UAE students explore climate action at CAP sessions in Expo City Dubai ahead of COP28

The Climate Ambassadors Programme (CAP) hosted 30 university students from across the country yesterday and discussed several climate-related issues, notably ways to reduce carbon and greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

This event is part of a series of CAP sessions held in Expo City Dubai. The students came from several UAE universities, including the American University of Sharjah (AUS), the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Zayed University, New York University Abu Dhabi (NYU), and Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi.

Essa Al Hashmi, Assistant Under-Secretary for Sustainable Communities and Acting Assistant Under-Secretary for Green Development and Climate Change at the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE), said:

"The Climate Ambassadors Programme reflects our commitment to involving students and youth in the climate action system by familiarising them with the scale of global challenges to climate change, and leveraging their abilities and ideas to find solutions to those challenges."

He added:

"The Programme contributes to creating a new generation that believes in the importance of action and prioritizes climate change to lead international, governmental, and societal efforts to address the biggest challenge in human history. We are pleased to welcome the first group of university students to the Programme and look forward to more productive sessions with other students until COP28 in the UAE later this year."

The Climate Ambassadors Programme was designed to be a "Youth COP", enabling them to assume the various roles and responsibilities of international stakeholders participating in COP28. As a result, yesterday's CAP sessions witnessed a productive dialogue among the referred university students in the areas of carbon and greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on global warming, as well as the worsening of environmental disasters and threats to biodiversity and living organisms, in addition to the direct damage to human health and the economy, and the escalating adverse effects to food and water security in different parts of the world.

CAP allows students to join a simulation of a climate ambassadors negotiation session, where they play the role of ambassadors from a specific country and learn about the impact of climate change on that country. They then work with ambassadors from other countries to find the best possible solutions to combat climate change, develop the necessary action plans to achieve them and negotiate to reach a final agreement to approve them.

CAP is a collaboration between the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE) and the Expo Schools Programme. It allows students from schools and universities in the UAE to represent the roles of climate negotiators participating in this year's COP28 in Expo City Dubai.

The programme welcomes students from universities and schools from around the UAE. Several sessions will be held until November 2023, as part of the preparations for hosting COP28.

News Source: Emirates News Agency