Young man presents his ideas to a table of fellow students
Persuading fellow students at COP27 climate negotiation simulation ©

British Council, 2022

During COP29, the world’s attention will again focus on climate change. Young people from across the UK will gather together to think about and discuss the challenges that key leaders face on this global issue.

Working with local partners, the British Council will organise a series of climate negotiation simulation events for students across the UK, coinciding with the 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 29), which takes place in Azerbaijan from 11 - 25 November 2024.

These simulation events offer a face to face role-playing exercise based around the UN climate change negotiations using materials developed by Climate Interactive, part of the MIT Sloan Sustainability Initiative

Students (aged 16-18) will take on the different roles of those people who are actively working in this field: world leaders, non-governmental bodies (NGOs) and the media. Working in groups which represent a country, a region or a lobby group, the students will take part in a simulation of a real-life climate negotiation. While each group looks at the issue from a different angle, they will come together to produce a global agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and keep the global temperature from rising above 1.5%. 

Through the simulation, participants explore the rate of change and level of action that nations must take to address global climate change. During the negotiations, the students’ proposals are fed into a computer programme, which uses real-life data to model what the consequences of the proposals would be. This gives them the opportunity to better understand how climate negotiations, such as the UN Climate Change Conferences operate. It also allows them the opportunity to work with students from other schools to reach a consensus on the issue.

In 2024, we will run four new simulation events: in Edinburgh (31 October), Cardiff (6 November), London (7 November) and Baku (17 November).

Similar events took place across November-December 2023 in Edinburgh, Cardiff, Manchester, Belfast and London. Watch the video of the event below to hear how the students learned.

Fancy organising your own climate negotiation conference? This makes a great project to work on with a partner school in a different country.