catalyze change in the US is to educate the public about the danger of not doing anything towards global warming. Furthermore, the issue of global warming needs to be a bigger priority than it is currently.

When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt overwhelmed as so many countries were constantly trying to make agreements. Our country was China and we were the largest producers of CO2 emissions in the air and other countries couldn’t understand that we decreased our emissions a substantial amount, but it was still the highest because we started out with the most. It seemed as though everything we sacrificed had a little effect on bettering the world climate change situation.

After filling out the first chart, I was still somewhat unsure what our common goal was. I did not realize what we were negotiating until we began to speak with other tables/countries who had plans in mind. When everyone saw their country individually, most countries were thinking in somewhat selfish terms. It wasn’t until we were all working to lower the Carbon in the air did countries start to sacrifice more money and resources.

My table was China. We knew we were a large contributor to this problem and decided to give lots of money. Originally, our group was going to give 10 billion dollars and start our peak year in 2040. By the end of the discussions, we changed this to 13 billion and had our peak year in 2030. We did not decide to do this until the U.S. group told us they would match us if we gave a few more billions of dollars. We thought this was a good idea because the U.S. originally only gave $17.76. This was effective in that the emissions lowered and other countries benefited from China and the U.S. giving 13 billion each.

In reality, I think that the emissions can be cut, but not to a great extent. Every country, for the most part, looks out for themselves rather than the world as a whole. It was easy in our class for us to throw around money because we weren’t actually in charge of an entire country. In real life, diplomats are much stingier as they have to ensure the prosperity of all of their citizens.

China’s main problem was that we could not put a large percentage for afforestation because our country needs farmland that can not be taken over by trees. There are many starving inhabitants of China, so we could not match the afforestation levels of other countries.

Individually, each U.S. citizen can not make a lot of change in reducing the emissions of CO2, but, together, we can make a difference. If we spread awareness of the issue, consumers will boycott many large businesses that produce too much CO2. We can consult the government to make strict legislation over these big businesses.

By Eryn Hasty

When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt shocked.  I could not believe how much effort it was going to take from every single country in order to lower us to lower the global temperature increase by 2100. 

As the rounds progressed my feelings grew stronger, and honestly more frustrated.  I was part of India, who initially was one of the lowest contributing country to CO₂ emissions.  On the other hand, most of our country is in poverty so we needed money if we wanted to work towards lowering our emissions rates even more.  I became frustrated because there were many countries who had much higher rate, but also many more resources who became very stubborn as the process developed.  The other nations needed them to lower their rates, but they did not give in much.  It took so much negotiating. 

My group evolved our negotiations and ideas across the debate from asking for less money for India.  This change was prompted because we realized that there were much needier countries who were also asking for something, and we needed to team up with them in order to get money from larger developed countries as well as have them lower their emission rates.  We teamed up with the other developing countries and split the money contributed by the other countries in order to work towards lowering our emissions more.

Emissions can absolutely be cut, but I do not know how effectively and efficiently they can e cut in order to get out temperature increase well under the 2 degrees Celsius we were aiming for.  Negotiations become very tricky, and for us to lower by that much all of the countries would need to be a lot more generous with their promises to cut emissions and prevent deforestation/promote afforestation.

The biggest barrier we faced personally is our lack of money and difficulty getting the larger countries to provide to our efforts.  We already had low emission rates which was beneficial, but we also had no money and majority of our country is in poverty.  Because of this we were asking for money to help relieve the costs of our environmental efforts and benefit our citizens. 

In my opinion, in order for us to catalyze change we must do everything we can to lower our emissions rate.  To the best of our ability the citizens and government can switch to solar power and electric power that does not emit harmful CO₂ into our environment.  We can also create more green space instead of these concrete jungles we keep spreading.  We could also work towards aiding developing countries, so they have the opportunity to change their ways as well.  If we do everything we can then that is better than doing nothing.

When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt that although each country theoretically had a lot of power to make a change and implement goals for the future, there was very little wiggle room and it was frustrating because making change depended on the cooperation of so many other countries as well.
How did your reaction, comments, feelings; and shifts (if any) in negotiating positions evolve across the rounds and discussions? At first, I was not very clear on what exactly we were negotiating because we were filling out sheets individually as a country. As we entered them into the simulator and it calculated the degree of difference after each country’s contributions, I was able to better understand. Although it was difficult making a change and getting countries to agree on certain policies, it was very interesting because the simulation showed just how hard this is in reality (obviously multiplied by 1000). As the rounds went on I better understood what we were negotiating and how to go about making a substantial overall change.
How did your group change their ideas? My group was China, and our ideas did not really change at all throughout the rounds. We knew that we were a world superpower and would have to contribute, and also a large contributor of fossil fuels so that needed to be addressed. What changed throughout the rounds was our commitment to making a change. We increased our money contribution and decreased our peak date because we knew that these would have substantial impacts on the overall degree decrease because of China’s stance in the world.

What prompted that change? The change was prompted when we realized that China is a country that has the potential to have such a big impact, and we can afford and really really should, make the changes and commit to the betterment of our environment. Also, after negotiating with the United States and them agreeing to match our contribution and peak date also prompted us to make a change because we didn’t feel like we were the only ones making that much of an effort.
In the end, do you think that emissions can be cut? I think that emissions can be cut, as shown, because we decreased it down to 2.4º degrees, but it is really difficult because it takes the commitment and compromisation of all these different nations who all have different desires and needs.
What were the major costs and barriers to the implementation of participant proposals? As China, with such a large population, and much of it runs on industries/factories it was difficult to promise a huge rate of decrease because this is such a large part of our economy. Also, afforestation was not as feasible in China as it was in other countries because we have large cities and lots of farmland so it just wouldn’t really make sense.
How can we catalyze change in the US? It is important to raise awareness of the severity of the issues that can occur, extremely soon, because it cannot take a few or a small group of people but it takes a nation to convince and impact the administrations who have the ability to legislate change.

Nina Boone

    When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt like many countries were very stingy with their money and willingness to change the peak year of their country.

·      How did your reaction, comments, feelings; and shifts (if any) in negotiating positions evolve across the rounds and discussions? At first I didn’t really understand exactly what we were deciding upon but once other groups began discussing options with us I was able to grasp the idea that as China it was inevitable that we would produce a lot of CO2 emissions and minimizing them was important but the development of our country and its people was also very important.

·      How did your group change their ideas? At first we were giving $10 billion and had our peak year very late in 2040 but we changed these to $13 billion and 2030.

·      What prompted that change? The US table came to talk to us and convinced us to do this and said they would match us. This lowered emissions and gave money to India so they could also do the same.

·      In the end, do you think that emissions can be cut? Realistically I don’t think we could get it to the point we got it to in class which was and increase of 2.3 degrees Celsius. Many countries are way more stingy with their resources and policies than we were.

·      What were the major costs and barriers to implementation of participant proposals? Being China, our main barriers were that afforestation and spending a lot of money meant less farm land and resources for our people who are already struggling. This made us not make as much change as other countries.

·      How can we catalyze change in the US? We need to go to our administration to catalyze change because large amounts of CO2 emissions cannot simply be fixed in a singular household.

Over the past two class sessions, you participated in a World Climate negotiation role-playing exercise that explores the science and geopolitics of international agreements on climate change. The role-playing is grounded by a computer simulation of the dynamics of the climate system, C-ROADS, that has influenced the actual global negotiations. World Climate has been played by more than 30,000 people, from middle-school students to UN officials in dozens of countries worldwide. By participating in World Climate, you have hopefully gained insights into the causes of climate change and can now see the possibility of success in addressing the climate challenge.

·      When I played my role in the policy exercise, I felt frustrated that no one was willing to contribute money. I represented the other developing nations, and it quickly became clear that other countries did not want to contribute to our forestation efforts, despite the fact that our countries are most important in stopping CO2 emissions.

·      How did your reaction, comments, feelings; and shifts (if any) in negotiating positions evolve across the rounds and discussions? My feelings improved as the negotiating rounds went further. Countries contributed more and more money to our fund after realizing that our fund was worth contributing to. We received more and more money, so I felt validated that our cause was worthy. I also felt good because I knew we would now have the funds to make an actual impact in reducing carbon emissions.

·      How did your group change their ideas?Although we changed our reasoning about why we needed at least 200 billion, our ideas about the amount of money never changed. We came up with more evidence and reasoning to convince other countries to contribute, but we realized from the beginning that this effort would cost a lot of money regardless. We also agreed to allocate money to different resources.

·      What prompted that change? As we realized we were not getting enough money, we came up with more reasons why we needed it. In addition, as we came up with these reasons, we realized that in fact we deserved a lot more money than we initially anticipated, but we still had to compromise with an amount of money lower than what we originally wanted. We also allocated a different amount to different resources to maximize our co2 emission decrease by contributing to green energy. In order to assuage countries’ worries about corruption, we also allowed them to control where their funds went.

·      In the end, do you think that emissions can be cut?I believe that emissions can be cut, but it would take full commitment to decreasing emissions at the expense of every country’s economy. In addition, we will probably not be able to cut emissions down to an acceptable level until some negative changes have already happened, and we can almost defintiely not reach our goal of temperature raising less than 2 degrees. However, we still must try our best otherwise our entire planet will be gone. In addition, this is difficult because countries are greedy and will never fund the amount needed to the project. I think our only hope is investment into management technology.

·      What were the major costs and barriers to implementation of participant proposals?Green energy is much more expensive, and this means that our economy will slow if we actually implement it. In addition, everyone has different ideas about which proposals will actually work, meaning that individual projects did not receive enough funding because every country wanted to fund different initiatives. Countries were also worried about corruption, we disincentivized their contribution.

·      How can we catalyze change in the US? We must stop emissions through agriculture and industry by demanding big companies make a change. Although limiting individual consumption is important, we can make the most impact by reducing larger corporation emissions and consumption. This only comes through consumers demanding change or the government making large consumption and production illegal. We also have to dedicate a significant amount of funds to make real change. This again requires the support of the citizens and the demanding of the citizens to make this change.

Pictures of our first negotiations

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Resources:

• Simulation of Sea Level Rise: http://flood.firetree.net/
• Climate Bathtub Simulation: https://www.climateinteractive.org/tools/climate-bathtub-simulation/