USC students tackle climate change negotiations at 2024 APRU global climate change simulation

In August, the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) hosted a Student Global Climate Change Simulation providing an opportunity for scholars to tackle pressing climate change challenges of our time. The four-week mock United Nations Climate Change Negotiation conference brought together 180 students from 20 universities across the world. Participants were assigned to delegations including the United States, the European Union, India, and China to address topics such as clean energy, migration, deforestation and carbon emissions.

This year, students from Keck School of Medicine, USC Dornsife College of Letters and Sciences, USC Jimmy Iovine and Andre Young Academy, and USC Viterbi School of Engineering represented the University of Southern California, and enrolled to learn about the intricacies of global climate change negotiations.

“The opportunity to represent a delegation in a global forum aimed at carbon emissions reduction really helped students understand how complex these decisions can be,” says Mellissa Withers, PhD, MHS, professor of clinical population and public health sciences at the Keck School of Medicine of USC and APRU director of the global health program. “The students deliberated on how to represent their assigned country’s own interests while also pledging ambitious reductions in emissions needed to achieve the Paris Agreement goals. I enjoyed seeing them in their various diplomatic roles argue for why the global community needs to take urgent action on climate change.”

Over the course of the simulation, students engaged with leaders from international institutions including the Officer in Charge of the United Nations Environment Programme’s Global Environment Facility Climate Change Mitigation team, Sudhir Sharma, PhD. “I really enjoyed the discussion and was very happy to see the high level of preparedness from the students and the fantastic questions they asked,” he shares.

Below are a few USC students who participated in the simulation. Read about their experiences.