Hall student reports on the COP25 UN Climate Change Summit

The Keith Gull Fund was established to provide direct support to current Hall students who wish to undertake special projects such as charitable work, choral and drama tours, travel for unusual academic opportunities and to assist others.

In Michaelmas 2019, Hall student Kate Cullen (2019, MSc Water Science, Policy & Management) received an award from this Fund to enable her attendance at the COP25 UN Climate Change Summit to work with colleagues from Pacific island nations, such as Niue and Palau, towards the goal of improving finance flows to communities must vulnerable to climate change. She provides an account of her experience below:

Niue and Palau are on the frontlines of experiencing climate change in the form of sea level rise, extreme weather and coral reef die-off. In 2017, I joined the volunteer-based non-profit Climate Policy Watch as an analyst and assistant negotiator to Niue, Palau and other small island developing states to support them in advocating for their urgent needs in COP negotiations. My original plan was to continue this work and attend COP25 as an assistant negotiator to Niue, or perhaps Palau as a back-up option. The sudden conference venue change from Santiago, Chile to Madrid, Spain prevented the full Niue and Palau government teams from attending, which meant I wasn’t able to officially be a member of their negotiation teams. However, an opportunity to attend through Oxford as an academic observer allowed me to support their teams in more informal ways, observe negotiations on their key issues, and participate in a larger breadth of conference events relevant to small island nations and my dissertation research more generally.  
 
The opportunity to engage closely with the Niue and Palau delegations allowed me to write a term paper for my Climate Change Law course in the School of Geography and the Environment on improving finance flows to Pacific island communities most vulnerable to climate change. The paper was well received, much in thanks to its relevance to ongoing negotiations. I’m now discussing the possibility of publishing it with my professor and other colleagues.  

Attending the summit also allowed me to connect with former colleagues, participate in closed-door meetings and presentations, and make new high-level contacts for the great benefit of my dissertation research. Through these experiences, I was able to better focus my research topic to examine how water governance can better incorporate climate change information and adaptation practices in developing nations.

My focus in analysing this issue has increasingly shifted to Chile, where I researched a similar topic for a year as a U.S. Fulbright Scholar. Attending COP25, which was still hosted by the Chilean government although it was located in Madrid, allowed me to meet with and hear numerous presentations from key government officials and private sector leaders working on these issues.

I had the opportunity to present my research topic and touch on my experience at COP25 at the MCR Hilary Term Research Seminar where a few of us were selected to give ‘lighting talks’ in the Old Dining Room. Once we have more certainty on our schedule for Trinity Term, I’m hoping to hold a seminar for the greater St Edmund Hall community to share more about my experience at COP25 and the functioning of UN climate negotiations more generally.  
 
The support of the Keith Gull Fund was crucial in allowing me to travel to Spain and participate in a historic UN negotiation session, strengthen key professional contacts, and tangibly improve my course work and research. It was an honor to represent St Edmund Hall at the COP25 summit.
   
If you’re interested to read more, I’d like to direct you to a blog I published for the Oxford Climate Society reflecting on my experience: “COP25: Flickers of Hope Amongst Disappointment.”