Experiences from COP15
The Wednesday Copenhagen Special: Ban Ki-Moon plus some John Kerry, add a dash of Evo Morales, stir in the environmental ministers of Peru and Ecuador, don’t forget the secret ingredient of Lord Nicholas Stern, and serve with a side of the mayors of Seattle, Mexico City, Copenhagen, Melbourne, Johannesburg, and Bonn.
Delicious.
Developing countries aren’t the only ones to be threatened in a big way by climate change. Tuesday I attended a session hosted by the Commissioner of Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation about the situation of indigenous tribes in north western Alaska.
There are very few things that climate scientists, CEOs and politicians can all agree on, but it seems that they all love metaphors and catchphrases. Successful talks teem with these word wizardries and over time, one hears some of the particularly successful ones recycled in various contexts. In this manner, what started out as a mere expression actually becomes an acknowledged term. One of these champions of the lexicon is the “low-hanging fruit”. (more…)
A tap-dancing penguin. Or so I discovered today.
If you haven’t already read, the UN is making strict cuts to entrants permitted from Tuesday until Friday – our NGO received only four secondary entry passes for these days. As there are seven of us from Rice, we’ve scheduled to attend the days that interest us most while taking others off to explore events in the city. I stayed away from the Bella Center today and hit the streets, hoping for a more pedestrian perspective on climate activism. (more…)
For those groups and citizens that were unable to find an outlet for their research, opinions, and concerns at the COP15 in the Bella Center, there are, thankfully, other venues in the city able to serve them. In fact, the Bella Center has a capacity of 15,000, and more than 45,000 people have registered so far; in the next few days more and more NGO observers and journalists will be excluded from the Bella center as important political figures arrive for the final sessions. Where can the overflow activists and observers head to? Events such as the Klimaforum.
As the news has been heralding, the Bella center is filling to capacity. Yesterday, we stood in line for three hours to register as NGO observers. Once we were inside, though, it certainly was a sight to behold. The Bella center is actually a mash-up of the actual convention center and numerous temporary buildings linked into a single complex. There are halls with booths for NGO groups, meeting halls, open public spaces, and offices for delegations, NGOs, and IGOs (intergovernmental organizations). The pubic spaces are regularly the scene of seemingly-spontaneous protests, while numerous talks, seminars, and side events are held in meeting rooms off of the public halls. As observers, we get to sit in and interact in these side events, hosted by NGOs or UN bodies, and interact with the range of attendants in the center. The range of humanity is impressive, from legions of bright-eyed organizers to delegates from every single country; there are even rock-star moments when figure like Al Gore and Bill McKibben grace the halls. And the actual talks that are supposedly deciding the fate climate change? They are hidden away in meeting halls where few, if any, observers are allowed to enter.
INFORMATIVE NOTE: The conference is organized in negotiation sessions and side events. Side events are held by organizations representing all sectors of society, they happen inside the conference center or outside. Negotiation sessions can only be attended by parties and the press. Side events inside the conference can be attended by registered participants. Off-site side events can be attended by all. Rice students only attend side events inside and out of the conference center, and follow the negotiations on live stream webcasts.
HIGHLIGHTS:
1. UN manages to make registration Hell on Earth with waiting times up to 6 hours in the Danish cold.
2. Registrants display a great level of resilience and temperance, but one of us falls sick.
3. Negotiators are incapable to reach agreements and activist outside the Bella Centers protest. In contrast, societal sectors represented inside the conference sport a constructive “let’s get to business” approach and patience over the complexities of the negotiations.
4. Sectors represented in the side events: Agriculture, Manufacturing Industry, Transportation, Finance, NGOs, and the Church.
5. Sectors have well defined programs and little non-sense talk. They identify capabilities, loopholes, and critical needs.
6. Let me say it again: Very constructive attitudes among the sectors (in contrast to the ones among country delegations). All sectors see opportunities. Overall, there is a feeling that it can be done.
7. National institutions also held side events at the different national centers: The US held events on the science while EU focused on policy, technological and financial tools for mitigation and adaptation, reflecting the differences between the stage of negotiation at both sides of the ocean.
8. We meet with Dr. Jerry Schnoor, editor of ES&T, and Dr. Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Dr. Lubchenco gives a talk on the impacts of climate change on the oceans based on NOAA measurements.
Climate is a complex system, global politics even more, and economics also has its thing. You put them all together and you have the UNFCCC. The students will write on specific topics of their choosing. Before taking off to Copenhagen, I gave them a set of readings so they could build a solid background on the issue. The readings include news and articles from CNN, BBC, The Economist, Science, Nature and ES&T magazines, as well as website, specialized reports and peer-reviewed article contents. I myself learnt a big deal reading through those pieces, and thought I post “my digestion” here.
In the section “Basics” I have tried to give answers to some of the questions most of us have. I don’t always quote my source, but I can provide it on an individual basis if anyone is interested or you can try to find it at the section “Learn More”, where I give you the links to the original sources and other more elaborate analyses. You can also find links to most of the COP15 logistics-related websites. My sections are always under construction and you can contribute to expand them. I encourage you to submit your questions, since I or some of the students might be able to answer them. I also encourage you to suggest sources of information if you think they can help. Since we are trying to be productive, please do not send anything on the science of climate change. COP15 is about policy and assumes climate change is happening and caused in part by anthropogenic GHG emissions, which we should reduce. The debate goes on both at the scientific and at the layman spheres (although at different levels). The first has a forum at the IPCC, a body that comprises numerous scientists including many members of the National Academies of Science, NOAA, NASA, etc. I leave it to them to decide and they have decided it is happening based on many different sets of data and analyses (not only the controversial ones from the University of East Anglia). The layman debate inevitably lags behind in terms of information and is mostly based on immobile personal ideological biases, which is not what I want to discuss here. There is plenty on the Internet where to find answers to common skeptical questions. I can recommend this for a start: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8376286.stm.
If you really want to learn about what precedes and goes on at the amazing effort of COP15 you should be able to find useful information here.
I hope that is the case.
Rosa