COPCAS 2022 – COP27

The sixth COPCAS took place during COP27 between the 7th and 18th of November 2022 which was hosted in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. This year, 23 PhD students took part in this COPCAS from the SCENARIO and FoodBioSystems Doctoral Training Partnerships and the School of Agriculture, Policy and Development, University of Reading.

As in previous years, a competition was run to select the SCENARIO students who would attend the conference. This year two students, one from SCENARIO DTP and one from FoodBioSystems DTP, were selected to attend COP27. For safety reasons, both students attended the conference during the second week. These students had full access to the conference’s Blue Zone as they held ‘Observer’ passes.

During COP27 itself, an updated, and dedicated space was made available for the COP CAS course in the Walker Institute, with face-to-face support from one member of the Walker Team during each session. Every weekday during COP27, the Climate Action Studio was open from 08:00 am until 17:00 pm. Support was also provided from the Walker ‘on the ground’ team who helped to identify interesting individuals for interview, facilitate the interviews, as well as provide a real-time link with events happening during the conference.

During this time, the students in Reading engaged remotely with COP, watching sessions via the official COP27 platform, conducting interviews, and discussing the issues they encountered on the day. They were also encouraged to write blog articles for topics which interested them. These blog posts were proof-read by the Walker Team, and then posted on the Walker Website, helping students develop their writing skills and improving their exposure. Students were also encouraged to write tweets for the Walker twitter account @WalkerInst. All the blogs were also shared with the University of Reading press office and publicised from the official media platforms. Students also created short video updates at the end of every day, which were also shared with the wider University community.

The UNFCCC streamed the panel and side events at COP27 from an area accessed on their website. Additionally, in a separate area of their website, it was possible to watch the plenary events, a range of ‘special events’ and press conferences. The streamed sessions remain available for a short amount of time on the website. They also had a dedicated YouTube channel which was easier to navigate. Some pavilion events were also streamed live and were accessible via YouTube or via their official webpage.

One of the most valuable activities that the students had the opportunity to do was to speak to a wide range of people attending the conference via MS Teams calls. These were often people who they would not have access to, from policy and practice contexts, but also people who are activists, and those currently experiencing the impacts of climate change. This was incredibly important in giving them exposure to different disciplines, sectors, perspectives, and ideas, as well as giving them contextual understanding of the fundamental reasons behind their research. A good mix of people from different backgrounds were interviewed, often sparking some very interesting discussions between the team outside of the interviews. The interviews were set up by the ‘on-the-ground’ team, and by the students themselves in the studio.

These interviews were extremely engaging activities and moved from traditional ‘interviews’ to discussions and dialogue on a range of research-policy-practice topics, as well as experiences of climate change. As we have found in previous years, the students were keen to explore issues outside of their research areas, and the discussions highlighted a clear interest in climate action. You can find the interviews below: 

Students this year produced more blogs than cohorts of previous years. Students benefited from feedback on their work before they were posted on the Walker Website so that they are available to the public, and blogs were also shared on twitter to reach an even wider audience. The titles, authors, and links to the blogs are detailed below.

COP Climate Action Studio – Student Video Blogs

COP Climate Action Studio – Galery