Geography Resources for COP29

COP29 official logo

COP29 will take place in Azerbaijan in November 2024.

Adapt these ideas to support your teaching in the weeks leading up to and during the conference to engage your students with the negotiations and where they are taking place:

Priorities for COP29 include:

  • Climate finance to developing countries to support climate change mitigation and adaptation.
  • Encouraging countries to commit to more ambitious greenhouse gas emission reduction targets by 2035
  • Developing a global carbon market
  • Greening education

Azerbaijan in context

  1. Using google maps, explore where Azerbaijan is, who its neighbours are, how big it is (how many times the size of Wales), it’s in Eurovision, but is it in Europe?
  2. Azerbaijan’s population pyramid
  3. Azerbaijan’s GDP
  4. Azerbaijan contains 9 climate zones. What are the main factors that determine the local climate?
    Sources: https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/azerbaijan/climate-data-historical  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Azerbaijan https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Azerbaijan_topographic_map-az.svg
  5. Construct or interpret climate graphs for one or more places/ climate zones in Azerbaijan using the information at https://en.climate-data.org/asia/azerbaijan-112/
  6. Contour drawing practice – the sketch map below has selected November temperatures for Azerbaijan. Draw the 10°C contour. (Click on image for an easy to print pdf)

Data sources: Google Earth, https://weatherandclimate.com/ and https://en.climate-data.org/ November mean temperatures (°C)

Climate change and climate justice in Azerbaijan

Explore the Global Carbon Atlas  (some sample screenshots are below)

Graphical/  Numerical skills:

  • What are Azerbaijan’s total emissions/ emissions per person/ emissions per GDP like compared to other countries? (use the graphs to ask specific questions such as how much more greenhouse gasses did the UK emit per person from fossil fuels in 2022 than Azerbaijan?)
  • How have Azerbaijan’s emissions changed over time?
  • What happened in the early 1990s?
greenhouse gas emissions per GDP Global Carbon Atlas

Climate change in Azerbaijan

Use https://showyourstripes.info/ or the IPCC’s Interactive Atlas to see how the climate of Azerbaijan is changing relative to the whole world or to the UK.

Source: Showyourstripes.info Ed Hawkins/ University of Reading

Climate Change Risk in Azerbaijan

Explore https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/azerbaijan/heat-risk and https://drmkc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/inform-index/INFORM-Climate-Change/INFORM-Climate-Change-Tool
https://drmkc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/inform-index/INFORM-Climate-Change/Results-and-data
Also
https://drmkc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/inform-index/INFORM-Risk/Country-Risk-Profile
https://drmkc.jrc.ec.europa.eu/inform-index/INFORM-Risk/Risk-Facts-Figures

How vulnerable is Azerbaijan to climate change? What impact of climate change (sea level change, river flooding, drought, disease or conflict) poses the greatest risk to Azerbaijan?

Source EU/ Inform Climate Change Tool

Climate Justice

Climate justice recognises the fact that the people and countries most vulnerable to climate change are often not the ones who have done the most to cause it.
Thinking about Azerbaijan’s greenhouse gas emissions, GDP and vulnerability to climate change, write a paragraph to justify this definition of climate justice.

Possible extension – Azerbaijan’s climate mitigation action is rated ‘critically insufficient’ by the Climate Action Tracker. How does this relate to the concept of climate justice?

Other useful sources of information:
https://www.adb.org/publications/climate-risk-country-profile-azerbaijan
https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/NDC/2023-10/Second%20NDC_Azerbaijan_ENG_Final%20%281%29.pdf

IPCC 2021 – Climate Change in Africa

Climate Change Quality Mark Content

Africa: Climate Change Impact and Mitigation

Africa is one of the lowest contributors to global greenhouse gas emissions, yet key development sectors are already experiencing widespread losses and damages attributed to human-induced climate change.

Widespread negative impacts of 1.5-2°C of global warming are projected for Africa. These impacts are likely to be severe due to reduced food production, reduced economic growth, increased inequality and poverty, biodiversity loss, and increased human mortality.

Exposure to climate change in Africa is multi-dimensional. There are socioeconomic, political, and environmental factors which make people more vulnerable. Socioeconomically, Africans are disproportionately employed in climate-exposed sectors: 55-62% of the sub-Saharan workforce is employed in agriculture and 95% of cropland is rainfed. In decision-making, particularly in rural Africa, poor and female-headed households have less sway and face greater livelihood risks from climate hazards. Environmentally, in urban areas, growing informal settlements without basic services increase the vulnerability of large populations to climate hazards, especially women, children, and the elderly.

Climate adaptation across Africa is therefore crucial to lessen the impact of future warming, is generally cost-effective, and will provide social, economic, and environmental benefits to the vulnerable. However, the current finance available is far less than adaptation costs. Most adaption options are effective at present-day warming but their effectiveness for future warming is unknown.

Climate: Impact and projected risks

Most African countries will enter unprecedented high temperature climates earlier in this century than generally wealthier, higher latitude countries, emphasising the urgency of adaptation measures in Africa.

Both mean temperature and extreme temperature trends will increase across the continent, resulting in more heatwaves and drought. With above 1.5°C of global warming, drought frequency and duration will particularly increase over southern Africa. If 2°C global warming occurs there will be decreased precipitation in North Africa whilst any rise above 3°C of global warming will lead to drought duration in North Africa, the western Sahel, and southern Africa doubling from 2 to 4 months.

Bar north and southwestern Africa, rainfall events will also increase in frequency and intensity across Africa, at all levels of global warming.

Consequently, multiple African countries are facing compounding risks in the twenty-first century.

Hydrological variability and water scarcity will increase and will have a cascading impact on water supply and hydrological power production.

Climate change has already reduced economic growth across Africa, one estimate suggests gross domestic product (GDP) per capita for 1991–2010 in Africa was on average 13.6% lower than if climate change had not occurred.

Future warming will negatively affect food systems in Africa by shortening growing seasons and increasing water stress. With 1.5°C of global warming, declines are projected in suitable areas for coffee and tea in east Africa, for olives yields in north Africa, and for sorghum yields in west Africa.

Mortality and morbidity are expected to escalate as of tens of millions of Africans will be exposed to extreme weather and an increase in the range and transmission of infectious diseases.

Climate change is projected to increase migration. Africa’s rapidly growing cities will be hotspots of risks from climate change and climate-induced in-migration, which will amplify pre-existing stresses such as poverty, informality, social and economic exclusion, and governance.

Increasing temperatures are likely to cause drought-associated conflict risk.

Climate Change Negotiations for Schools

Simulating a world climate change conference

Guidance for Teachers

  • Notes for teachers – this contains everything you need to know to run the activity. Start here!
  • Curriculum Links
  • Print:
    Pack 1 (double sided if possible) – note these are personalised;
    Pack 2 (table flags, must be printed in colour, could be laminated), or as Pack2b names (which can be printed in black and white).
    Pack 3 (sticky labels for printing on standard 8 row label sheets or print on paper and use school lanyards),
    Optional Pack 4 (country fact sheets for reference in class),
    Pack 5 for Module 4, Market Places.
  • PowerPoint slides for use in all modules. Edit this before use to assign students to each country.

Please let us know if you have used these resources by emailing education@rmets.org. It would be great if you could also tell us which year group you used it with, how many students there were and how it went. This will help us refine it in the future.

Module 1 – Introduction

Module 2 – homework

Module 4

Module 5

Module 6

Useful Tools:

Acknowledgements

Silver Geographical Association Publishers Award 2018This work was funded by the Royal Meteorological Society and is supported by Rimini Protokoll, based on their theatre production for DeutschesSchauspielHausHamburg: World Climate Change Conference , 2014.

We are delighted that this resource has been awarded a Silver award by the Geographical Association. The citation given reads “Simulating a world climate change conference is a free, online and multimedia resource, relevant for both GCSE and A level specifications. It provides a wealth of high-quality, sophisticated and up-to-date materials including video input from one of the British delegates to the Paris climate talks. The judges felt that the quality of the resource would enable teachers to confidently set up an excellent simulation for their classes.”

This resource has also been Highly Commended by the Scottish Association for Geography Teachers.

You may also be interested in the higher level version, not specifically for schools, created by Climate Interactives using the CRoads model and the model climate conferences for secondary schools run by InterClimate.org in local council chambers.

David Warrilow, UK representative to the Paris negotiations, has published this article: Science and the international climate negotiations

stripes Europe

MetLink - Royal Meteorological Society
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