After driving by artificial islands, sprawling construction, and manicured gardens in the desert, it would be easy to approach the Qatar Sustainability Expo with some skepticism. However, after a closer look at this country, one can see a very real problem that regional governments and companies are trying to solve. Sustainability for Qatar and the region is more than a buzzword. It is a necessity.
Qatar’s vulnerable future
The pavilion, like all things United Nations, was massive. At the center of the hall was a hospitality tent in the shape of the Zubara Fort, built in 1938 and most recently a station for the coast guard. The Expo’s free food provided our class with sustenance throughout the day when overpriced conference center food was not an attractive option. The pavilion…
“We want our children to live in an America that […] isn’t threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet.” Many still remember this brief, yet hopeful and encouraging moment during Obama’s acceptance speech after his re-election in November. Observers hoped that Obama and his administration would bring much needed leadership from the top in addressing climate change issues during the UNFCCC COP18 Summit in Doha. Yet, the conference is now done and dusted, and the United States was again among the array of developed countries to block the progress with an unwillingness to commit to collective mitigation and adaptation goals. In fact, the second largest emitter has since scored not one, but four of the Fossil of the Day “Awards” civil society doles…
“She’s welcome to stay for as long as she likes” my mother says when I ask her if I could bring a friend home to stay over for winter recess “we now have daily water supply”, she adds triumphantly.
Provision of water to households in Bangalore, India’s sixth largest city and my parents’home city, is at best erratic and at worst non-existent. The state owned water and sewerage works department, BWSSB supplies water to the city’s 8.45 million inhabitants. The supply runs (or trickles in, especially during the summer months) for only a few hours every day and for a few days a week. The volume of water delivered per day totals 0.34 billion gallons. New York City delivers 1.2 billion gallons of water per day to its 8 million residents…
I recently asked Sarah, our Student Assistant, to write up some last words of advice to those of you putting the finishing touches on your applications. The biggest thing that we want you to walk away with is the idea that the application is many parts to a whole. Therefore, each piece should tell part of a cohesive story as to who you are. The personal statement is probably the best way to pull everything together for us. This is what Sarah had to say (and I'd second all of her advice!):
Ask two new people to read over your personal statement. First, find someone who has applied and been accepted to the program. Then ask another person, whom you respect, but is not a close friend. This close to the…
I arrived for the second week of the COP18 to replace David Emmerman and Kathryn Wright to continue our project with the Latvian NGO homo ecos:. The goal of this project was simple, to get progress updates from working groups on matters that are important to Latvia. These updates were then disseminated to the broader public via a social media campaign (@LatviaCOP18Chat).
Unfortunately, I only had observer status and was not able to attend most of the important meetings. But the updates on the progress made in the three tracks were still accessible from tweets and emails at the COP. In fact, everyday there was more information coming in than one person could handle. Sorting through all the information, picking and choosing messages was difficult and time consuming. Thus, from the…
Hello again, FES Blog readers! Emily again with latest from the Admissions Office.
Applications are trickling in, just before the dam breaks and the flood of just-before-the-deadline applications hits us. Looking forward to the reading season—cozying up with a cup of tea (maybe some hot chocolate?) and some applications, it’s almost like a good book.
This week, I’ve brought another recent alum to the spotlight, Matt Strausser, MEM ’12. We sat down to talk about his time at FES and what he’s doing now, which, like many of our alums, is pretty awesome.
Emily: So, Matt, what do you do these days?
Matt: I am the wildlife biologist on NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, Texas.
Emily: Why would a space center need a wildlife biologist?
Matt: Excellent question. Surrounding the dozens of buildings, laboratories…
The Chinese government again put up an elaborate China Pavilion in the COP18 Climate Change Conference in Doha. Everyday is filled up with fanfares of side-events and ceremonies from dawn to dusk. Despite the heavy dose of corporate footprint in the China Pavilion and official statements on China’s climate achievements, these presentations and performance in some ways reflect China’s strategic positions and dilemmas in negotiating for climate and advancing its economic development.
China Sold-out?
Since the Durban climate summit, China National Petroleum Company (CNPC) has been sponsoring the China Pavilion activities. This year, CNPC gave 1 million Chinese yuan (160,000 USD), which explains the subtle and quite ornate addition of CNPC’s logo at the bottom of the China Pavilion banner (picture left). CNPC is the largest oil and gas producer and supplier…
For a week I have been trying to put my finger on the cause of the fog that I feel at COP18.
Durban felt better than Doha. There is a lingering feeling that something vital is missing, and I'm sorry to say that I am underwhelmed because of it. To be fair, last year was my first COP, and there's always something extra special about the initiation experience because the future experiences tend to have diminishing returns.
I'm not jaded, but definitely hoping for something more and not finding it. Perhaps it is because we are a few months out from Rio+20, and there is a “big conference fatigue” amongst the crowd at the end of 2012. Maybe I'm just disinclined to sift through the rhetoric of the negotiations to see if…
Wednesday, December 5th: deep within the bizarre landscape of minarets, oil refineries that stretch out into the sandy horizon, and a wildly ad hoc, opulent, and strangely 1970’s-going-on-the-future skyline, the annual UNFCCC conference moves along in its second week. In these last days of COP 18, much still remains open and on the table. It appears that there will be a second commitment period to the KP, but what will it look like? Progress on the Durban Platform inches forward – but will any solid groundwork be laid for the 2015 climate agreement? Overall, ambition throughout this COP has been extremely low, with only the most vulnerable nations pressing for fast and dramatic action.
But outside the dry, deadlocked negotiations at the Qatar National Convention Center, things seem…
By Yiting Wang and Angel Hsu
DecisionMakr welcomes you back to the final week of the Doha climate conference. Brief showers of rare rain cleared up the afternoon sky on Saturday, but the battle goes on. As the second week of the Doha climate talks begin, ministers from around the world are arriving, which means the stakes of the negotiations have automatically been raised. Most of the technical discussions (Subsidiary Bodies, etc.) have concluded, and delegations are working overtime to shape up the text for their ministers to hammer out remaining details. Many people especially the youth constituencies welcomed that the Subsidiary Bodies of Implementation adopted the Doha Work Programme on Article 6 of the Convention, which addresses climate change education and garners support and broader participation, including from the…
