Global Public Policy Network 2024: Reducing the Impact of Climate Change on Vulnerable Territories and Populations

The Global Public Policy Network is a partnership created in 2005, involving eight prestigious schools of public affairs (Columbia School of International and Public Affairs; LSE School of Public Policy; Hertie School; Graduate School of Public policy - University of Tokyo; Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy - National University of Singapore; Fondaçao Getulio Vargas Escola de Administração de Empresas de São Paulo; Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto; Sciences Po School of Public Affairs), and aiming to develop collaboration between institutions, students and researchers, around major public policy issues.

Each year, the network organises an international conference, during which students and deans from member schools exchange views on major global issues in public affairs. Sciences Po's School of Public Affairs hosted GPPN 2024 on February 22 and 23. This year, students were invited to propose an innovative project on the theme of "policy proposals to reduce the impact of climate change on vulnerable populations and territories". 

92 selected students, including 11 from Sciences Po, travelled from all over the world to present their proposals addressing these issues to the deans of the partner schools of public affairs who formed the jury. 
 

The 31 groups presented their policy proposals, each given three minutes to convince the jury, using a combination of innovative technologies and strategic partnerships to address the challenges posed by climate change, such as access to resources, support for agricultural systems and communities, heat mitigation in urban areas, education and food security. Following deliberations, 10 groups were selected for the final phase of the competition.

The afternoon continued with a discussion featuring Nathalie Blanc, Director of Research at CNRS and Director of the Centre de Politique de la Terre at Université Paris Cité, who presented "A territorial study of adaptation to climate change : the Paris metropolis", and Frédéric Ducarme, General Secretary of the Overseas Chair at Sciences Po, on the theme of "Adaptation to climate change : French overseas territories as a source of innovation".
 

Students then had the opportunity to take a guided tour of the Sciences Po campus, create a climate fresco conducted by two students from the Master in Public Policy at the School of Public Affairs, or take part in a writing workshop, reflecting on the power of literature to address environmental and political issues. 

On the second morning of the conference, the 10 groups still in competition were given 5 minutes to present their projects in greater depth, and then answered questions from the jury, aiming to better understand the envisaged implementation of their proposals, and to test the strength of their conceptions.
 

The awards ceremony on Friday afternoon brought GPPN 2024 to a conclusion. 

Munk students tied for first prize ex aequo for ClimateEd, a project to create floating schools in flood-prone regions of India. The aim is to prevent school closures and thus guarantee uninterrupted education, a key factor in breaking the cycle of poverty. 

Students from the Graduate School of Public Policy at the University of Tokyo also won first prize for their proposal to install an underground rainwater harvesting system to solve the problems of access to clean water for the inhabitants of a village north of Jakarta. 

The runner-up prize went to students at Columbia's SIPA, who have imagined an index-based flood insurance that financially protects smallholder farmers in India against flood-induced crop damage and subsequent economic loss.  They propose to use remote sensing-based datasets to determine flood thresholds and trigger payouts in the case of flooding.
 

The public affairs students were thus able to apply their learning through this professional experience, and better master the challenges of a policy project, from financing to implementation. 

The two-day conference allowed participants to share concrete solutions to the urgent need for action to limit the dramatic consequences of climate change. 

Among the wealth of proposals, and in the wide diversity of territories studied, the need to directly involve the populations concerned, to create solutions adapted to the local context, and to encourage synergies between public, private and civil society players, were more apparent than ever.