Geography Climate Change Conference Triumph

On Monday 1 February, the infamous Geography Climate Change Conference took place for all the Year 9 cohort. This year for the first time, in addition to 15 geographers from the Girls’ School, the Conference was attended by some state schools, including Beaumont in St Albans, who brought over 20 Sixth Form pupils.

In the first half of the morning, pupils listened to keynote speeches from Dr Benjamin Hennig (Senior Research Fellow at the University of Oxford) and Tom Jennings (Senior Press Officer for Science and Conservation at the Zoological Society of London), before drafting their two resolutions and then trying to persuade other countries to support them. The second half of the morning saw the four successful countries, whose resolutions had achieved support, presenting their resolution and answering questions from both their peers and the judges in what was an inspiring Q&A session. After a tense round of voting, it was pleasing to see that both the Aske and Bourne groups did pass a resolution – something which has recently been achieved by world leaders at COP 21 in Paris.