Waking up on the first day was a bit of a challenge. The thirteen-hour flight did us no favors, but we woke up ready for the conference. Getting there took about a twenty-minute walk, followed by a forty-five-minute train ride on the metro. Once we arrived, we walked into the massive entrance to Expo-City. The venue for this year's COP is massive and requires plenty of walking. First, we needed to get our badges, which we needed our passports and our acknowledgment letter. From leaving Airbnb to getting to the entrance of the COP, it took nearly two and a half hours. Our first stop was heading over to the Michigan Tech University Pavillion.
The first discussion we went to was led by Roman Sidortsov, a research fellow at Sussex University and now an associate professor at MTU. Roman is a project leader for the project JUSTNORTH, whose main focus was to assist with the decision-making process between rightsholders and stakeholders in the Arctic. This project was created to help build a foundation for future sustainable energy sources in the Arctic (ex: hydroelectric, windmills, etc.). A big issue that lies between the rightholders vs. the stakeholders is that there isn't a way to quantify the importance of certain things. This is where JUSTNORTH has created a tool called JUSTscore to help with the negotiation processes.
The JUSTscore tool was made to help bridge ethics and personal value to a quantifiable value system. With the help of this tool, it can help certain activities that go on in the Arctic be an ethic-based decision rather than just an economical-based decision.
This dialogue was very interesting since it's something that I haven't had an initial interest in. Seeing that there was a way to bridge a connection between rights and stakeholders rather than just making an economic decision was something that I wasn't sure existed. This presentation was definitely more on the policy end of the spectrum of environmental science, but learning about this will help me be a more well-rounded individual once I enter the workforce.
We ended the day going to the Plenary, where the previous president of COP27 handed the torch to the new president, Sultan Al Jaber. I found a few things intriguing about his initial speech that will make the negotiations for this upcoming week interesting. One of the things that really stuck out was that Sultan Al Jaber emphasized the importance of fossil fuels when making a green transition. Sultan Al Jaber's case for oil and gas makes me concerned about the progress of this COP, especially considering that this conference is in a country that is heavily reliant on both of those fossil fuels for its economy.
After a long day, we headed back to the Airbnb, worked on some homework, got dinner, and went to bed. I'm looking forward to spending the week here and learning about the different branches of environmentalism and the different perspectives of people all over the world.
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