Chapter Five | Teaching perspective in an unequal world: negotiating climate change within the UN system | Kate O’Neill and Sebastián Rubiano-Galvis

Teaching perspective in an unequal world: negotiating climate change within the UN system

Kate O’Neill and Sebastián Rubiano-Galvis

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PROJECT SUMMARY

This chapter describes a negotiation exercise carried out in person several times over the course of teaching International Environmental Politics (ESPM 169) at University of California Berkeley and how we worked to modify the exercise for an entirely online, asynchronous and intensive six-week summer course in summer 2021, with some surprising results. The class introduces upper-division students to the dynamics, actors, and issues of international environmental politics in the last three decades, one of them being the global governance of climate change. The exercise is based on the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process – historically (pre-Paris Agreement), the 2015 Paris agreement, and continually updated following subsequent negotiations and goals. Through a structured and scaffolded simulation of an international negotiation of a draft resolution about the future of the Paris Agreement, the Climate Politics Exercise (CPE) gives students a unique opportunity to learn about the global challenge of climate change from the perspective of a nation participating in a UNFCCC negotiation and, by doing so, to learn to “walk in another’s shoes,” where the “other” is the government representative of another country. This roleplaying dynamic addresses the economic, political, and environmental inequalities and the ethical dilemmas that shape the international attempts to curb the effects of climate change.

The CPE is explicitly designed to avoid the competitiveness (and expertise requirements) of a Model UN format while retaining aspects of debate and highlighting the equity dimensions of climate negotiations. Also, the CPE is meant to avoid a technocratic approach overly focused on the metrics of climate and economic impacts without enough consideration for the ethical and political dimensions of climate politics. While some climate negotiation simulations rely on interactive models allowing students to see in advance a measurable and quantifiable prediction of the consequences of all possible negotiating scenarios (e.g., Climate Interactive), we take a more qualitative approach. That does not mean the simulated negotiations in the CPE format do not take place on the basis of reliable evidence (Climate Interactive is one of the resources we supply). The CPE requires students to peruse a packet of resources, drawn from historical and real-time sources, that inform the enactment of each role and are essential for achieving the project’s learning goals.

After outlining and going over the CPE’s components, the CPE and its possible variations, the chapter also discusses how the CPE can serve as a teaching tool for learning about international climate action while instilling empathy, and a sense of belonging and agency in and beyond the classroom. Based on our experience with the CPE in the classroom, we discuss how the exercise contributes to these goals – particularly in online teaching environments and times of dire climate injustices. Given that asynchronous online teaching is often considered an ineffective, or even negative, environment for teaching (Vigdor & Ladd, 2010; Aedo et al., 2020), our experience with the CPE and online teaching in general is that this does not have to be the case (for more on online teaching see Tassio, this volume). In fact, as we’ll discuss, our experience with the CPE reflected what some authors have referred to as an online community of inquiry (Rogers and Khalsa, 2021; Rogers, 2019), an instructional setting that increases the possibilities for achieving pedagogical goals more effectively. Both the description of the CPE components and the analysis of its role are meant to provide instructors with the tools to teach the UN climate negotiations while building and recreating an in-person or online COI that centers equity, justice, and empathy in learning about climate change governance.

ISSUE BACKGROUND: UNFCCC AND CLIMATE POLITICS

In 1992, nation states negotiated the UNFCCC, a treaty that acknowledged the global relevance of anthropogenic climate change and committed parties to address it. As occurs with every international regime – the set of treaties, soft-law declarations, norms, and principles that aim to solve or manage a problem of global relevance – under the international climate regime, nation states, and the negotiation coalitions they form, weigh their national interests against the common interest of governing global anthropogenic climate change (O’Neill, 2017). States’ willingness to cooperate is also shaped by changing norms and emerging scientific and traditional knowledge. In turn, non-state actors (including corporations, nongovernmental organizations, subnational governments, scientists, and social movements) attempt to influence the agenda by providing knowledge and pushing states to move in one or another direction. As is the case with other international treaties once they enter into force, the nation states that signed and ratified the UNFCCC meet every year at the Conference of the Parties (COP) (the supreme decision-making body of the Convention) to review the treaty’s implementation, and its administrative and institutional arrangements, and to incorporate new knowledge and learnings.

Given the enormous asymmetries between countries in terms of resources, power, knowledge, and responsibility for historic greenhouse emissions, some deem the UNFCCC a key site for negotiating global inequalities (Paterson, 2021). Subsequent climate negotiations have proven slow, winding, and, to many observers, ineffective (for more on the history of the climate negotiations, see Chasek and Downie, 2021). The UNFCCC gave way to the Kyoto Protocol, the Bali Roadmap, the Copenhagen Accord, the Durban Platform, and, of course, the Paris Agreement. Climate negotiations, while frustrating to many (most) observers and participants, are also important because they reflect changing patterns of power and interests in global politics writ large. Such changes include the rise of China and the waxing and waning role of the US in climate negotiations. The rise of climate justice and youth activism is another crucial shift. The 2019 strikes engaged more than 7 million people in 125 countries, an unprecedented number in the history of climate activism. As they do every year at the COP, delegates of the most vulnerable nations have kept insisting on increasing the ambition of mitigation goals and even proposed initiating the negotiation of a Loss and Damage Protocol to compensate for the impacts that climate change has already caused in the most vulnerable nations.

Despite their importance, diplomacy and international negotiations are difficult to teach and learn about. Especially for the novice, they are inherently opaque, their dynamics are difficult to see from the outside, and their importance and complexity are not self-evident to those unfamiliar with the workings of international politics. The outcomes of international negotiations sometimes are only known in their full extent thanks to insider views written ex post by privileged observers (Kamau et al., 2018) – so much so that even researchers who have partial access to these venues face enormous challenges in studying them (O’Neill and Haas, 2019). In turn, the equity dimensions of climate politics and aspects like the power asymmetries in international negotiations sometimes appear as marginal or are obscured by the formality and technicalities of diplomacy. The insufficient presence of women at climate COPs (UNFCCC, 2020) and Indigenous peoples’ limited influence in international forums (Marion Suiseeya et al., 2022) can reinforce in students – particularly those from historically oppressed communities – the idea that, since international negotiations are exclusionary spaces where progress is limited, it is not worth learning about them.

The complex dynamics of global climate governance mean learning about international climate negotiations can be better, when possible, through “learn by doing” strategies. For instance, in fall 2021, we had a former negotiator from a southern nation as a guest speaker in class. By sharing examples from their own experience at climate negotiations, this person’s talk gave students unique insight into the gendered power dynamics in international negotiation and illustrated countries’ asymmetrical capacity in international negotiations in terms of expertise, time, and resources. Another strategy is the CPE, an exercise based on the UNFCCC process – historically (pre-Paris Agreement), the Paris agreement, and subsequent negotiations and goals, especially in the lead-up to 2021’s 26th COP and the post-2020 commitments. Aside from serving as a hands-on simulation of what happens behind closed doors at climate COPs and the broader geopolitics at play, the CPE is designed to illustrate the equity and justice angles of climate change.

Climate change is the prototype of what some have called a wicked political problem: it has complex causes and effects across different settings and scales; it is uncertain and unpredictable; and no matter what the solution or policies are, someone is going to be negatively affected. Therefore, the range of possible solutions for wicked political problems like climate change is as mediated by ethics as it is by science and politics. Under the Paris Agreement’s bottom-up approach, national governments are the key sites of action involved in causing emissions to peak and decline (Paterson, 2021). In a world dominated by inequalities and climate injustices that trace back to industrialization, colonialism, and imperialism (see Kashwan, in this volume), multilateralism remains one of the most prominent climate forums globally. Therefore, roleplaying in a simulated scenario lends itself to promoting reflection about climate politics and justice through the enactment of countries variously positioned in the climate regime and the political economy of responsibility and vulnerability.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

The CPE expects students to:

• Learn about the politics and climate vulnerabilities of the country assigned to them in some depth, and about the politics of others assigned to other members of the class.
• Comprehend some of the complexities and challenges of reaching an agreement in the context of negotiations around the most complex issue of our time – especially as countries submit major revisions to their Paris Agreement nationally determined contributions (NDCs).
• Collaborate by “standing in another’s shoes” – in other words, representing another country in debate with others even if one doesn’t agree with them.
• Negotiate and generate a draft resolution under the UNFCCC reflecting the commitments of one’s assigned country as well as the compromises.

While these goals occur simultaneously at various stages of the project, the assignments take students through a scaffolded trail (or climb) that begins with individual, in depth research into an assigned country or regional alliance like the EU or the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and ends with the informed exchanges in the simulated COP plenary and the final vote. In terms of the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy of learning objectives, the CPE pursues both low order and high order thinking goals (Anderson & Krathwohl, 2001), including knowing about climate change; understanding its global politics, and applying that knowledge to a specific country and a subset of contentious issues; analyzing such knowledge in the context of a simulated COP in a virtual setting, and synthesizing it in exchanges with peers through written and video statements; and collectively creating and voting upon a final, bracket-free version of the initial draft resolution.

SUGGESTED BACKGROUND READING

The CPE requires background knowledge about the climate emergency and climate politics. The following resources provide such information:

• Class lectures covering, among other topics: actors and problems of global environmental governance (GEG), an introduction to international law and treaty-making, the role of nation states and the North–South divide in global politics; as well as the specifics of the global governance of climate change, and the milestones of the journey from Rio to Paris and beyond. Many textbooks cover some or all of these topics. Among other sources, we assign Chapters 1 and 2 of Pam Chasek’s and David Downie’s Global Environmental Politics (Routledge, 2021).
• To introduce the global politics of climate governance, we address issues like the asymmetries in research about climate studies and its impacts in hindering the further development and implementation of global climate change agreements. (Blicharska et al. (2017). Steps to overcome the North–South divide in research relevant to climate change policy and practice. Nature Climate Change, 7(1), 21–27)
• On the politics of decarbonization, we read, among others: Michael Jakob et al. (2020). The future of coal in a carbon-constrained climate. Nature Climate Change, 10, 704–707.
• Since Exercise 4 must end with a resolution vote after the exchange of positions, removing the brackets from the draft resolution – or explaining why it was not possible to remove them – is as essential as understanding why they were put there in the first place. To address the importance of language, we assign Susan Biniaz’s piece, Common but Differentiated Responsibilities: Punctuation and 30 Other Ways Negotiators Have Resolved Issues in the International Climate Change Regime. Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, Columbia University, Working Paper (2016).

ONLINE BACKGROUND MATERIALS

We provide resources on how COPs work (like the Earth Negotiations Bulletin briefs and reports by the United Nations Environmental Programme and the UNFCCC Secretariat) and other miscellaneous resources, such as:

• An interactive map of negotiating blocs under the UNFCCC: R. Pearce (2018, December 3). Interactive: the UNFCCC negotiating alliances. Carbon Brief. https://www.carbonbrief.org/interactive-the-negotiating -alliances-at-the-paris-climate-conference/.
• Emissions Data (n.d.). Our World in Data. https://ourworldindata.org/ search?q=emissions+data.
• WDI – The World by Income and Region (n.d.). The World Bank. https:// datatopics.worldbank.org/world-development-indicators/the-world-by -income-and-region.html.
• The World Factbook (n.d.). Central Intelligence Agency. https://www.cia .gov/the-world-factbook/.
• Freedom in the World (n.d.). Freedom House. https://freedomhouse.org/ report/freedom-worldOTHER MATERIALSOnce the basics described above are covered, the following materials provide the detailed knowledge for the rest of the exercise, and level the playing field by giving all participants the basic information they need to begin Exercise 1. These materials are provided to all students at the beginning of the exercise.
• Short memos with basic information about each country participating in the CPE (two–three pages), prepared in advance by the teaching staff.
• A handout explaining the chronology of the climate regime, from theUNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol to the Copenhagen Accords and theParis Agreement.
• A glossary of acronyms and commonly abbreviated terms in global environmental politics.
• A chronology of major events in GEG between 1972–2021, particularly thefour major global summits in 1972, 1992, 2002, and 2012.
• UNFCCC (2021). Overview of Party Groupings under the UNFCCC.
• Real-time updates on the most proximate real COP, including important news and analysis services like Climate Change News, Climate Action Tracker, and Carbon Brief.

We also share sample opening statements from countries at climate COPs (either real statements or samples from previous versions of the exercise).

PROJECT INSTRUCTIONS

History of the CPE in ESPM 169

By way of context, this CPE began in a six-week intensive summer course in 2012, with a class of around 20 students. In 2013, we (the teaching team of instructor and teaching assistants) started to run it in the regular 15-week semester version of the course, which is a much larger group. That year, 125 students in the class represented 26 nations in a simulated negotiation running parallel to the then ongoing climate COP19 in Warsaw. A story in the Berkeley News covering that fall’s CPE recounts how there were “opening addresses, motions, votes, impromptu coalitions and factions, impassioned pleas for action – and even those old political standbys, grandstanding and backpedal- ing” (Hockensmith, 2015). At the end of the semester, we grouped the students into parallel negotiating sessions, to be able to compare outcomes in the final class. At these sessions, we also awarded our version of the Fossil of the Day Award, which climate activists award to the most obstructive countries at climate talks: we gave “sunflower” awards to the most cooperative mock delegates and “fossil” awards to the most obstructive.

The mock conference’s results were rather politically disappointing:

“Japan announced it was downgrading its emission-reduction goals significantly due to the near-meltdown at Fukushima in 2011 … Australia and China also seemed to back away from emission-reduction commitments, and both a bloc of developing nations and a group of non-governmental organizations walked out of the conference in protest”. (Berkeley News, 2013)

Several of the students interviewed for the Berkeley News story highlighted that despite the weakness of the final resolution, the exercise taught them about the complexity and institutional dynamics of international climate negotiations and illustrated the importance of empathy and flexibility. For others, the main takeaway was the importance of leadership and the power of persuasion. The CPE was taught in regular semester versions of the course until 2017; after that time, the class simply got too big to manage the logistics, but is being redesigned for 200 students in the online, asynchronous format.

The Summer 2021 Version

This version of the CEP was designed to proceed remotely and asynchronously for at least six weeks (see Table 5.1). At the end of Week 1, students were allocated (at random) a country to represent. In the summer 2021 version, we chose a range of countries (10–12) representing powerful and not-powerful countries and geographic diversity. In 2021, the list included the United States, the European Union, China, Mexico, Russia, Brazil, Nigeria, AOSIS, India, Iran, Australia, and Turkey. We included major players, obstructionists, and the most vulnerable. We also chose countries we could find good and comparable information on.

After the country allocation, students moved on to complete four assignments, including some group work, which built upon each other to the final assignment: parallel discussions and negotiations of a draft resolution provided by the instructor (see Appendix I for an example). Assignment 1 is individual (one per person), but each student will be in touch with their country group. Assignment 2 is joint (one per country). Assignments 3 and 4 are individual, but build on Assignments 1 and 2. Since things can be fluid/challenging for small groups, instructors should be available and willing to help out and keep an eye on the students’ initial work.

At the beginning of Week 1 or earlier in the class, the instructors supply all the materials students will need (listed and annotated earlier in the chapter). Specific prompts and instructions for each assignment are released week by week. From the beginning, each group is assigned a point person in the teaching staff who can guide them through the process, answer questions, and help them “read the conference room,” and think strategically. In the online version we did in 2021, we launched Exercise 3 in Week 5 through posts in the simulation’s discussion forums in Canvas (a course management system that supports online learning and teaching), impersonating the UNFCCC Secretariat and requesting the “Parties” to post their opening statements. By the time Exercise 3 begins, students will typically know from their studying of the real UNFCCC that a willingness to cooperate and sound science are important but far from enough to reach international climate agreements. This is one of the reasons why throughout the exercise we emphasize that the assessment of the students’ work is more about the learning process and not so much about the final version of the resolution.

General Overview of the Assignments/Exercises

Table 5.2 details the goals and components of each of the sub-exercises for Weeks 2 to 5.

Insights from the Summer 2021 CPE

The draft resolution that the students had to discuss in the CPE we carried out in summer 2021 included bracketed words outlining different possible outcomes for both developed and developing countries. Five issues were discussed, all of them being topics that highlight the equity dimensions of climate change across and beyond the North–South divide; see Table 5.3.

At the end of the course, we shared with the whole class a summary of the outcome of each of the four parallel negotiation rooms; these spanned from the most radical versions of the resolution to patchier versions with partial agreements and even abstentions in the final vote. As usually happens in real (and simulated) COPs, none of the final versions of the draft resolution managed to fully satisfy all the countries in the room. Despite this, by and large, equity and justice dimensions of climate action were explicitly addressed throughout the exercise. Despite disagreements, there was a general tendency toward allowing stronger language in the Preamble (“climate crisis” or “climate emergency”), although the timelines and conditions for achieving carbon neutrality varied. Overall, students were sensitive to COVID-19 impact assessment despite some discrepancies about the assessment mechanism. The students also achieved a good grasp of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, one of the main provisions in the UNFCCC addressing climate injustices.

Broadly, students were prone to solidarity and cooperation despite wearing different shoes. Some students took on the role of regional alliances like the EU and AOSIS, so they already had to face the challenge of representing a variety of voices. In general, during the CPE, negotiating blocs were formed through both formal and informal channels – namely, both in the discussion forum of the simulation where the COP took place (there was a subforum where delegates could chat informally and exchange emails to discuss possibilities to move forward in the negotiation points) and in parallel channels like Google Docs, email comms, and direct messages. While this did not translate seamlessly from an in-person to a virtual and asynchronous setting, it had similarities, and some advantages over, outcomes in traditional classrooms. We were expecting some countries – like Russia, Nigeria, China, or the US – to adopt obstructive roles. However, there were a few last-minute deals in three of the rooms, all in the interest of reaching an agreement despite certain differences. We even had the “Sunflower-Fossil” award: obstructive countries that displayed a willingness to compromise (Russia and Mexico).

The disparity in terms of data and scientific evidence available to back countries’ claims in the simulation is particularly visible in Exercises 1 and 2, when students need to research their assigned role and justify their stance on the proposed draft resolution. In the class, we learn how northern domination of science globally relevant to climate change policy and lack of research led by southern researchers in southern countries hinder the development and implementation of bottom-up global agreements and domestic policy in southern countries. The divide disproportionately impacts least developed countries and small island developing states, which are the most vulnerable to climate change but contribute least to relevant research (Blicharska et al., 2017). While we provide students with enough background information about their assigned country from the outset, students’ individual research throughout the exercise presents them with the challenge of working with differentially available climate science and data among the countries to back their claims.

As was expected, students who already had knowledge about their assigned countries did better in Exercises 1 and 2 than those who were assigned countries they did not know much about. Nonetheless, during Exercises 3 and 4, the overall performance and commitment were notable. It is worth acknowledging that at moments, the mock delegates’ desire to cooperate came with a certain naivety or without enough awareness of the countries’ power in the international arena. While an insufficient understanding of the assigned country and its role in international politics is always a risk in abridged versions of climate COP simulations like the CPE, preparing thorough resources about each country before Exercise 1 is key to instilling a deep understanding of the different nations and their relationship with climate change in the most thorough way possible. Also, when needed, instructors can help the students think strategically and assess the implications of the multiple possible wordings of the resolution provisions.

Students’ reflections about the CPE

In the last discussion forum of the summer 2021 class, which took place a couple of days after the CPE had ended, the students were asked to share what they had learned about GEG in the CPE and the class in general. The points that were most recurrent were:

• the importance of words;
• the complexity of GEG: what works, what doesn’t, and that some institutional arrangements do work!
• all countries care about climate change;
• scale and local–global connections; and
• complexity and conflict of interest in bargaining.

Although we had to work on the fly sometimes to make (or try to make) the assignment work in the way we wanted it to, the online, asynchronous version turned out well. We received feedback from the students, accompanying advice from an online course designer with expertise in pedagogy, and accumulated experience from past iterations of the exercise. The summer 2021 term students’ feedback expressed a sense of clarity and organization. In the end, students self-governed in the final exercise (see Exercise 4, “Project Instructions”): we did not appoint chairs or other “supervisors” in the room; this created, potentially, a sense of agency in the room.Several students felt that interplay of personalities and relationships was reduced and limited in the transition from the live version to virtual channels – a factor that was apparent in the real-world negotiations that went online too. Given the difficulties and hurdles experienced by students during the pandemic, the difficulty of the draft resolution was significant but not too complex. Although several students expressed having learned a lot and enjoyed the experience, one other thought the terms of the agreement were a little basic. We adopted a flexible approach to the variety of situations that can emerge in online instruction (e.g., students in different timezones). Despite these limitations, an advantage is that perhaps we heard more from those who were less comfortable in the live, in-person version. We will gather more data as this exercise progresses.

OPTIONS FOR EXTENSION AND ADJUSTMENT

As well as adapting to the online teaching form (a challenge we discuss below), the version of the exercise we discuss here is also adapting to a very different world, compared to the last times it was taught, in 2016 and 2017. Some countries are pulling back, others stepping up – certainly some critical countries are walking backward or turning away from the wider world. Since the CPE teaches about a shifting international climate regime, the exercise can be adjusted in duration, scope, and complexity. The size and length (summer vs. semester) of the class and the instructors’ capacity can also shape the scale of the exercise. In the CPE we ran in 2021, 45 students participated. The groups formed for Exercise 2 (consisting of researching the assigned country and deciding on an informed position on the resolution) were later split in Exercise 3, when we divided the class into four parallel negotiating rooms, each of which had at least one delegate for each participating country. In the end, we had four different versions of the draft resolution. Ideally, in or after Week 6, there should be a recap and analysis of the differences in the different resolutions. A class conversation and resources like a Mentimeter poll can serve to assess what students learned from the CPE, and how its outcomes resemble or differ from what we see in the real-life climate regime.

Other possible extensions or adjustments can include:

• In-person, online, and hybrid versions. Requires different organizational settings, but the essence remains the same and the basic structure can be maintained and adjusted.
• For Exercise 1, an alternative instead of providing country briefs is to create a shared spreadsheet – with a tab for each country – where everyone can see other’s work. It could help students to better understand in a comparative context. Some useful tools include Hypothesis, Google Docs, Perusall.
• Including more countries and, when possible, a second negotiation round of the draft resolution.
• Incorporate the roles played behind the scenes of non-governmental actors, bringing outside people in to play those roles (or protest!) as we do for chairs and moderators. An example, adopted in summer 2022, might be a transnational organization of Indigenous Peoples.
• More complex resolutions to negotiate: fewer topics with more complexity, or more topics with an intermediate level of complexity. The quantity and complexity of the bracketed and disputed provisions in the draft resolution can also vary at the instructors’ discretion.

ADDRESSING COMMON CHALLENGES: THE CPE IN ASYNCHRONOUS AND ONLINE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS

A key design element of the 2021 version of the CPE is that it had an asynchronous and decentralized format. This was totally new, given that previous versions of the CPE had been done in person. Our efforts to solicit ideas from people in our academic communities who had taught similar exercises bore little fruit (clearly, we were breaking new ground), so we worked primarily, and productively, with online pedagogy specialists. Having the CPE asynchronously and online opened the possibility for students to join a learning community, despite not being in the same physical location. To do this, we worked with Sandra Rogers, PhD, a critical pedagogy specialist and course designer at UC Berkeley, who advised us and assisted us in the process. Aside from the technical work of creating and setting up the virtual platform, our collaboration allowed us to create what Rogers and other education scholars call an online COI (Rogers and Van Haneghan, 2018; Rogers and Khalsa, 2021; Rogers, 2019). An online COI encompasses cognitive, social, and teaching interactions, which means that “learners in an online environment are involved in cognitively challenging activities, can interact with their classmates, and that the teacher or student moderator is present in some way through words, voice, or person” (Rogers, 2019: 459).

Through an assessment of the type of interactions between instructors, students, and the content that a syllabus provides, Rogers and Van Haneghan (2018) propose five criteria to determine a course’s potential for developing an exemplary online COI. There should be: (i) an instructional design that provides extensive cognitive activities promoting exploration, integration, and application of ideas; (ii) technological tools that allow continuous communication like sharing forums, emails, and multimedia projects; (iii) opportunities for student-led moderation of forums and other forms of student–student interaction; (iv) established support for multiple learning styles and characteristics (i.e., scaffolding assignments, disability accommodations, etc.); and (v) extensive and accessible channels for instructor feedback, like virtual office hours and social media for classroom interactions (Rogers and Van Haneghan, 2018).

The kind of student–student, student–teacher, and student–content interactions that the online version of the CPE proposes meets these five requirements: (i) the CPE pushes students to pursue both high- and low-order learning goals which include, as explained earlier, understanding global politics and climate governance, applying that knowledge to a specific country, and synthesizing it at the COP plenary; (ii) the online version of the CPE was conducted through bCourses, UC Berkeley’s virtual learning platform, equipped with multimedia, forums, and other technologies; (iii) during Exercise 4, students self-moderate the COP plenary negotiations and must agree on a final version of the resolution before the deadline; (iv) the CPE is a scaffolding assignment that gives various tools and opportunities to achieve multiple learning goals, evenly balances individual and group work, and creates opportunities for various learning styles; and (v) the CPE relies on various channels of student–instructor and student–student communication such as email and asynchronous discussion forums.

Creating an online COI was important for at least three reasons. First, it was an opportunity to engage in a less hierarchical mode of teaching and learning. Second, it gave students a sense of agency and responsibility (see also the Kashwan and Tassio chapters, this volume). Third, it created a space for students to strengthen their sense of belonging, understood as a “feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together” (McMillan & Chavis, 1986: 9, cited in Strayhorn, 2019: 4). Also, we were ahead of the virtual global governance curve. The pandemic brought the challenge of how to conduct international meetings like COPs virtually or in hybrid formats. Meetings like the UNFCCC COP 26 in Glasgow, Minamata COP 4, and the Convention on Biological Diversity COP 15 were held partially or fully in a virtual environment, creating logistical and political challenges that might accentuate existing inequalities among delegates (Chasek, 2021; Vadrot et al., 2021).

REFLECTIONS ON EQUITY IN THE CLASSROOM: PERSPECTIVES ON GLOBAL CLIMATE JUSTICE

For some environmental ethics scholars, “the practice of global environmental governance is indistinguishable from the practice of global environmental ethics” (Bird et al., 2016: 120). For instance, the UNFCCC process illustrates various global ethics dilemmas like the fixation of normative standards for humanity; the negotiation of fair accountability regimes in light of historical injustices; the calculation of emissions with the nation state as the unit of analysis; and the uneven redistribution of benefits, costs, and risks that, various climate policies entail (Bird et al., 2016: 127). Similarly, others claim that aside from a deep economic gap rooted in colonialism and historic climate injustice, there is an unaddressed ethical gap manifesting in a lack of sufficient global cooperation and solidarity with those most vulnerable to climate impacts (Krznaric, 2010). Also, activists, vulnerable groups, and countries most affected by climate change have mobilized moral claims with the goal of instilling empathy and solidarity in citizens and decision-makers in the countries most responsible for greenhouse gas emissions.

Class assignments can provide useful insights and learning experiences that foreground the ethical dimensions of climate politics. Projects like “climate pen-pals” (a letter exchange to share the lived experiences of climate vulnerability and hope), climate futures museums, and storytelling for or from one’s hypothetical grandchild 50 years from the present are some examples of educational and experiential formats to instill empathy about climate injustice across space (to make present inequalities across countries and communities explicit) and through time (to foster intergenerational ethics questions) (Krznaric, 2010). In middle schools, instructors have also reportedly used educational drama as a form of rendering visible the ethical dilemmas and values embedded in living in community in a changing climate (McNaughton, 2014). In times when students around the world – especially those from lower socioeconomic backgrounds – have reported less contact with nature and increased anxiety during the pandemic lockdowns and long terms of online instruction (Rios et al., 2021), instructional creativity, inclusiveness, and a strong sensitivity for the ethics of climate politics will be essential in environmental educational settings.

The CPE can be a valuable tool to illustrate class concepts and provide a hands-on learning experience. With some previous or accompanying knowledge on international climate politics, instructors teaching classes on environmental justice and environmental politics can use hands-on tools like the CPE to foster conversations and reflections on climate justice and invite students to walk in others’ shoes. This includes learning how and why some governments adopt the positions they do, even counter to the wishes of their populations or the international community. The exercise can be helpful for instructors seeking to teach the ethical, economic, and political challenges of international climate actions, as well as their limits. In addition, the CPE can help cultivate practical skills like writing briefs, position memos, time management, and oral presentations. Also, for many of our students, from interdisciplinary/ non-social science majors, this is their first experience of researching another country.

Our experience with the CPE has taught us that experiential exercises that foreground the power of agency and cooperation can motivate students to learn about global climate injustice while also attuning their ethical sensitivity and reflecting on their own ethics and positionality (see also the Kashwan and Middleton chapters, this volume). Discussing the experience of racial and ethnic minorities in STEM fields, Strayhorn (2019: 4) argues that a sense of belonging – defined as “a feeling or sensation of connectedness, and the experience of mattering or feeling cared about” – is one of the most impactful in the college experience of students. Promoting a sense of belonging in the classroom is intimately linked to the broader goal of practicing inclusive teaching (Dewsbury and Brame, 2019). The CPE, with its obvious limits, is inspired by the idea that learning is more effective when one belongs to a community – even if it’s online – in which one has an actual say. Roleplaying a fictitious scenario in which most of the agency relies on students (an agency based on informed speculation about possible alternative futures) and where cooperation is at the center of the learning process is a practice in which “each member benefits from the group and the group, in a sense (no pun intended), benefits from the contributions of each member” (Strayhorn, 2019: 10).

In the same way that one cannot have effective agency in a community one does not belong to, one cannot feel like one belongs when there is no perceived or real room for agency. That is why the relationship between agency and a sense of belonging in the classroom, particularly for students from minorities and communities, is so critical for the CPE and environmental education more broadly. A cross-cutting idea throughout the ESPM 169 class is that southern nations have not been passive spectators, but rather active builders and key players in international environmental politics. In turn, the concurrent and previous learning in class about effective international environmental regimes seeks to illustrate how international cooperation, although difficult, can work out well sometimes. And while southern countries and marginalized groups (to which some of our students belong) still bear the most severe impacts of the climate crisis and struggle to even have a voice in the forums where the framing and responses to the problem are at stake, part of our work in the CPE and the class in general is to point to how there is nothing natural or immutable about that, and to provide a space to confront skepticism and learn that things could be different.1

NOTE

1. We thank Erin Bergren, Laura Driscoll, Manisha Anantharaman and all the other past instructors of the International Environmental Politics class in different moments during the last decade, for their work in helping structure the original version of the CPE in 2012 and its iterations in subsequent years. A special thanks to Sandra Rogers, who advised us and assisted us in the process of adjusting the CPE to an asynchronous format in 2021; and to all the students who have participated in the assignment and have provided feedback to improve it.

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APPENDIX I: DRAFT RESOLUTION FOR CPE USED IN ESPM 169 AT UC BERKELEY IN 2021

Draft Resolution to Be Negotiated by the Parties to the UNFCCC at COP25B Berkeley, CA, USA, July–August 2021

Preamble

In the light of the severe economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and considering the US rejoining the Paris Agreement in 2021, Parties believe now is the time to start taking decisive action to increase ambition for mitigation goals, to increase funding for climate adaptation in developing countries, to compensate the lost time in the past five years, and to consider alternative, perhaps drastic, measures to address [climate change] [the climate crisis] [the climate emergency]. [At all times the international community must [address] [bear in mind] the [necessity for] [desirability of] a just global transition]

Article 1. Renewing commitments for a climate-aware post-COVID-19 economic recovery

a. [All] [developed countries] [developed plus BASIC] Parties [shall] [should] commit to increase the ambition of their current mitigation goals established in their NDCs.

b. [An independent commission of experts appointed by the UNFCCC Secretariat] [The Conference of the Parties with the technical support of the UNFCCC] will assess the global economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to the current NDC submissions under the Paris Agreement.

c. [The countries most severely struck by the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic according to the assessment established in Article 1b] [All developing countries] will not be expected to [meet] [strengthen] their NDC under Article 1a.

Article 2. The US

a. The Parties congratulate the United States on its return to the Paris Agreement and welcome president Joe Biden’s stated intention to catch up with the US’s own previous NDC commitments, especially, but not exclusively, regarding mitigation and finance. While the United States rejoining the Paris Agreement reinforces the integrity of the treaty, it is also a reminder that the goal of reducing the global temperature well below 2 degrees Celsius is now more pressing than ever. In virtue of the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities, [all] [developing countries] Parties [urge] [hope that] the United States [to] [will] increase the ambition of their mitigation and decarbonization goals and timelines well beyond the scope of Article 1a of this resolution.

Article 3. Global coal ban

a. The Parties recognize the urgent need for global decarbonization as a means to achieve the Paris Agreement goals. Given that the coal sector produces over 40% of global carbon dioxide emissions, it is particularly important to target its production and use. A specific date for a full [and irreversible] global coal [ban] [moratorium] will be determined to occur within the next [5] [10] [15] years.

b. [All] [developed countries] [developed plus BASIC] Parties [shall] [should] [fully ban coal] [restrict coal-generated energy to less than 15% of the country’s energy matrix] by [2040] [2050].

Article 4. Geoengineering

a. The Parties recognize the challenges already faced in meeting even the 2 degrees Celsius target established in Article 2 of the Paris Agreement. Accelerating timelines and increasing ambition for goals in the terms of Articles 1 and 2 are insufficient. Therefore, [developed countries] are urged to [deploy] [actively research for later deployment] [all large-scale geoengineering technologies] [carbon dioxide removal] [solar radiation management].

b. [Developed countries] [any country] [any private sector actor] that deploys geoengineering [should] [shall] assess the impacts on the most vulnerable countries, and [should] [shall] arrange to compensate their [governments] [peoples] in the [event of] [anticipation of] harm.