Warwick Climate Forum 2015; It’s our future, not theirs.
Mahir Yousuff (Treasurer, WCF 2015)
Affiliation: University of Warwick
Date: 21st February 2015
Sponsor: Professor David Mond
Project funded by IATL ‘Student as Producer – Collaboration Grant’
Overview
Warwick Climate Forum 2015, was a conference held on Climate Change on 21st February,
where over 120 guests were in attendance at the M1 Warwick Business School Teaching
Centre. Through bringing together academics, activists and students from disciplines ranging
from Sciences to Law; the forum achieved its key aims of providing a platform of debate,
enrich understanding of climate change as well as prompt action
Background and Motivation
Climate Change is a highly relevant and contentious theme with ongoing global
developments. The latest of which is the historically important Paris agreement (an outcome
of 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP21), whereby all countries have
agreed to limit the global temperature increases to under 2°C whilst reducing Carbon
Dioxide emissions yearly. With the build up to the Paris agreement providing the context of
our forum, ‘It’s our Future, not theirs,’ we hoped to motivate people to get up and fight for
their future instead of leaving power solely in the hands of government officials and industry
CEO’s. Through this we developed our 3 main goals:
Educate – Make people aware of the current debate and arguments surrounding climate
change across all disciplines including Economics, Sciences and Law.
Inspire – Inspire a generation of students at this critical moment in global history to take
more responsibility and assert their authority to achieve ground up reform.
Connect – Students will have the opportunity to connect with the leading people in their
relevant field, helping to expand their network and provide a platform for discussion.
The event and achieving our aims
In order to achieve a strong representation of students studying Maths, Sciences, Social
Sciences and Humanities, we promoted the conference extensively throughout campus,
online via Facebook and Twitter and especially through department and society emails.
Through this approach we were able to reach more students than those studying
‘Challenges of Climate Change’ and ‘Achieving Sustainability.’ Further tickets were sold to
teaching staff and outside visitors. Similarly, our 11 speakers had the same variety of
disciplines with particular mentions to Professor Jaqueline Mcglade (Chief Scientist UN
Environmental Programme), Chris Haan (Solicitor working in Human Rights cases), Charles
Sheppard (Marine Biology Professor) and David Dewhurst (member of Economics Working
Group at Occupy London).
The programme was carefully designed to help achieve our 3 aims. The initial introduction
was a recorded video message by Bill McKibben, the famous environmentalist and founder
of 350.org. This really helped to inspire the guests by demonstrating the real impact of
campaigns and organised climate marches can have in shaping policy. Then, we held 3
lectures, which educated guests on broad themes such as climate science and governance.
Lunch was supplied, which consisted of an array of vegetarian options from Bread Oven as
well as locally sourced, Organic fruits and snack from Infinity Foods and Down to Earth. This
reinforced key themes of the conference that we should behave, interact (or eat) in a
sustainable fashion. Guests were able to interact freely with speakers.
After lunch, there were 2 workshops which helped people to become involved with grass
roots action, really achieved our aims of Inspiration and Connection.
Art not Oil – promoting theatrical activism and fight against big Oil companies extensive
sponsorship of the Arts.
David Saddington’s ‘Why I don’t care about Climate Change’ – where in small groups,
people learnt how to deal with climate deniers, both understanding and persuading them.
Further to more lecture style talks based around Agriculture, Marine Biology and Law, there
were two highly engaging panel debates centred around Economics and our prospects for
the future respectively. During these two debates, students were really able to apply all their
experience and knowledge to challenge and clarify key issues. Often, the fact that guests
asked such pertinent questions, which couldn’t be definitively answered by our distinguished
panel is testament to both the complexity of dealing with Climate Change and the audiences
responsibility for changing the current status quo. Overall, I was pleased that the conference
was extremely interactive and that everyone who attended left the conference with a
renewed sense of purpose. I truly believed we achieved our aims well in the areas of
Education, and exceptionally in Inspiring and Connecting students.
How we spent the IATL Grant
The money we received from IATL contributed towards speaker’s travel reimbursement and
buy food for the event. Furthermore, through IATL, we could also provide accommodation for
Professor Jacqueline McGlade who had flown in from Nairobi for the event.