A group of Indiana University students attended the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference to engage with world leaders and climate professionals as student delegates.
The conference, more commonly known as COP29, took place in Baku, Azerbaijan from Nov. 11-22 as this year’s annual international meeting to assess climate change progress and multilateral agreements based on Articles of the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The 16 students attended COP29 as a part of associate professor Jessica O’Reilly’s course International Climate Conference. O’Reilly has been taking students to attend the conference since she arrived at IU in 2016, but it took two years before she could obtain observer status for IU to take more students using credentials provided that allowed her to form a full student delegation.
O’Reilly said one aspect of her program that doesn’t change at all is the students’ passion for climate justice.
“Our students really want to learn about this, not just because they're interested in the UN and international diplomacy, but because they see it as a defining issue of their lifetimes. They want to contribute to the solutions so they're always very idealistic and hard-working,” O’Reilly said.
The undergraduate, master's and doctorate students O’Reilly takes with her all enter COP29 with an individual research project to complete. They interview professionals and leaders at the event based on their prior interests and experience in a climate change-related research endeavor.
“What we try to put together is a delegation that is really looking at the climate problem from multiple angles,” O’Reilly said. “Because the issue is so complex, it's so critical that we use every skill possible in order to address it. I think it's really important that we have people looking at the mental health impacts of climate change alongside policy, alongside how music and the arts can help us address it.”
Julianne Hatcher, a senior majoring in international studies and environmental sustainability, attended the second week of the conference as a part of the student delegation. Hatcher's research project stemmed from her passion for islands and her study abroad experience in the Galapagos Islands.
“I studied noneconomic loss and damage of small island states,” Hatcher said. “So I spoke with people from the Cook Islands, Marshall Islands, Samoa and small islands, mostly in the Pacific. And I was lucky to have found a plethora of people to talk to. People were really nice.”
Hatcher said she expected delegates to be extremely serious, but she found them to have fun and be excited about the conference, which helped her feel more welcome.
Hatcher, who is currently applying to law school with an interest in environmental law, also appreciated being able to talk to environmental lawyers and advocates at the conference.
“You see a room full of people that are doing things and then you realize like, ‘I'm in the prime position of my life to get started on doing that as well. I am on the precipice of my career, and I can go join that and be part of that as well,’” Hatcher said.
Julianne Hatcher, an attendee of the 2024 United Nations Climate Change Conference, stands in front of a sign reading "COP29" during the conference that ran Nov. 11-22, 2024, in Baku, Azerbaijan. A group of Indiana University students attended the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference to engage with world leaders and climate professionals as student delegates.
Madison Harris, a senior studying international law and policy analysis, has been interested in the UN since she was in middle school. She applied to O’Reilly’s program to combine her passion for the UN with her experience in international institutions and climate governance. Her research project for COP29 was examining what international legal frameworks could be used to protect the rights of climate migrants. During the conference, she had the chance to speak to the Prime Minister of Tuvalu, a small island in the Blue Pacific Continent that is being threatened by rising sea levels.
At first, Harris said she felt overwhelmed by all the people at the conference and was expecting the negotiations to be unimpressive; however, seeing people from across the world come together to speak about climate justice helped her leave the conference more hopeful than expected.
“I think that there's a long way to go, and there's a lot to be done with climate change, adaptation and justice. But I think that the fact that there's people talking about it, advocating and fighting for it gives me a lot of hope that change will continue to be made,” Harris said.
With observer status, O’Reilly said she and her students receive access to formal negotiations, plenaries, side events and pavilion events. Their only access limits include sensitive negotiations or smaller bilateral meetings.
Hatcher’s favorite event was “The People’s Plenary,” which featured high-level discussions over climate financing with activists. She said it featured activists from Sudan and Palestine, youth activists, disability activists and more who shared their experiences as people directly impacted by climate change.
“There's a popular chant, ‘What do we want? Climate justice! When do we want it? Now!’ And they're all chanting it and you know that the negotiators are right next door,” Hatcher said. "They can hear it and they're kind of being forced to listen to the people. I think that was probably the most powerful moment for me. I teared up a little bit. It was pretty cool.”
Harris said she was impacted most by a climate mobility pavilion event on Young and Future Generations Day at COP29 that emphasized the human factor of climate injustice. She was able to hear from the people she was researching about firsthand as they talked about their experiences with climate displacement.
Over the years, youth activism and involvement in COP29 have grown more, which Hatcher said she believes is important in involving the people most affected by climate change.
“I know our generation, a lot of them are frustrated that they weren't necessarily the cause of this issue and will be bearing the brunt of its effects,” Hatcher said. “So I think empowering students to be part of those conversations is an owed thing because 19-year-olds didn't cause climate change, but they're going to be feeling these effects, and having them in the room is really important, especially young students.”
Harris said as climate change gets worse, it’s important for people to recognize the value of having youth discuss their futures at events like COP29.
“Obviously we weren't a part of the negotiations themselves but having the opportunity to talk to prime ministers and different ambassadors, it was really cool to be able to kind of share that perspective of the youth,” Harris said.
Because of the global scale of climate issues, Harris said it makes the work, conversations and news feel hopeless at times.
“I think that it's very easy when you read the news or hear about all of these different global conflicts to kind of lose faith and in global negotiations, global collaboration and diplomacy. But to be in that space and see that people are genuinely making an effort to collaborate and to work together and to make progress on an existential crisis — that's definitely something that I'm going to take away,” Harris said.
O’Reilly said that one of the most rewarding parts of attending the conference with her delegation is seeing how much her students gain in research, future plans and friendships.
“Meeting with bright eyes helps me learn so much, so I'm really thankful for them and really love getting to know students by traveling with them. It's really a privilege,” O’Reilly said.
