Yale on the Ground at Paris Climate Talks

Note: Yale School of the Environment (YSE) was formerly known as the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES). News articles and events posted prior to July 1, 2020 refer to the School's name at that time.

Dozens of members of the Yale community, including 60 students from the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies (F&ES) and Yale College, will be in Paris this week as part of the pivotal COP21 climate negotiations. 
 
Several F&ES students are participating in negotiations on behalf of national governments, including Colombia, Macedonia, and the Republic of Palau. Others are presenting their own research, coordinating side events, and developing relationships for global NGOs, international coalitions, student organizations, and Yale-based programs.
And throughout the conference, Yale representatives will share their findings and experiences on social media and on the F&ES blog. On Twitter, follow the hashtag #YaleClimate to keep up with all Yale-related activities at the climate talks or to join in the conversation.
 
Members of the F&ES faculty — including Ben Cashore, Dan Esty, Edgar Hertwich, Angel Hsu, and lecturer Paul Lussier — will participate in a series events focused on new solutions to the global climate challenge. 
 
Esty will participate in a side event, “Energizing Climate Action Through Broader Engagement and City-Scale Climate Finance,” a Yale Climate Change Dialogue and C40 event aimed at increasing action by ”sub-national actors“; and a Climate Summit for Local Leaders. Cashore is leading a group of F&ES students that will present its findings on constructing “decarbonization pathways” and the impacts of policy on land use. Lussier will participate in a side event, “Science with Impact,” hosted by Yale, the UN-based Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

On Dec. 4, Hsu will present Data Driven Yale’s non-state/sub-national actor research alongside the UNFCCC Secretariat Christiana Figueres and French COP President Laurent Fabius.
 
Hertwich, the new director of the Yale Center for Industrial Ecology, will unveil the results of a new report he led for the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) report, “Green Energy Choices: The Benefits, Risks, and Trade-Offs of Low-Carbon Technologies for Electricity Production.” The report is a comprehensive comparison of the greenhouse gas mitigation potential for a number of alternative energy methods — including wind, solar, geothermal, and hydro. [Read more]
 
On Dec. 6, F&ES will host a reception for Yale alumni and friends of the School, featuring a panel on leadership and climate change. Participants will include Frances Beinecke ’71 B.A., ’74 M.F.S., former president of NRDC and Dorothy S. McCluskey Visiting Fellow in Conservation at F&ES; Maria Ivanova ’99 M.E.S., ’06 Ph.D., Associate Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston; and Julia Marton-Lefevre, former Director General of IUCN and the Edward Bass Distinguished Visiting Environmental Scholar with the Yale Institute for Biospheric Studies. F&ES Dean Peter Crane will moderate the discussion.

For a full list of F&ES-related activities, go to environmental.yale.edu/cop-21.
with al gore Brittany Carmon ’16 M.E.M. with former Vice President Al Gore.
at cop ymca Yale students headed to Le Bourget to present climate communications research.