Monalisa Chatterjee, USC Dornsife assistant professor of environmental studies who is from Delhi, India, served as a facilitator for the students representing that nation in the climate negotiations. Gibson brought her expertise to event by role-playing the UN executive secretary for climate change. “They’re going to need global communication, cross-cultural collaboration and teamwork skills in their future careers.” “Climate change is a big topic around the world, and it’s the next generation that’s going to have to solve it and solve it pretty quickly,” Withers said.
The lack of international cooperation essential to mitigating global warming also pushed Withers to expand the simulation beyond USC to include students from across the Asia-Pacific. Withers cites two sources of inspiration for organizing the simulation: The initial spark came from Shannon Gibson, assistant professor of International Relations and Environmental Studies at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, whose courses feature interactive model UN simulations derived from actual climate negotiations. In addition to USC and the University of Oregon, the simulation’s partners included Monash University and The University of Melbourne in Australia, Peking University in China, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Universidad San Francisco De Quito in Ecuador, Tohoku University in Japan, Universiti Malaya in Malaysia, Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico, The University of Auckland in New Zealand, Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and the University of Washington. Tracy Nilsson, senior director of the Global Environmental Program for Adidas, spoke about the company’s efforts to lower emissions by creating greener, more sustainable manufacturing processes.
Speakers included Maori rights leader Rhys Jones, a public health physician and University of Auckland senior lecturer in Māori health, who spoke on the climate-related challenges faced by indigenous peoples. Topics were addressed from such perspectives as developing nations and public health. Teams took part in three rounds of negotiations, each guided by an expert facilitator, on subjects such as deforestation, clean technologies, carbon trading and offsets, ocean health and population control. Students had two weeks to study the relevant issues and get to know their teammates before the event’s kickoff and the mock negotiations. “The experiential learning opportunity really drives the message home much more than reading about it in a textbook or writing a paper.” “This is a global, shared problem, and we need involvement from the private and public sectors, and nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations in all countries to solve the crisis,” said Withers, who is director of the APRU Global Health Program. The program was so popular - more than 400 students applied for 10 seats in Peking University - Withers plans to offer it twice next year. “The experience revealed the importance of global collaboration and transparency to ensure sustainable, equitable and inclusive progress towards global climate resiliency.” “This simulation is a consequence-free experience that really cements in the minds of students all around the world that climate change is no joke,” said Santos, a progressive degree student who is earning a BS in Chemical Engineering at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering while pursuing her MPH. Jessica Santos, Chemical Engineering, ’22 (Photo/Jessica Santos) More than 16 international speakers, including a Maori rights leader, and 24 facilitators took part in the three-day event. Santos and 120 students from 13 universities in 10 countries participated in the recent simulation, led by Mellissa Withers, associate professor of population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC, and hosted in partnership with the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU), of which USC is a founding member. The USC Master of Public Health candidate quickly discovered it was going to be more challenging than she anticipated - much like it is in the real world.
#STRIP CLUB SIMULATION FULL#
Jessica Santos was full of optimism heading into mock negotiations at the APRU Student Global Climate Change Simulation.
USC students and faculty join peers from around the world in an online simulation to build consensus on global warming and climate change challenges.
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