This fall, a dozen undergraduates from the Institute's Climate and Development Lab (CDL) will enroll in a course called Engaged Climate Policy at the UN Climate Change Talks. For one week in December, the climate negotiations and the Parisian streets will become the students' classroom, as they join 20,000 country delegates, civil society representatives, journalists, and thousands of citizens in their debate of one of the most important issues of our time.

Timmons Roberts, Institute Fellow and Ittleson Professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology, founded the CDL in 2010. Roberts has been attending the climate negotiations since 2003 and has since built up an impressive list of professional contacts: a veritable Who's Who in climate change leadership. These contacts, along with Roberts' expertise and a chance to attend the UN climate talks, make competition for entry into the lab and course understandably steep.

But for a lucky few, their successful admission represents the opportunity of a lifetime. Since the introduction of the Engaged Climate Policy course, over 40 students from ten concentrations have attended the UN climate talks, traveling to such far-flung locations as Cancun, Durban, Bonn, Warsaw and Lima. Some return to the talks the following year as CDL alumni; others network their way into "embedded" roles within country delegations and NGOs.

"Olivia Santiago [‘16], who [took the class in Fall 2014] is [now] with the Seychelles delegation," offers Guy Edwards, IBES Research Fellow and co-director of the CDL along with Roberts and recent PhD recipient David Ciplet. "She has a country delegate badge, which means she can access any part of the negotiations normally closed off to journalists and NGOs."

Other students have made impressive professional contacts as well. For instance, Saleemul Huq, Senior Fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), has been working with Alexis Durand ‘16 and Victoria Hoffmeister'17 since 2014 and at last year's talks in Lima immediately put them to work investigating the Loss and Damage Mechanism for the Least Developed Countries Group (LDC). Maria Camila Bustos'16 and Ximena Carranza Risco'17 made a similar connection with Monica Araya, Founder and Executive Director the think tank Nivela; the two now hold research positions with the organization.

"We're very small, the lab group, so we've made the most of these contacts we have at much bigger or influential organizations. We have the student resources, so on a number of occasions these organizations have just called us and said, ‘Do you have someone that could help with this?' or, ‘Can you suggest someone who might be interested in that?'," explains Edwards. "The students have a solid base in UN climate policy, so if they are interested in the work on offer they can really hit the ground running."

Roberts and Edwards recount the story of Brianna Craft, M.A.'13, who volunteered to fill one of these requests – a call for support from Pa Ousman, The Gambia's Minister of Environment, Climate Change, Water Resources, and Parks and Wildlife and former chair of the Least Developed Countries negotiating group. "She was essentially his personal assistant at the UN talks in Doha in 2012," recalled Edwards. "At the final meetings of the negotiations, when just certain people were in the room to draft an agreement, she was sat just behind Ousman, taking notes, with other ministers and top negotiators from the US and other countries." Craft is now based in London at the IIED and continues to work closely with Ousman and the LDCs.

Roberts believes that such access to key players in the climate change debate offers members of the CDL a more nuanced perspective than they would get otherwise. "Students meet the people who are making the decisions, people who are coming up with the ideas that might solve this issue of climate change," he explains. "One of the students said last year, ‘I was surprised at how human the process is.' You can read about climate change politics in the books all you want, but when you actually know the personalities of the people and you see them again and again in different negotiations or out in the hallways… There's just nothing like being there."

During their week-long stay in Paris, this year's cohort will observe as many of the open-door negotiations as they are able; however, they will also spend time setting up meetings with target contacts, conducting interviews, attending side events, visiting with activist groups, blogging, and posting to social media. Roberts, Edwards, and Ciplet believe that the students' activities at the negotiations, as well as the research, writing, and policy-making skills they develop as members of the CDL, are a valuable complement their more traditional academic studies.

Former CDL member Bryna Cofrin-Shaw'15 agrees wholeheartedly. "No experience during my time at Brown exemplified the concept of learning outside the classroom like the Climate and Development Lab," she says. Adds Sophie Purdom'16, "My experience with the CDL at the UN climate conferences epitomized the trust and freedom that has made my Brown education so outstanding."

This year's summit in Paris is charged with finalizing a new global climate deal to come into force by 2020. As thousands of negotiators, analysts, and campaigners prepare for this crucial meeting, twelve fresh faces here at IBES are gathering their own scholarly materials, professional contacts, and confidence, and bracing themselves for participation in an event with the loftiest of goals: building a low carbon and more resilient future for us all.

For ongoing updates, visit the CDL website at http://www.climatedevlab.brown.edu/ and follow @ClimateDevLab on Twitter.