Blog Series From our Interns: Charlotte Boggon on Positive Action in Climate Education

Over the summer months, we had an amazing group of students working on different projects. They will be sharing their experiences in the next few weeks.  We start with Charlotte Boggon, undergraduate student in Geography.

Positive Action in Climate Education

This summer I was able to work with the Centre for Climate Repair to develop a curriculum, as an intern for one of their UROPs [Undergraduate Research Opportunities Programme]. During the internship I was able to work with the librarians in SPRI [Scott Polar Research Institute] and my supervisors, Antoinette and Michael, to build up a database of resources. 

Over the course of the internship, I created a framework of modules on Climate Repair, spanning science, policy, ethics and community engagement. I found that many of the debates and misconceptions surrounding Climate Repair stemmed from a lack of inter-disciplinary communication e.g., a lack of understanding about the timescales and feasibility associated with certain Climate Repair methods or a lack of information about the colonial history of environmental interventions. As a result of this, I aimed to include a diverse range of disciplines within the reading lists for each module, so that it was never the case that only “one” view was being represented. Overall, it was a really valuable experience exploring Climate Repair, a topic I had only briefly covered within my degree, in more depth. I also felt very lucky to be involved in a Climate Education project and team that really valued inter-disciplinary collaboration. 

Alongside research for my project, I had the opportunity to hear about the projects being completed by my fellow interns – including research on ice thickening, carbon capture storage and marine cloud brightening. It was really exciting to hear about and discuss such new research topics and it gave me a much better understanding of the science behind climate repair methods. 

As an intern, I was further able to listen to speakers [including Dr Emily Shuckburgh] at Cambridge Zero’s lunch time seminars for their Future Leader’s Programme. The speakers in these sessions shared some really useful career advice and I learnt about environmental careers I wasn’t even aware of!