University of Plymouth experts at COP28

Championing the importance of the ocean in climate negotiations
Ocean waves
A team from the University of Plymouth is attending the United Nations Climate Conference – better known as COP28 – in Dubai, this week.
Attendees, including politicians and scientists from all over the world, will have the opportunity to meet leading researchers and experts in the fields of offshore renewable energy, ocean science, plastics and more.
The University is working with Plymouth Marine Laboratory and Partnership for Observation of the Global Ocean, and can be found at Stand 9 in the Education, Science and Technology Zone, at Expo City.
The team is sharing the latest developments in climate challenges, impacts and options towards sustainable ocean development. And the aim is to connect science, industry, policy and society for ocean action in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) processes and strengthening Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).

Our COP28 Side Event

The centrepiece of the University’s presence at COP28 is a side event on Sunday 3 December, which is focused on scaling up community knowledge within a whole-system approach for climate-smart solutions in energy and land transitions.
A just transition for energy and resource development requires systems thinking to resolve complex challenges from land to sea. It demands negotiating conflicts of top-down and bottom-up knowledge, learning from community-led approaches to deliver evidence-based sustainability solutions, fast and at scale.
Keynote speaker at the event is world-leading marine scientist, Professor Richard Thompson OBE FRS . The expert panel includes Professor Paul Monks, Chief Scientific Officer for the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, Professor Deborah Greaves OBE FREng , Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre for Decarbonisation and Offshore Renewable Energy and Supergen Offshore Renewable Energy (ORE) Hub , University of Plymouth. And they will be joined by further experts from the Maldives, UK and Ireland.

What is COP28?

The Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an international climate summit, which is normally held annually. At COPs, world leaders gather to work on solutions to tackle climate change. There are now 198 Parties (197 countries plus the European Union) to the convention.
COP28 is bringing them together to unite around tangible climate action and deliver realistic solutions, with the goal of meeting the Paris Agreement, which aims to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by 2100, and to adapt to the existing effects of climate change.
COP28 graphic