PADMUN

Burned Out

Looking back, at this point I had had an MUN every month for the past four months and it was finally really taking a toll on me. I wasn't able to muster enough energy to do proper research into the topic and I even kinda dragged my feet in making the conference's position paper. Simply put, I was tired and needed a break.

The Conference

PADMUN has always been a comparatively small MUN with a modest number of council (only 4) and an equally modest number of delegates, there were only about 10 in my council. Here in the council I was pleased to see Anna, an IR student from BINUS that I had met previously in SMUN. There were also a CBCS student that I had seen previously as a delegate in ITBMUN 2023 (I was the academic director of the council). For some reason, the committee also decided to put another member of GMUNC delegation in the same council as me.

One strange aspect of this conference was the lack of a social night. I honestly don't know why they decided to forego social night when doing so really sucked the fun out of the conference. I got to chat quite a bit with Anna though so that was neat.

High Politics Dynamic in Low Politics Council

The most notable thing about this conference was the fact that it's your run-of-the-mill UNEP council talking about climate change and whatnot, but then the debate that were had actually resembled the debate one may find in a UNSC council. There were huge contention between one particular island country (Vanuatu) and the rest of the council's active player (France, Germany, and me as Japan). Vanuatu insisted that the entire world must eliminate all fossil fuels consumption by 2030, but most of the rest of the council argued that it wouldn't be feasible.

When questioned on how Vanuatu would make that possible, he always gave a vague answer of making developed nations help developing nations in transitioning to cleaner energy sources. I argued that if the developed nations couldn't even reach that goal (and they couldn't by the admission of each of the country's government), then how could the developed nations help the developing nations in reaching a goal they themselves cannot attain? Fierce debate were had and unfriendly amendment were given by my bloc and the opposing bloc. At the end my bloc just barely prevented the passing of the opposing bloc's DR (and yes our DR didn't pass).

Takeaways

The main thing holding my award back in this MUN was my substance, as I had predicted honestly. It was probably due to my aforementioned burnout combined with my inherent bias as an engineering student that made me misread the topic that was given as a technical topic with technical solutions. My previous experience with a tangentially related topic in the council of IAEA in ITBMUN 2022 (which is a very technical council with a very technical solutions) also made me reuse some of the substance there in this conference. In actuality, the topic mainly revolves around how to improve the existing international mechanism in expediting the global transition to a cleaner energy source.

Misunderstanding the topic was a fundamental mistake because it affected my entire performance in the conference. First, it made me took an entirely wrong angle in my position paper, resulting in my position paper not winning the BPP award. Most importantly, it made me steer the debate to the wrong direction (during the feedback session the chair stated the displease they felt when I started talking about nuclear energy). The chair said themselves that other than substance, there weren't really anything wrong with my performance, thus I definitely would've gotten a better award had I been more thorough in my research. I suppose the importance of research in MUN really cannot be emphasized enough.