Six students from Year 12 & 13 took part in the students Climate Change Conference organised by the Interclimate Change committee and hosted in Cheltenham Council Chambers this Tuesday 26^th November. This is the 10^th year that the ICC has held these mock climate change conferences throughout Gloucester and Sir Thomas Rich’s has contributed a number of teams representing a number of countries over these years.

Eight schools took part representing eleven countries. Sir Thomas Rich’s was given the UK, a challenging, but interesting, option at this time in our uncertain politics.

As in previous years, the debate was well managed. Each “country” presented well researched positions at the outset and were able to negotiate from informed positions creating all too realistic debates and arguments.

There were break out times for the “countries” to informally negotiate with other “countries” and form alliances. The experience provides a real education of the climate change issues and the conflicts but it also provides an invaluable opportunity for students to develop communication and negotiation skills.

Our team were well researched, able to present the current UK position, put forward potential developments on carbon capture, off shore wind technology and…. They negotiated well with other “countries” on sharing Japanese technology on “Smart Cities” and assisting Japan to move on from its disastrous nuclear and tsunami experience to use wind turbine technology.

Kenya challenged the UK to provide more support for developing countries but our STRS team already had the facts and figures to hand anyway.

A new development this year was the requirement for the school teams to present local, school initiatives. An energy market provided a number of companies and charities to help stimulate ideas.

Our school went away with a number of ideas to build on and a number of ways to engage students in our school.