Assemblies / Talks

COP 27 Talk

With the forthcoming COP 27 Sumit being at the forefront of many people’s minds, Green Impact and the Partnership’s team welcomed Old Gower, Archie Young, the UK’s Lead Climate Negotiator to deliver an inspiring talk to pupils from across the school on his experiences leading the COP 26 summit and some of the challenges in climate diplomacy. He drew upon his experiences at the school, which instantly helped the pupils to be able to relate to his journey towards becoming a fundamental figure in the countries’ international presence. This latest event demonstrated how important it is to get pupils talking about international diplomacy along with climate justice, as countries come together to deliberate on the latest update of international climate policy. The society will be closely following the COP 27 Summit and will be discussing how the pledges made on an international stage map out at a local level.

The climate crisis will be one of the defining issues of the coming few decades and UCS has ensured that pupils are engaged in action and through equipping them with data so that they can measure the effectiveness of specific strategies. For example, pupils have monitored the school’s energy usage, recycling percentages and air quality providing them with greater agency and ability to lead the continuous improvement of the school’s environmental footprint. The latest Green Impact project, which coincides with COP 27, involves a competition across all three of the Foundation’s schools to see which can reduce their energy consumption the most through behavioural changes. Behavioural changes, although less glamorous, have the greatest impact on an organisation’s carbon footprint and through pupil led campaigns like ‘Switch-off Fortnight’ it continues to raise the profile of sustainability around the school and encourages a ‘possibilist’ mentality which is so important when pupils are faced with issues surrounding the climate crisis.