Dartmouth Observers Attending U.N. Climate Summit

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A Tuck delegation and undergrads are among the attendees in Dubai.

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People walking through climate summit.
People walk through the COP28 U.N. Climate Summit on Wednesday in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. (Photo by AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool)
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More than a dozen Dartmouth students and professors are attending the United Nations climate talks in Dubai this month, serving as observers and sharing some of their own research.

About 90,000 people registered to attend the climate summit, known as COP28, which runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 12, according to the Associated Press.

Among the attendees are 10 second-year students at the Tuck School of Business who are representing Dartmouth in the United Arab Emirates as observers and also conducted an independent study project to produce timely research on a newly proposed accountability framework for voluntary climate pledges by non-party stakeholders.

The Tuck students, who are rotating in for a week at a time in two groups of five, are: Lauren Adamson, Laura Betten, Pierce Gibson, Claire Kadeethum, Chirag Kataruka, Sarah Kilpatrick, Laura Knapp, Gagan Makhija, Kush Sodha, and Jack Vann.

Accompanying the students are government professor Diederik Vandewalle, who is also an adjunct professor at Tuck, and Tracy Bach, a law professor who has attended previous summits.

Also attending the summit are Kate Yeo '25, an environmental studies major and climate activist, and Stela Tong '22.

This is Yeo's second COP summit. She is a youth delegate this year with the nongovernmental organization Climate Action Network Southeast Asia.

"I follow negotiations on mitigation and carbon markets. I'm here so that I can be a more effective climate advocate in Singapore, my home country," Yeo said by email from Dubai on Wednesday. "I believe it's important for youth to understand all the COP jargon so that we can analyze policies and ultimately put forward more robust alternative proposals."

Tuck has sent students to COP summits since 2009, and recently interviewed some prior attendees about their experience.