COP 22 Reflection by Bailey Jacobs
I am mere months away from graduation, which seems surreal after building a family on campus over the past five years. At the turn of a new year I like to reflect, and 2016 brought many academic successes upon which to pause and review. In October 2016 I applied to the COP (Conference of the Parties) “away team,” meaning, I put my hat in the ring to be one of the few students who would be able to go abroad to the United Nations Climate Change conference, COP22 in Marrakech, Morocco. Much to my surprise, I was selected to be one of the four undergraduate students to represent the University in November! Spending ten days in Morocco, attending the COP22 conference side-events and living and commuting through the streets of the Medina was undoubtedly one of the best experiences of my academic career thus far.
Undertaking my Senior Honours Thesis in my final year of Environment Resources and Sustainability, I saw COP22 as an opportunity to find inklings of my personal research project in the discussions and on-goings that were taking place at the national, and even global, level. My thesis is focusing on creating an accessible way for Waterloo Region homeowners to receive information on ‘green’ home retrofits, so I practiced informal participatory observation (or “sponging,” as I prefer to call it) throughout the duration of the conference. Seeing as COP22 was dubbed “the action COP,” in so far as it had the mandate of creating steps to achieve the Paris Agreement, I hoped that some of the side events and discussions would touch on the topics of greening cities, local capacity building and regional energy alternatives. Unfortunately, this wasn’t necessarily the case, with regards to my research I was left creating my own assumptions as to how the high-level conversations would be actioned at the provincial/regional level. While the COP22 topics weren’t perfectly aligned to my project, the discussions were a beautiful summation of my four years of learnings in SERS.
On my plane trip home between my layover in Paris, and my second layover in New York, I found myself reflecting back even further into my academic past. In 2012, with offers from multiple universities and an interest in the environment and governance/policy, I visited campus and accepted my offer to SERS. I chose Waterloo, and more specifically, the Environment Resources and Sustainability co-op program because they promised a true “experiential learning” opportunity. I loved the idea of ‘getting out of the classroom’ and ‘experimenting with my different interests,’ but I figured the university experience they were talking about would be limited to just that… I would never have expected the type of well-rounded and custom education that SERS has given me. With my electives in my 1-3 years I was able to integrate my philosophical and peace and conflict interests into my core environmental education, equipping me with a unique perspective from that of my peers. Three years of a well-rounded environmental background, with a sprinkle of my custom interest areas provided me with the foundation I needed to attend a United Nations conference (I still can’t quite believe it!) and offer meaningful contributions to the discussions among global professionals. Further, I’m confident that my SERS foundation will be exactly what I need to continue to make meaningful contributions within my field and ensure my continued success well into my professional career.