Poznan: Good Climate For Talks
The Yale contingent has arrived to the 14th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties (UNFCCC COP14 – the first of endless acronyms). Twenty students will spend the next week observing the international climate change negotiations, this year held in Poznan, Poland.
The welcome posters in the airport proclaimed: “Poznan – A good climate for talks.” So far, it has been! Poznan is a former industrial city about 2 hours by train from Warsaw. Not quite as balmy as Bali, where last year’s negotiations were held, Poznan has been cooler and darker than New Haven, with a crisp mist in the morning. We’ve have decent weather so far – not that it matters, since some of us spent 12 full hours in the convention center yesterday!
Hot topics this session include:
- REDD – counting carbon dioxide sequestered by existing forests and newly planted trees in developing nations as CO2 emissions;
- CDM – the Clean Development Mechanism – a carbon trading scheme that allows developed countries to buy CO2 “credits” achieved through projects in developing nations; and
- Adaptation to climate change – helping developing and vulnerable countries that will be severely impacted by climate change prepare for future (and present) rising sea levels, drought, and increasing disasters.
We’ve been busy attending plenaries and side events, so expect more reports to follow!
For clarification – Poznan is not a former industrial city. If we think about factoris at the beginnig of XX century, all cities in Europa were industrials, so all of them are now former industrials;)
We can say now that Poznan is a rapidly growing city with a large number of universities (6 by now) and a strong business.
Of course that clarification is not the key think in the post, but I`m a “local patriot” a bit
Thanks for the clarification! Sorry to have misspoke. I have very fond memories of Poznan