Submitted by Anonymous on Wed, 2016-01-13 12:01
On Saturday 5th December, 100 students representing over 30 universities from around the world came together at the Sorbonne in Paris for the ‘Global University Climate Forum’.
Several students from the University of Cambridge attended the forum, with four teams having successfully applied to attend the event by submitting proposals for improving campus-based sustainability at their universities.
The teams presented their project ideas, which focused on a range of ways to raise student awareness and global consciousness on environmental issues. Their ideas included:
• Positive Investment blog – communications through a blog, gathering support within a college community.
• Positive Investment campaign – suggesting financial architecture and mechanisms to implement at the University of Cambridge, as part of their work with the University’s Working Group on investment responsibility.
• Reducing electronic waste – initiating a system through which students can more easily re-use and share items in order to reduce consumption and waste production, as well as increasing links across each new intake of students and reducing their costs.
• Sustainable living – the One World Challenge encourages more sustainable everyday behaviour and actions, through forming teams competing against each other to instil new behaviours.
There was a particular exciting feel to the event, as it took place not far from where negotiators were reaching the mid-point of the United Nations’ COP21 climate change talks. After presenting their project
ideas and efforts to all other attendees through posters, the students shared experiences and advice with other attendees. They also heard from speakers involved in the science of climate change and in sustainable government policy. Now the work really begins to implement their ideas, and then share their experiences and lessons with everyone they met through an online forum over the months to come…