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More than 10 Harvard students and several faculty members traveled to Belém, Brazil this month to attend COP30, the annual United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Harvard attendees from across the University presented research and policy initiatives while participating in events during the two week conference. The Harvard Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability funded travel for 10 students, though most Harvard affiliates in attendance had to secure credentials though a nongovernmental organization before receiving Salata funding.
This year’s conference focused on executing past climate commitments by linking goals to counter climate change with concrete pathways for implementation, according to COP30 attendees.
“This COP is being championed as the implementation COP,” Arathi Rao, the director of the Global Climate Policy Project, said. “Much of the negotiation’s been done and what we need to do now is implement what has been negotiated.”
Benjamin N. Heilbronn ’27, a first-time observer at the conference, said he enjoyed seeing real-time climate negotiations as he learned more about other climate activists in attendance.
“I think that COP offers a really unique opportunity to engage with people of all different backgrounds and across the world who are all focused on addressing climate challenges,” he said.
Parts of the conference were available to the public, offering learning opportunities for understanding effects of climate from worldwide to local levels. But the locus of decision making took place behind closed doors — in the “Blue Zone,” an area of the conference only accessible to certain preapproved observers.
Harvard faculty played key roles in several policy negotiations in the conference’s Blue Zone. Professors — including Mary B. Rice at the School of Public Health and Jeannine Cavender-Bares in the organismic and evolutionary biology department — held talks presenting about their research on public health and the environmental impacts of climate change.
But many Harvard affiliates said they struggled to get access to the “Blue Zone,” leaving them questioning whether they would be able to see the most important negotiations — and scrambling to secure funding to attend the conference itself.
“The Salata Institute has a COP Student Observers funding program,” Heilbronn said. “This program gives you money to help support your expenses to attend COP — but the stipulation is that you need to basically secure a badge, and the badge is a credential to get into the Blue Zone.”
Each year, Harvard receives a limited number of badges that University must allocate through a competitive application process. Affiliates who don’t get tapped to receive a badge must secure credentials from willing non-governmental organizations so that they can still receive funding to attend.
Heilbronn said he sent emails to “50 or 60 different NGOs” before he successfully secured a badge.
Jing Ling Tan, a PhD student at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, also said it was challenging to obtain a badge through Harvard to access the Blue Zone.
“I didn’t get a badge from Harvard. So if I’m not wrong, Harvard has very few badges, maybe four this year. So I got a badge from the National University of Singapore as an alumni there,” Tan said.
Despite the difficulty of securing the necessary credentials, affiliates said they relished the opportunity to take part in the conference’s negotiations alongside other passionate attendees.
“It’s important that people, no matter what their experience is with climate, have part of the COP and have a part in the conversation,” Heilbronn said. “Because it really does affect everyone.”
