Zachary Beaudoin’s commitment to environmental and sustainability issues at Fredonia is taking the senior from Angola to COP21, a United Nations-sponsored conference focused on crafting a long-sought and far-reaching international agreement on climate change.
He will be among representatives from more than 195 countries assembling in Paris for the 21st Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which runs from Nov. 30 to Dec. 11. Its goal is to forge a new international agreement on climate change – applicable to all countries – that keeps global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.
Beaudoin will serve as a reporter as part of the Citizens Climate Campaign program.
“I will be making talking points for high level officials, NGOs and individuals to bring back to their country,” Beaudoin explained. Other duties will include taking messages from the Secretariat and breaking them down into digestible information for people to use and disseminate to a broader audience.
“The big issue with summits like this is that the information is very dense and we will be acting as decoders for whatever comes out and then we will construct the data into any capacity that is needed,” added Beaudoin, who will also write a blog during the conference.
Sarah Laurie, director of Environmental Health, Safety, and Sustainability at Fredonia, said Beaudoin has been an active proponent of sustainability issues on campus and SUNY-system wide. He was recently elected chair of Sustainability for the Student Association at the SUNY level, where he is strongly dedicated to creating Sustainable Development Goals that encompass all SUNY campuses.
“This is an extremely high honor and something Zach and Fredonia should be proud of,” Ms. Laurie noted.
Dr. Michael Jabot, who serves on the Fredonia Sustainability Committee with Beaudoin, agrees. “Having Zach involved in COP21 is an incredible opportunity for Zach and a huge honor for our campus,” he said. “This meeting has delegates from around the world – ours is President Obama and his staff – as well as invited guests who were given credentials. These credentials were coordinated by the UN and were highly limited. So having Zach receive these is really very special.”
Beaudoin has a long-held interest in the United Nations, but it wasn’t until the English/International Studies major was given the opportunity to work on Sustainable Development Goals through the SUNY Student Assembly that he became so invested in the UN. He established ties with the UN at the 2015 UN Foundation’s Social Good Summit in New York City.
Working alongside Beaudoin at the conference will be Morgan Wood, a colleague of his at the SUNY Student Assembly who attends Binghamton University. Four students from the University at Buffalo are attending the conference as observers.
At Fredonia, Beaudoin is president of the Sierra Club, United Nations and Amnesty International as well as president of the resurrected Fredonia Democrats. He is the student chair of the Environmental Relations Committee that helps to organize the campus-wide Earth Month, reports on environmental initiatives on campus and engages campus groups in green initiatives, is a Global Student Ambassador and member of the Student Committee of the FSA Board of Directors, and is a former student board member of Chautauqua Citizens’ Response to Climate Change.
Efforts to develop an international political response to climate change were initiated in 1992 at the Rio Earth Summit. What emerged was the UN Framework on Climate Change designed to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases. COP (Conference of the Parties) events held in in subsequent years produced international agreements, including the Kyoto Protocol in 1997 that set internationally binding emission reduction targets for developed countries.
Beaudoin acknowledges that gaining the support of the United States, which declined to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, poses the biggest challenge for this conference.
“Once the U.S. pulled out, it was a chain reaction for the other global leaders to pull out. I also think an issue will be getting everyone in the room to discuss and agree on everything,” he explained. “As we know, it’s hard for Congress to sit in a room together let alone a meeting of the world’s governments.”
Even so, Beaudoin enters COP21, also known as the 2015 Paris Climate Conference, with high expectations for success. “I think that the U.S. is in a position where it is do or die, literally. Many world leaders have already committed their countries to the outcomes of this conference and if the U.S. doesn’t ratify the treaty, I think that it will have really harsh consequences,” he said.
Beaudoin also notes that President Obama has met with CEOs of many companies, and suggests many businesses are moving forward to take action on limiting climate change.
