By Véronique LaCapra, St. Louis Public Radio
ST. LOUIS – Washington University is hosting its first U.S.-China undergraduate conference on climate change and sustainability.
Eleven students from Fudan University in Shanghai have come to St. Louis to participate.
Wash. U. student environmental leader Jiakun Zhao said she thinks China and the United States will play the most important role in directing the future of the environment. "So we feel like it is very important for us to start this kind of collaboration, and the mutual understandings, the exchange of perspectives, between the students from the undergraduate level," Zhao said.
The student coordinator of the Chinese delegation, Xuege Lu, is a senior in journalism at Fudan University in Shanghai.
She said her fellow students have majors ranging from business to environmental studies, and that most of them have never been to the United States. "I think that they really got excited about everything, and I can tell from their faces, I know that we're doing the right thing for them to see the world," Lu said.
Lu believes the conference will provide an opportunity for the Chinese students to learn about environmental issues from a global perspective, and to build relationships with their Wash. U. counterparts.
The six-day conference will include lectures about energy, food production, and environmental issues, and a mock United Nations climate negotiation.
More information about the conference is available on the Washington University Students for International Collaboration (WUSICE) webpage.