Yale partners with Fundação Getulio Vargas and UMass Boston for Rio 2012 Event

March 5, 2012

Universities from around the globe are invited to participate in a groundbreaking collaborative workshop during the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio de Janeiro.  The event will take place on 19 June 2012 - the day before the 2012 Earth Summit - on the Rio campus of Fundação Getulio Vargas. Co-hosted by Yale University, Fundação Getulio Vargas, and the University of Massachusetts Boston, this event will offer teams of university students from around the world the opportunity to idea-share and collaborate on how to tackle sustainability issues on their campuses.  

Yale and its partner organizations are inviting student teams to submit proposals for ambitious-yet-achievable campus-based projects. Two or three student representatives from selected projects will then be invited to attend a half-day workshop in Rio, during which the students will engage in peer-review and receive feedback from practitioners and officials attending Rio+20. Students will subsequently share ideas and best practices throughout the process of implementing their projects on a web-based forum provided by Yale.

 The deadline for submission is 16 April 2012. Selected teams will be invited to send two or three representatives to participate in a one-day workshop in Rio de Janeiro during the Rio+20 Earth Summit. Limited funding is available to supplement travel expenses for students from developing countries.

For more information, please contact Amal Ga’al at amal.gaal@yale.edu.

This initiative builds on an event hosted by Yale and the University of Copenhagen in 2009.  Examples of projects from that event, as well as a progress report are available on this website: 2009 Global Climate Action Coaltion Workshop.

This initative is made possible in part with funding from the Yale Climate and Energy Insitute, and with financial and administrative support from Fundação Getulio Vargas (in particular the Center for Sustainability Studies) and the University of Massachusetts Boston (in particular the Center for Governance and Sustainability) .