• The programme is held in Expo City Dubai 

Dubai: The Climate Ambassadors Programme (CAP) hosted 30 university students from across the country yesterday and discussed several climate-related issues, notably ways to reduce carbon and greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

This event is part of a series of CAP sessions held in Expo City Dubai. The students came from several UAE universities, including the American University of Sharjah (AUS), the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), the Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence, Zayed University, New York University Abu Dhabi (NYU), and Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi.

His Excellency Essa Al Hashmi, Assistant Under-Secretary of the Ministry for Sustainable Communities and Acting Assistant Under-Secretary for Green Development and Climate Change at the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE), said: "The Climate Ambassadors Programme reflects our commitment to involving students and youth in the climate action system by familiarising them with the scale of global challenges to climate change, and leveraging their abilities and ideas to find solutions to those challenges."

He added: "The Programme contributes to creating a new generation that believes in the importance of action and prioritizes climate change to lead international, governmental, and societal efforts to address the biggest challenge in human history. We are pleased to welcome the first group of university students to the Programme and look forward to more productive sessions with other students until COP28 in the UAE later this year."

The Climate Ambassadors Programme was designed to be a "Youth COP", enabling them to assume the various roles and responsibilities of international stakeholders participating in COP28. As a result, yesterday's CAP sessions witnessed a productive dialogue among the referred university students in the areas of carbon and greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on global warming, as well as the worsening of environmental disasters and threats to biodiversity and living organisms, in addition to the direct damage to human health and the economy, and the escalating adverse effects to food and water security in different parts of the world.

CAP allows students to join a simulation of a climate ambassadors negotiation session, where they play the role of ambassadors from a specific country and learn about the impact of climate change on that country. They then work with ambassadors from other countries to find the best possible solutions to combat climate change, develop the necessary action plans to achieve them and negotiate to reach a final agreement to approve them.

CAP is a collaboration between the Ministry of Climate Change and Environment (MOCCAE) and the Expo Schools Programme. It allows students from schools and universities in the UAE to represent the roles of climate negotiators participating in this year's COP28 in Expo City Dubai.

The programme welcomes students from universities and schools from around the UAE. Several sessions will be held until November 2023, as part of the preparations for hosting COP28. For registration or more information, please click here.

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About CAP 2023:

CAP 2023 sessions will run daily from Monday to Thursday until November 2023 (with no sessions held during school and public holidays, as well as Ramadan). Session timeslots will be pre-allocated to each school or university group, with sessions being held from 9:00am to 12:00pm or 1:00 to 4:00pm. All sessions will run in English, so students must be fluent and comfortable to use the English language. Registration is currently open for sessions till June 22nd, 2023. Schools can register one group of 30 students in each category. Registration will open at a later date for all sessions starting September 2023.

About MOCCAE:

The Ministry of Climate Change and Environment was established in February 2006 under the name "Ministry of Environment and Water". Its new name was approved in February 2016 during the new ministerial formation after adding the climate change file to its previous responsibilities, in order to launch a new phase with the aim of strengthening national efforts to deal with all pressing environmental issues, foremost of which is climate change. The Ministry will work during the next stage to raise the prestigious position of the UAE in all international forums, consolidate the gains that have been made over the past years, manage and protect resources, and enhance food security in order to achieve the aspirations of our wise leadership to transform into a pioneering model for sustainable development.

For more information, please send any inquiries to the following email address: Media@moccae.gov.ae