COP Cafe at ECCI
The COP29 climate summit kicked off in Baku, Azerbaijan on Monday 11 November. Throughout the conference, ECCI live-streamed the events and negotiations on a big screen in the ECCI Cafe - open to all students and staff from 9am - 5pm, Monday 11 - Friday 22 November.
On Wednesday 20 November, ECCI hosted an afternoon of informal discussions - aimed at answering questions about the annual climate summit and the events unfolding at COP 29 from students, academics and practitioners.
The discussion featured climate experts and COP veterans, academics and students and broadly focused on exploring climate adaptation, mitigation and finance through the lens of COP 29. Speakers included:
- ECCI Co-Director and Climate Risk and Resilience expert, Dr Kate Donovan
- Brenda Mutoni - a Mastercard Foundation Scholar studying at the Business School who, prior to coming to Edinburgh, led the development of Rwanda’s first green investment facility and launched it at COP27
- Viltė Čivilytė, President of the UoE Sustainable Development Association
- Lecturer in Climate Change Mitigation, Dr Matt Lane
- Luca Taschini, Chair in Climate Change Finance at the Business School - recently returned from Baku.
Thanks to the brilliant and insightfiul contributions from the audience of Carbon Management and Climate Change Finance Masters students (among others), the discussion was rich and wide-ranging, covering all aspects of the huge challenge at hand. From the nitty gritty of climate finance and the 1.5 degrees target, to Trumpian politics, combatting neo-colonialism and what is really possible within a racial capitalist, neo-liberal modern world.
COP Cafe at ECCI was also featured in Learning for a Sustainable Future: Live at COP29 MOOC. Check out the video below to hear what Edinburgh students thought about the initiative and what they got out of it.