COP 22 Day 5

Our final day at the COP was short and sweet. We took a final walk through the blue zone, ate lunch, and did some work in one of the computer rooms. We spent our finals hours exploring the green zone in more detail. We were interested specifically in projects and initiatives based in Morocco.

We walked through the displays in the civil society portion of the green zone, reading the posters of several climate and sustainable development projects that various groups were doing throughout the world. The civil society tent was rectangularly shaped, with “agoras” positioned in the middle for open discussions on various topics and rows of display booths lining the “agoras” on both sides. We took interest in displays that pertained to micro-credit financing for rural Moroccan women and climate leadership initiatives targeting youth. Finally, we met with a women from the Moroccan Ministry of Environment, who helped put us in contact with The Moroccan Agency of Development in the North and The Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy, which heads Morocco's renewable energy initiative. These contacts will be used for our respective independent study projects we will be conducting for the remainder of the semester.

Our mood throughout the week oscillated between hopeful, inspired, and melancholic. With the election of Donald Trump, we have been in despair for the future of our world’s ecosystems and the impacts that his presidency will have on the fight against climate change. Yet, attending COP22 showed that those most dedicated to climate change will not stop, regardless of the political situation throughout the world. We very much appreciated the opportunity to witness an initiative such as COP22 and its determination to make planet earth a safer and better place for all of us. We are immensely grateful for the opportunity to attend this first week of the Conference of Parties in Marrakech; we certainly learned a lot.