Tuck School team attends United Nations Climate Change Conference
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE—December 11, 2009
CONTACT: Kim Keating,
603-646-2733
HANOVER, N.H.—Motivated by the recognition that climate change raises complex issues for corporate responsibility, students, faculty, and staff from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth will participate in the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen from December 14-18. Tuck will be the only business school formally represented at the summit. The team will attend as accredited Observers and will attend sessions and meet international business groups and NGOs with the aim of learning about summit proceedings and their implications for global business. The students will post their findings on their Tuckatcop15's blog.
Sponsored by Tuck's Allwin Initiative for Corporate Citizenship as a not-for-credit learning expedition, the team includes eight second-year MBA students (selected from a larger group who expressed interest), professor Anant Sundaram as team leader, and Allwin Initiative director Pat Palmiotto.
Professor Sundaram's recent research focuses on a new metric for scoring companies on their stock market exposure to fossil fuel use and contingent green house gas emissions. Sundaram also created and teaches a class on business and climate change at Tuck. "Unlike other major global issues, climate change is one where businesses have the biggest cause-and-effect relationship," he says. "Companies are by far the largest emitters and they will be the ones to commit resources and develop technologies to solve the problem. The challenges and opportunities for businesses from the emerging climate economy are vast. We are entering an era in which the careers of MBAs graduating today will evolve in a world in which there is a price on carbon, the implications of which are wide-ranging."
Students at Tuck believe business leaders must understand how the decisions that companies make today will have an impact on business and society in the future. The COP15 conference sets an ambitious goal to attain a global agreement to address climate change. An agreement is necessary to enable business leaders to incorporate the impact of climate change on their business plans and to mitigate potential threats to their organizations, people, and the planet. The Tuck team hopes to learn from the perspectives of other conference attendees and to share their experiences and views on these issues with their Tuck peers and the greater Dartmouth community.
"As students of business it is important that we are not only aware of how climate change is going to affect businesses but also to understand the implications on the way in which business will be conducted in the future," says second-year student Manoj Sahoo. "Being at Copenhagen is a once in a lifetime opportunity to be part of what might be one of the game-changing events of the century. We plan to share the key learnings from the conference to help to enrich the experience of other classmates and also to guide us in the decisions we will make in our post-MBA careers. "
The Tuck team will offset the carbon footprint associated with the trip by planting a number of trees on campus next spring.
Founded in 1900, Tuck is the first graduate school of management in the country and consistently ranks among the top business schools worldwide. Tuck remains distinctive among the world's great business schools by combining human scale with global reach, rigorous coursework with experiences requiring teamwork, and valued traditions with innovation.
|
