I wasn’t planning to attend too many country meetings while here at Copenhagen. I feared that anything sponsored by one country in particular would be long on the bragging and short on the facts.

Despite this, yesterday I attended Haiti, Cuba and the Dominican Republic’s joint presentation on the Caribbean Biological Corridor, a collaborative effort to protect the biodiversity of the Caribbean. Currently Cuba has officially protected 15% of its land, the Dominican Republic 15% and Haiti less than 2%. (1) However, it’s currently not contiguous, even internally, and nominal protection never guarantees actual protection.

While it took 20 minutes to finally begin the meeting, five minutes into the presentation it became painfully apparent that the “Caribbean Biological Corridor” was not a road to biodiversity, but some xkcd-inspired highway engineer’s nightmare. (2) (more…)

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.

(more…)

Despite how exciting it is to be here at the conference, it’s surprising how out of the loop I feel. Granted, our observer status gets us into hundreds of events hosted by governments, IGOs, NGOs and corporations, where we rub shoulders with high level officials, scientists, and even Al Gore,; however, we have no access to the actual negotiations. I find myself relying on my old standby, nytimes.com to let me know what’s happening! (more…)

I apologize for the lack of post yesterday; as Yves wrote yesterday, we had a terrible time getting registered for the conference! (I didn’t get in until 1:30,  and I was one of the lucky ones.)

Today we had the pleasure of meeting Jane Lubchenco, Under Secretary of Commerce for Oceans and Atmosphere, and Administrator of NOAA. She invited us to attend her and her colleague’s session on the impacts of climate change for oceans and ecosystems. It was the first science based lecture I attended (most of mine have been focused on global poverty… will blog about it soon!), and quite frankly, the most depressing.

(more…)

I should probably explain the meaning behind “Tiny Tim”. I said that I wanted to investigate the overlap between climate change and global poverty. Tiny Tim is a good example of a resilient yet unfortunate bloke, who despite his physical disadvantages, is able to help induce a change of enormous magnitude in Scrooge. Tiny Tim may lack a lot of basic capabilities in his life, but his outspoken presence contributes in a large positive way toward improving society. (more…)

Finally, we have arrived in Copenhagen and are settling in on our boat hotel. (There are so many people at the conference, the city is filled to capacity, so they rented boats. Apparently Greenpeace has one too, but we haven’t seen it yet.) (more…)

As the beginning of COP15 draws near (and classes draw to a close!) the organizers of the Rice group are encouraging us with increasing intensity to choose a topic to follow while in Copenhagen. Climate change is a very broad topic, and in the five full days we’ll have at the conference, there’s no way we can hope to explore every facet!

Quite frankly, I’ve been torn between many topics. As an American, I wonder what role developed nations should be playing in climate change policy. As an engineer, I’m interested in the new and old technologies that we can harness. As a humanitarian, I’m concerned that the fight against global poverty will take a back seat to climate change. (more…)