World leaders have reached a new agreement to tackle climate change in Dubai. COP28, the 28th annual United Nations (UN) climate meeting, brought nations from around the world together to figure out how to deal with the effects of climate change.

The event, which this year was hosted by United Arab Emirates (UAE), took place over two weeks, concluding on December 13.

The University of Leeds, which was an official observer of the event, sent nine delegates including – for the first time – an undergraduate student. 

Vaibhav Pramode Nair, who is only 20-years-old, studies Sustainability and Environmental Management at the School of Earth and Environment and was given rare access to the event. He tells The Gryphon why he went and what he saw at the largest climate summit in the world.

How did you get to attend the conference?

I built relationships within the University of Leeds Priestley Centre for Climate Futures and out of curiosity expressed my interest in wanting to help. I then spoke to the School of Politics and International Studies and told them I live in UAE anyway.

So I pitched the idea and there was a back and forth with emails and we established what I wanted to do at COP28 and met in the middle in terms of what the Priestley Centre was looking for. 

Why did you want to go? What priorities did you have going in?

I had lots of things I wanted to focus on! It was a big privilege to be the first undergraduate ever from the University of Leeds to attend. 

I am a big advocate for soil and part of a global movement called Save Soil so my number one priority was to go and engage with soil policy and ensure soil was on the cover text. 

My second priority was youth engagement. How do we get young people from Leeds specifically on board with the COP process and understand there’s a formal way to impact positive climate action? Civil society – campaign groups like Just Stop Oil and Greenpeace – is one part of it but I think students tend to think that’s the only way to impact climate action. There’s a huge demand to bring about climate action but little knowledge there’s a formal way to sit at the negotiation tables and speak to bring about change. So I wanted to go to COP and bring back that experience to the community in Leeds.

My third priority was on following the advancements in terms of the finance front. A big question going into the conference was how do we ensure that climate action is adequately financed and countries pay up?

Can you conceptualise the conference for me, what does it actually look like inside? The University of Leeds is an official observer, what access does that status give you?

At COP there are two zones. The green zone is open to the public and is usually free to enter. In this zone companies set up stalls showcasing their sustainability initiatives. It’s like a trade fare. 

The blue zone is where the real stuff happens. It’s where all the delegates, ministers and heads of state gather for negotiations. We had access to the blue zone, and whilst there are a few sessions that are exclusive to heads of state or environment ministers, we could get into most rooms and observe most meetings. 

EXPO City Dubai is huge! It’s 15,000 daily steps easy without trying too hard.

What did the University of Leeds delegates do whilst you were there?

The University of Leeds mostly sends scientists and researchers who have their own priorities and will follow the negotiations and speak at some events. 

We had nine people go as part of an in-person delegation and another 15 attending online. We didn’t have a stand but each of us had our own issues that we focused on and charted our own schedule. For me, it was youth empowerment and soil so I attended relevant negotiations and events for these topics.

Going in there was some scepticism about the United Arab Emirates hosting the event. It’s a nation that is very dependent on the riches of carbon. Can you give me an idea of the national debate going on within the country at the moment? Is climate action a serious priority or are there still, understandably, concerns about the potential economic impact of changing the status quo?

Post-COP28, if you ask most people around the world, this conference has been a success. Initially, when we entered we thought it would be a finance COP about how we can mobilise finance to support climate initiatives but that was barely seen in the end.

It instead became a fossil fuel COP and the cover text sends a clear message about the desire to move on from fossil fuels. There were also other key outcomes such as the Emirates Declaration on Sustainable Agriculture which put food high on the climate agenda.

Within the UAE there is a celebratory mood. The feeling is that COP28 has created a positive momentum, with the UAE presidency pulling off a successful event and putting out a cover text that is implementable, though of course there is a lot of work to be done and there are sceptics. 

I would say that Dr. Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber (the COP28 president) has silenced his critics because he has come out with a pretty concrete outcome.

In the text agreement the word ‘soil’ was not mentioned. What are your thoughts about that? 

Soil is seen as a victim of climate change when it should be seen as a solution and an adaptation of climate change. When we talk about climate, we don’t think of soil, which is the largest terrestrial carbon sink on the planet.

I hope at COP29 we see the declaration taking up the issue of soil seriously. Whilst it’s not on the cover text, I am really happy about the sheer volume of people gravitating towards food systems and agriculture. Never before at a COP has this topic been covered in such depth so I am really glad to see that. 

When you come back to Leeds what is the next step?

We just had a post-conference delegation meeting and spoke about our key takeaways. We will all be writing individual reports about our experience, what we can do better and what the COP29 delegation should be looking out for. I will also be going forward and engaging with young people in Leeds on the COP process. We have some exciting initiatives coming up on how students can engage in the formal process of COP and get their voices heard. 

The United Kingdom hosted COP26 two years ago and was at the forefront of tackling the climate crisis. However, with Rishi Sunak delaying and cancelling green policies such as the ban on petrol and diesel cars do you think the UK is still a global leader? 

I saw first-hand the work that the UK is doing and the work British universities are doing and it is simply phenomenal. The current government might not be up to speed with climate action but it doesn’t give me a reason for discontent because of what I saw at COP28. All the British universities and the UK delegation itself held multiple bilaterals and were very active in negotiations.