Pedro (G10) advocates for climate action in Teaching Times

G10 student and Halcyon MUN Director, Pedro discusses how Halcyon London International School has used the MUN format to debate climate issues.

An extended version of this article can be accessed in Teaching Times.

Real Climate Negotiations Happen In The Classroom

A Model United Nations (MUN) is a useful tool for engaging students in debate. Student Pedro Pina Albuquerque discusses how Halcyon London International School has used the MUN format to debate climate issues.

For young people who look on, year after year, we are forced to cringe at the lack of progress in climate negotiations. As students at Halcyon London International School, we refuse to adopt the apathy shown by our global leaders. Instead, we have forged our own brand of climate negotiations that offers a blueprint for the future.

Every year, as climate change intensifies, new records are broken. 2024 was the hottest year ever recorded on Earth – a banner year for climate devastation, marked by droughts, wildfires and hurricanes. Yet it was also a remarkable year of political inaction and ineptitude shown by global leaders.

This inadequacy was personified at the 29th Conference of the Parties (COP29) held in Baku, Azerbaijan. Although COP provides a powerful opportunity to discuss and debate climate change, it continues to be overshadowed by other global issues and conflicts. We saw world leaders from the United States, Brazil and the European Union skip COP29 and allow this opportunity to turn back the tide of climate change slip away.

International environmental negotiations have become a broken record of political buffoonery. COP29 achieved the bare minimum this year, and the slow nature of this conference has allowed leaders to hide behind the curtain of private negotiations while taking little to no action. The main achievement of COP29 was a new agreement which set a climate finance goal of at least £300 billion per year from the developed world.

However large this achievement may sound, the outcome was compromised. As usual, it was a symbol of hopelessness; a refusal to provide meaningful change for smaller countries and island nations, which are being unfairly and disproportionately affected by climate change. This deal, although a good stepping stone, has left many developing countries frustrated and disappointed with the outcome of the conference.

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