Introduction
Focus on the Global Warming——Action from the Youth!
——Theme of 2nd Students International Environment Forum(2006)
Motivations
The advancement of technology speeds up the development of human culture continuously, however the activities of human beings have caused serious environmental problems or even disaster to environment. During the globalization of economics and culture, environmental problems have been globalized early before people recognized this problem. The global warming is one of the most important global environmental problems.
Human activities, for example burning the fuels, planting, farming, disafforestation, urbanization and so forth, not only release the greenhouse gas like CO2, CH4, N2O and so on, but also alter the source and collection of greenhouse gas and the lower terrestrial reflected radiation, and cause the global warming. It leads to thawing of glacier, shore being eroded, variation of species, more frequent fires in forests, and disappearance of large quarter of lake and so on. Development is to obtain better life, nonetheless, the development of human society is destroying people’s life environment. In front of the change of the climate, any country, government and individuals cannot slide over the problems. Controlling and reducing the release of greenhouse gas became the focus all over the world in <Kyoto Protocol>constituted in 1997. China, as one of the countries that economics develops most rapidly, would transcend USA and become the country releasing the most CO2 in the world in 2009 at least, if people would not take any action.
As an environmental system engineering saving all human beings, it not only needs the research on new technologies by inter-subjects but also cannot be without the cooperation of society to decelerate and avoid the earth getting warmer. Hence, it has strategic meanings for controlling and reducing the release of greenhouse gas and even the Sustainable Development to build a communicating platform across countries, subjects and various groups of society.
In the begging of 2007, “The program on education of college students environmental protection base” applied by both the youth league committee of Peking University and College of Environmental Science, Peking University has obtained the outstanding prize of “youth in China Feng Tian environmental protection prize”. The start-up of Chinese college students environmental protection education base ceremonial will be held on June 5th, 2007—the 36th world environment day. People all over the world will think about whether the melting of the glacier will be a problem on that day. And international brilliant youth will be invited by students in Peking University to discuss the cause, the developing trend and the control ways to the global warming problem deeply. And practice to keep this world problem within limits is anticipated from we youth.The topic of current college students’ international environmental forum is “focusing on global warming”. One the one hand, all the society should be called on to focus on the terrible results caused by global warming, for instance, the redistribution of rain fall all over the world, the melting of glacier and frozen earth, the sea level rising and so on, which threaten both the equilibrium of natural ecological system and human’s food supply and living environment; on the other hand, all society should be called on to adopt relevant steps to slower or avoid the global warming trend, which is even more important. Now, many countries in the world have started the upsurge on “focusing on global warming”. Ana actual activities have been acted in various fields of reducing the release of greenhouse gas, the technology of decreasing expending the energy, exploring clean energy. Another significant meaning of current forum is to supply more practical suggestions for works involving slowering and avoiding global warming through the practice of college students. Finally, the forum also is meaningful to transmit the obligation afforded by China on global warming, and each region or country has common but distinct obligations. It is anticipated that youth from all over the world will recognize more clearly that as one of the young people, we have our obligations confront global warming through the holding of this international college students’ forum. What is more important is that the slogan will be transmitted to students from China and even all over the world: action!!
Theme
The forum will take “Focus on the Global Warming——Action from the Youth!” as its theme and several relevant topics will be discussed in a systematic way with the prospect of making a perfect transfer from consciousness to action.
Objectives
Strengthen the consciousness on the serious trends of global warming.
Improve the consciousness on preventing global warming
Share experience on global warming control and prevention
Promote attention and participation of Students Environmental protection Union to environmental problem like global warming.
Put the environmental protection education into practice, from consciousness to action
Establish international communication platform, promote international communication and cooperation on environmental protection.
Recruit young elites with leadership, ideality and aspirations
Contents
This forum will be mainly divided into four parts: major forum and three subdivided forums.
Major forum
Major forum will mainly focus on global warming including its mechanism, impacts, prevention and relevant policies. And officials from environmental department and famous experts from homeland will be invited to give speech on those topics.
Subdivided forum
Global academician communion
Native and foreign students will be divided into four groups and discuss the theoretical research and practice on environmental policy and environmental promulgate in different countries and areas. The four groups will respectively represent four distinct areas: North America, Europe, East Asia and South Asia. Each group contains 2-3 native students and 2-3 foreign students. A text and an PPT document should be submitted by each group before the forum for the first-run checkup. The passed group should give a presentation on this subdivided forum and be appraised by the experts, answer their questions and discuss freely.
Theme collection of social environment practices
We collect social practice topics about global warming including the topics relevant to the stage of how to put the program into practice, the technology exploitation, the policy system civilian participation research, etc., such as reducing of green house gas, the technology of energy saving, the exploitation of clean energy and so forth. The environmental practice is restricted in China during summer vacation mainly in July and August 2007. 3-5 participants form a team to design topic, and hand up the sign up table and the scheme of the environmental practice. The pre-examination is according to the electronic text handed, and we have a rule of novelty, feasibility, expected force and integrality of the program. The passing teams need to give a presentation in the forum and answer the spot questions from the experts of China Environment Education Base in Peking University.
Students environment Associations and NGO communion
An international communication platform for environment students associations in China is anticipated to be built up after this forum, and they can communicate with NGO for the chances of further cooperation. This subdivided forum will discuss the problems and share the experience on environmental protection and education in the form of lectures and seminars. The self-construction of student’s environmental protection associations will be focused on though discussing in groups. And experiences will also be shared. Finally, the topic on “Green Campus” establishing matters would also be discussed.
Organizations
