Pupils across the world join together for a virtual conference in light of COP29
We have worked with local educational charity Outdoor and Sustainability Education Specialists (OASES) and Durham University, including Durham Energy Institute, to deliver the ECO2 COP29 schools climate conference. This is the third consecutive year we have delivered this event and this year we had 83 participating schools from 14 countries joining the online conferences, which ran alongside this year’s COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan.
COP is a United Nations climate conference that takes place every year and is attended by 197 countries. Representatives share knowledge, set climate targets and review progress against previous climate targets. Since COP26 was held in Glasgow, the ECO2 COP schools virtual climate conference has run alongside COP, giving children and young people a voice in the fight against climate change and a platform to learn from each other.
This year’s ECO2 COP schools climate conference involved schools from: County Durham and wider UK, Azerbaijan, Egypt, France, Hungary, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, and the United Arab Emirates. During the three interactive, online conferences, pupils were encouraged to share their thoughts, feelings and experiences around climate change, and had the opportunity to out forward solutions and questions to a panel of experts from different fields across Durham University and ourselves. Professor Chris Stokes also live-streamed in from COP29 in Azerbaijan, giving the children and young people from around the world a flavour of the discussions and activities taking place. Schools and pupils also made pledges of climate action for the year ahead, building on the pledges made by attendees in our three previous ECO2 Schools COP climate conferences.
You can see some examples of interesting questions that the children asked the panel of experts in our Facebook Reels.
Ahead of the conferences, schools were encouraged to work through a set of online educational resources, focused on climate change, climate justice and climate finance. In addition to exploring the science of climate change, the schools were inspired to create art, poems and posters about their thoughts, feelings and experiences. They were able to share their efforts and view other schools’ work on a shared drive for inspiration to take further climate action.
In total over 2000 pupils participated in the ECO2 COP29 schools climate conference and pledged climate action.
“I would just like to thank you for the conference – it was fantastic and a wonderful and valuable experience for the children. The school’s Eco Team children will now present what they learnt at the conference to the rest of the school” – Teacher from Oak Houses Schools, Barcelona.
“Thank you for today and the lessons we received. The children have learned a huge amount about climate change and how to improve what we can do to reduce it” – Teacher from Byerley Park Primary, County Durham.
“Every drop in the ocean counts! Therefore, even though I may be only a young girl I will try my best to do whatever I can to prevent climate change” – Student from JNS School, Mumbai.
To find out more about ECO2 Smart Schools and the ECO2COP29 Schools Climate Conference, you can visit the ECO2COP29 website, or find them on a Facebook search for ‘eco smart schools’ and Instagram under the handle @eco2smartschools.
We also are sharing snippets from these sessions on our Climate County Durham Facebook Reels.
