The University of Colorado Boulder was bustling Friday morning with students, employees, elected officials and climate experts from all over the world who came together to discuss an issue impacting them all: climate change.

After more than a year of preparation, CU Boulder on Friday began its first day of panels as part of the Right Here Right Now Global Climate Summit, which the campus is cost-hosting with United Nations Human Rights.

As of Friday, people from more than 90 countries had registered for the event. About 1,600 people registered to attend in-person, and more 2,300 people registered to attend virtually for the three-day global summit. Additionally, more than 500 people signed on to attend the summit's community-focused events.

Daniel Magraw, an international lawyer who serves as a consultant for the United Nations for matters including environment, human rights and investment, spoke about the key theme of the summit Friday morning: Understanding climate change as a matter of human rights.

Magraw, who organized a climate conference at CU Boulder in 1989, said years ago, the relationship between the environment and human rights wasn't obvious.

"After many, many years of effort, we now know that it's a reciprocal relationship — that most, if not all of human rights actually depends on a healthy environment," Magraw said.

During the same session, Astrid Puentes Riaño an environmental lawyer, spoke about COP27, the 27th United Nations Conference of the Parties that was held in November in Egypt, featuring representatives of more than 190 nations, including the signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992.

"I think that one key point that we have to remind ourselves (of) — that to me and to a lot of others is painful to recognize — is that everything we are doing in terms of climate action is not working," she said.

Puentes Riaño went on to say that this is why society must remember the theme of human rights in its work, because not everyone is equally impacted by climate change.

"When we talk about human rights, we're talking about obligations and responsibilities," she said. "Ten percent of the population worldwide (is) responsible for 50% of emissions, and if you go further, it's 1% of the population that's responsible for a majority of the emissions."

Puentes Riaño said climate experts from around the world were involved in the conversations during the 2015 Paris Agreement. This was important because it allowed people with diverse ideas and backgrounds to come together to discuss climate change solutions. But since then, there has been more and more push back from officials connected with the fossil fuels sector, she said. Last year's COP hosted about 500 attendees linked to fossil fuels. This year, about 600 attendees had ties to the fossil fuel industry.

"We need to include that diversity not only because it's human rights, (and) it's moral but because we need different solutions, and we're not having different solutions today because the same group of people and sectors that caused the problem are the ones there deciding," Puentes Riaño said. "We know the definition of insanity is thinking we're going to get different results by doing the same (thing)."

Julie Poppen, spokesperson for CU Boulder, said it was up to individual faculty members to decide whether students could attend panels for course credit.

Outside of the CU Boulder University Memorial Center, where the morning session was held, more than 100 students, employees and alumni gathered on Friday afternoon to protest the university system's continual investments in fossil fuels.

CU Boulder graduate student Rachel Saidman handed out bright orange hats with the word "divest" on the front before the protest got started Friday afternoon.

Saidman said a big reason the protest was held was to spread the word to high school students and prospective students in effort to get them involved in the conversation about the importance of moving away from fossil fuels.

"By coming to this school, we're making an investment in that name (CU Boulder), and we hope that (the university system is) trying to make that same investment in our futures as well," she said.

But Matt Dempsey, spokesperson for the Independent Petroleum Association of America and a CU Boulder alum, who also attended the protest, disagreed.

"Especially as consumers face rising energy prices, we should be working on collaborative solutions that reduce emissions while keeping energy affordable," he said. "Divestment is a political campaign that does neither."

Ken McConnellogue, spokesperson for the CU system, said of university's $4.9 billion in investments, which includes external foundation investments and the university's internal treasury pool, about $270.5 million or 5.4% of funds come from the the fossil fuel sector.

He added that in recent years, CU has moved to "socially responsible" investing, including signing on to the Principles of Responsible Investing initiative under the the United Nations. The university's investments in companies who are integrating sustainability into their business practices account for $526.2 million or 10.5% of the system's total investments.

McConnellogue was unable to say how much of the university system's retirement funds are linked to fossil fuel investments before publication Friday. The percent of university's endowment funds that come from the fossil sector was not readily accessible Friday evening.

CU Boulder Chancellor Philip DiStefano said he supports the students, employees and alumni in their activism but said the decision to divest from fossil fuels is ultimately a decision the University of Colorado Board of Regents must make.

"What I want to do is make sure that I listen to students and faculty and staff and respect their activism, but I want to work on solutions that I can make decisions about," DiStefano said.

He added that the campus is committed to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. He said he is working with the campus' sustainability council to drive down its fossil fuel energy use, invest in renewable energies and increase the campus' use of technologies such as carbon capturing programs or nuclear energy.

Another plan to achieve its sustainability goals involves incorporating the theme of sustainability into a common curriculum, which will be used in all CU Boulder classes, by the fall of 2023, DiStefano said.

"A group of faculty have been working for the last couple of years on this common curriculum, which I believe will be adopted in the spring and started in the fall, so that all students — no matter what their schools or colleges are — arts and sciences or music or engineering — they will be part of this common curriculum that will really help in the future as they become leaders in their own community."