In mid-November more than a dozen Duke students traveled to Belém, Brazil to attend the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference, also known as COP30. There, they observed international negotiations and participated in panels on topics related to climate diplomacy.
The students ranged from undergraduates to doctoral candidates that all took the flight to COP30 as part of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change practicum course. The course began as a student initiative and is now sponsored by Bass Connections, seeing more than 100 students apply for roughly 15 spots.
“COP is quite important because it is the central vehicle by which the global community attempts to come to resolutions on climate,” said Jackson Ewing, instructor of the practicum course and director of energy and climate policy at the Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment & Sustainability. “… I truly believe that there’s no substitute for going to a large international summit like this if you do want to work in a given space.”…