The 2017 Fellowship took place from 28 August to 1 September, hosting 24 ecbi Fellows – senior climate change negotiators from developing countries. On 30 August, the Fellows were joined by 24 European colleagues for the Oxford Seminar. This year, the Seminar was attended by, among others: representatives of the current (Morocco), the preceding (France), the incoming (Fiji) and the next (Poland) Presidencies of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change; the Chairs of the LDC Group, the G77, as well as the Western European and Others Group; the Chair of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice; the Co-Chair of the Standing Committee on Finance; members of the Green Climate Fund Board; representatives of the current trio of EU Presidencies (Estonia, Bulgaria and Austria), as well as representatives from the European Commission. 

Discussions during both events focused on key concerns relating to the ongoing global negotiations on the rules for implementing the Paris Agreement. In particular, participants focused on issues related to: gender; equity; common timeframes and the ambition cycles; the 2018 Facilitative Dialogue; global stocktakes; adaptation communications; transparency; finance; and the Article 6 Mechanisms.

H.E. Ambassador Deo Saran, Fiji’s Climate Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the European Union, in a keynote address, expressed his appreciation for the level of engagement in the Seminar. “I must say that the spirit of the seminar truly reflects the Talonoa spirit that we would like to bring at COP23,” he said. “It has been very enriching and will bring immense value to our preparation for the COP.”

• Seminar Group Photograph (5mb)
• Speech by Deo Saran
• Address by Tosi Mpanu-Mpanu

On Thursday 31 August 2017, Oxford Climate Policy, on behalf of the European Capacity Building Initiative (ecbi) and the Oxford University Natural History Museum, hosted a special event for the participants of the ecbi Oxford Seminar. 

The Natural History Museum was the venue of a historic evolution debate on 30 June 1860, seven months after the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, involving Samuel Wilberforce, the then Bishop of Oxford, and Thomas Henry Huxley, a biologist who defended Darwin's theory of evolution and had earned the epithet of “Darwin’s bulldog”. 

The event, named "We Meet Again!" in reference to the historic debate, brought together the current Bishop of Oxford, the Rt. Revd. Dr Steven Croft, and Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College, London, and Professor of Meteorology at Reading University, to discuss the question: "What can we do to support the fight against global warming in the current climate?"

The transcript of the proceedings is now available for downloading.

• Oxford University Science Blog
• Transcript of proceedings
• The Oxford University Science Blog (pdf)