The Perspectivity Game - an international climate convention negotiation simulation

May 06, 2010,
3:00pm - 5:00pm

Have you ever found yourself in the grocery store looking at the price of eco-friendly tofu, only to put it back and continue to the ground beef? That weekend flight recently to Philadelphia: was it really worth its CO2 emissions? There is a good chance that, as a person concerned about the climate issue, you sometimes experience dilemmas like these.

If these are questions you may struggle with individually, imagine how it would be to make such tradeoffs for an entire country! The Conference of the Parties to the Climate Convention in Copenhagen this last December has shown once more that this type of dilemma is omnipresent at the world level. National politicians have to continuously take decisions under large uncertainty in which they need to balance many different interests. As a participant in the Perspectivity Game you will experience what it is like to wear the hat of these politicians in the international negotiations. Under severe time pressure, you will have to make decisions that best serve all of your country's interests, with a central focus on the ever-present tradeoff between sustainability and economic development.

The Perspectivity Game is a growing success in Europe, with countless sessions played among government policymakers, diplomats, university students, NGO board members and corporate lawyers. Can you beat a bunch of directors of a major international oil company? Can you do better than a group of Russian diplomats?