CEMS Model UNFCCC Climate Strategy Roleplay

The programme offers many opportunities for students to test their knowledge in a wide variety of settings. In the Model UNFCCC CEMS Climate Strategy Roleplay course, negotiations of the COP27 conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change were simulated, with the active participation of 224 international students from CEMS partner universities, including Corvinus students. 

Model UNFCCC CEMS Climate Strategy Roleplay is a unique, innovative course that provides the possibility for students to experience, as active participants, a complex, multilateral negotiation with far-reaching consequences for the future of the planet. After the online conferences of the previous two years, the negotiation simulation could once again be held in person, with 224 students and instructors from 10 CEMS partner universities coming together in Warsaw. During the two-day programme, students impersonated the delegates of various countries, representing their interests in the negotiations for a new treaty on climate change. The conference included plenary and working group sessions as well as informal negotiations in a realistic setting, allowing students to make use of their knowledge on climate change, the UNFCCC process and negotiation strategies acquired during the course. As a result of intense negotiations and searching for compromise long into the night, by the end of the second day, students were able to come to consensus on the text of the „Warsaw Accord”, which focused on the most important issues in relation climate change: the reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions (mitigation), preparing for the effects of climate change (adaptation), climate finance, market mechanisms to facilitate emission reductions, and questions about the status of climate refugees and loss and damage resulting from global warming. 

The success of the two-day simulation proved that this course, now in its 14th year and always building on the current state of play, is able to prepare the next generation of decision makers to face the complex challenge of tackling climate change. This year’s event was hosted by SGH Warsaw School of Economics with the participation of students and teachers from Corvinus University of Budapest, the University of Cologne, ESADE (Barcelona), RSM (Rotterdam), Bocconi (Milano), the University of St Gallen, Stockholm School of Economics, NHH (Bergen), and Aalto University (Helsinki). At Corvinus, the course is taught by Dr. Ágnes Zsóka and Dr. Anna Széchy.  

Participants of the climate change negotiation simulation from Corvinus were: 

Chen Keyuan, Sára Rebeka Csintalan, Réka Farkas, Hermine de Francqueville, Clémentine Garillon, Annabel Groen, Ádám Hajnal, Estelle Lalisse, Achille Lange, Dániel Miklós Lengyel, Mirella Sóti, Dénes Ferenc Szabó, Fanni Szűcs.