admin | Malaysian Youth Delegation

My observation after a week of COP21 negotiations

by admin | Jan 5, 2016 | Blog, MYD2015, UNFCCC

This is how hectic and crowded Hall 6 can be. Spot the Climate Change TV behind!

After a few days of tracking and running around we found out that tracking negotiators is HARD. They are busy until they don’t even have time to eat. Their schedules are highly uncertain, as immediate changes or postpones or even cancellation of meetings are the norms. Meals and toilet breaks are on-the-run.

Based on our observations, negotiators are multi-tasking all the time. Their brain never stops, literally. You see them texting and typing during meeting; whispering with their team in between discussions. Everything is really intensed. They basically start their day at 8am with meetings, end their day at evening, sometimes after midnight (in the second week).

It took us some time to understand the different types of meeting. As I am mostly following the main text agreement, the meetings that I always went are those under the ADP ones. Other meetings by different bodies such as the Subsidiary bodies (SBSTA & SBI) and LPAA (Lima-Paris Action Agenda) are ongoing at the same time too.

Basically, ADP meetings consists of spin-off groups and contact groups. Contact group is an open-ended meeting that work on crosscutting issues and items not associated with agreement articles, where the parties negotiate before forwarding the agreed text for formal adoption in a plenary. Whereas spin-off groups work on the individual articles in draft agreement and their respective decision text.

~~Facilitators are appointed by the UNFCCC secretariat to facilitate and speed up the contact groups and spin-off groups~~. Sometimes, there are informal meetings too such as informal contact groups or informal consultations to let group of delegates to meet in private to discuss and consolidate views. Besides that, each party blocs do have their own daily coordination meetings are meant for each bloc (e.g. LMDC coordination meeting, or G77 & China daily coordination meeting) to ensure the bloc comes to a consensus on certain topic or discuss strategies for daily’s negotiations on how to deal with other blocs.

How a typical meeting room set up looks like. Screens are provided for negotiators to read the instant changes in the text upon discussion

In the meetings, we also found it hard in the beginning to identify who are the speakers because no country flags are placed in small scale meetings as the negotiators know each others well. We were also quite lost in the beginning of the pace of discussion, mainly because of all the jargons that we came across (e.g. we support LMDC suggestion on article X, paragraph Y that blah blah… However, AILAC mentioned in article Z paragraph S…).

Newcomers, like us, are not familiar with the text would take more time to absorb what exactly was the spokesperson referring to. So it is not surprised to see how attendees in meetings including the negotiators themselves bringing a hardcopy of the text full of highlights and remarks along with them all the time!

Logistically, I found out that the soundproof facility between rooms to rooms are not that good. It makes me wonder how can the negotiations carried out in peace, confidentially? (oops, hope they didn’t overlooked this part).

Securities are pretty tight too especially closed meetings where every single person will be checked on their badges before entering the room by the United Nations own security force. Some of the contact groups even needed special secondary badges to enter! The so-called CCTV (climate change TV) is literally everywhere in HALL 6 to showed the up-to-date schedule and also sometimes, broadcasting live closed meetings. Sometimes, many of the important closed meetings happened parallel with each other. This raised concern to the negotiators, and Malaysia voiced this up several times to the chair and secretariat. Not to mention, Malaysia pushed to open some other closed meetings to be opened to observers for transparency purpose! Another proud moment for Malaysians *Jumps and feeling proud*

Written by: Emily

Meeting inspiring youths in COP21 (Part 1) – by Emily

by admin | Jan 5, 2016 | Blog, MYD2015, UNFCCC, YOUNGO

Throughout COP21, I bumped into many amazing youth from all around the globe and found their stories really inspiring!

Emma Lewins, United Kingdom- United Kingdom Youth Climate Coalition (UKYCC)

Emma is currently working for her local council back in the United Kingdom. She joined UKYCC since February 2015 and work under the team that focuses on understanding and following national climate related policies. This COP21 opportunity came at a surprise when there was a last minute vacancy from UKYCC and thus she decided to grab the chance. As Emma didn’t have access to the COP21 Blue Zone, she thus decided to help her teammates who were on the inside (of COP21) to connect with other people out there and be part of the climate movement. For instance, she had recently attended the ‘Red Lines’ protest in Paris where she was so touched and cried (happy tears) because she felt incredible to be with so many different people all united for the same cause!

She shared that this year, UKYCC asked hundreds of young people to complete postcards before they left for Paris to show the negotiators what the youth of the UK were most concerned about climate change. In this initiative, Emma thinks her involvement in getting 30 students to draw postcards was her biggest achievement in COP21. Besides, she also attended talks at the Climate Action Zone, including a great talk from Indigenous Women from around the world; where she found the connection between gender and climate fascinating.

Aside from COP21, Emma explained how climate change affects her country- where flooding is happening more frequently. Unfortunately, the UK government cut a lot of funding for flood defences in the past few years, and not much was seemed being done. Emma also raised the issue of historic responsibility in climate change is explained poorly in the UK. In addition, the local media framed Paris Agreement as a total success which to her, was frustrating. She also believes that UK youth are engaged in climate change, but not in the COP process and that more should be done on this.

Renee Juliene M. Karunungan, The Philippines- Dakila

Renee is a communications director and climate campaigner for an organization in the Philippines called Dakila. Dakila is a group of artists and young people that uses creative platforms for its advocacies. Renee also have been writing as a freelance journalist on climate issues and the negotiations in local and international media, feel free to follow her reneekarunungan.com. This year, she joined the climate tracker program in COP21 to track the negotiations and to interact with the Philippines national delegation.

She learnt that one can be effective in influencing public and policy by writing; and she was able to write two articles a day- which she think is a milestone for her. With the climate tracker program team, they also managed to do a lot of text analysis and info graphics every time a new text came out.

Renee thinks that the overall youth participation in COP needs to be improved by more engagement in the negotiations than just via actions outside of the negotiations. She also added on that Filipino youths involvement in COP is quite limited. She thinks that more Filipino youths should be engaged and it should be started from the national level. Nevertheless, Renee is proud of her country’s performance in COP21 where The Phillipines led the Climate Vulnerable Forum which pushed for 1.5 degree celcius and fought hard for human rights.

Bindu Bhandari, Nepal- CLIMATES

Meet Bindu from Nepal! She is a youth eco- campaigner under CLIMATES and Tunza Eco- generation, specifically working for youth sensitization in climate change. This is her first time in COP21 and she is here to learn about how negotiation works and to understand what exactly an observer does in COP. She have chosen to track negotiations focusing on Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Loss and Damage (L&D) which is more applicable to Nepal as an agricultural country.

She pointed out Nepal is one of the most vulnerable countries in climate change, where the people depend on rain-fed agriculture system, thus intense drought and unpredictable high rainfall has serious effect in overall economy of the country. Moreover, as Nepal is a land of several high range mountains including highest Mount Everest; glacier melting has become a serious concern. Of all these, she appreciates the Nepal government initiatives by supporting REDD+ and is a member of UN REDD program. This approach aims to empower local communities with funding and capacity building for conserving existing forests and fostering community forests.

Regarding youth participation in Nepal, Bindu explains that although there is an appreciative attitude in participation among the urban youth in Nepal; however, participation is still lacking when it comes to climate change movements in villages and sub-urban areas. Bindu feels that the Nepalese government should include youth in the national delegation so that the youth can feel that they are part of it as well as enhance exposure to really understand the happenings in COP. She also thinks that it is more effective for the youth to engage and lobby their respective national negotiators or ministers compare to meeting up them back in respective countries.

Kristina Yasuda, Japan- Climate Youth Japan (CYJ)

Kristina Yasuda from Climate Youth Japan (CYJ) shared that COP21 was her first COP and she felt very lucky to be here as Japan is very strict on giving out accreditations. As the only representative from CYJ in COP21 for the first week, she fully utilised this opportunity to attend different types of side events, workshops and of course observing the negotiations.

Among the side events, Kristina found the initiatives done by private sectors to combat climate change very inspiring. As an example, there was an event that talked about hundreds of banks from around the world form alliance not to fund companies with high carbon footprint. She also raised her concern on gender equity in climate change where she saw that women are still marginalised. Thus, she hope to see more equal representation of both gender in the future, especially in Japan itself.

Through following the negotiations, she was very surprised to find out at how similar the negotiations actually are as compared to the debates in colleges. It was however a bit saddening to see Japan being not influential enough in the negotiations. She also thinks that youth involvement and participation in Japan is not sufficient which definitely need more work on it- to mobilise the government as well as to engage with universities who provide accreditations.

Kristina thinks that her biggest achievement in COP21 was to be able of positioning herself in an active international youth network. She explained that previously she stopped volunteering in environmental activities due to the lack of activeness in volunteering culture in Japan. However, meeting youth from different parts of world inspired her to return and she thinks COP21 further enhanced her motivation. She was also happy to see how her social updates being recognised and acknowledged by people and she feel that was essential because not everyone can go to blue zone!

Qin Yuanyuan, China- China Youth Climate Action Network (CYCAN)

Yuan Yuan is a member of China Youth Climate Action Network (CYCAN)- COP Youth Delegation. CYCAN have been working on the “low-carbon campus” project back in China for years which conducts carbon accounting investigations on campus and coming up with effective solutions to reduce carbon emission. In COP21, Yuan Yuan aims to stretch out for more people and knowledge relevant to tackling climate change in various fields. She is keen to learn and witness the negotiation process, as well as to interact with people inside COP to understand their concerns’ on this issue.

In COP21, she had the chance to be part of the presenter in a press conference to issue ‘Sino-U.S. Youth Declaration on Climate Change’ with members from Sierra Student Coalition and it was recorded by UN press! Besides that, she managed to attend side events organised by Climate Strike or Climates that were held to unite young people around the world to articulate their concerns and demonstrate their efforts. She found these events were very encouraging and promising.

When it comes to youth participation in COP21, Yuan Yuan had her say on it- she personally believe that the overall youth participation has to be enhanced and enlarged, including youth participation back in China. In COP21, youths don’t get enough discourse rights in the conference, especially in the decision-making area; where she self-experienced it and it struck her hard. She thinks that the current existing platforms such as YOUNGO could be regarded as informational channels, yet still need space for improvement. To mobilise on this, she thinks that joint project is a way to engage more youths and exerting youth power in the process.

**View Part 2 of the interview here 🙂

Interview done by: Emily

p.s. I have wrote a tribute to my beloved interviewees too on how I got inspired by them and what I learnt from them. Check it out here!

Emily’s typical daily routine in the not-so-typical COP21- Week 2

by admin | Jan 4, 2016 | Blog, MYD2015, UNFCCC

After struggling to follow the negotiations, I decided to move on to explore the outside world of Hall 6 (LOL).

My routines on the second week were more exciting. I only managed to roam through a few halls throughout my entire first week. My second week’s focus was Hall 4, a very ‘happening’ hall.

Same as first week, 9.00am was the waking time of COP21. I attended side events in Hall 4, most of them were in the “silent” mode. All participants were required to put on headphones and listened to the speaker through a “silent’ microphone. So almost no voice could be heard from the outside. You only listen the presentation from the headphones.

When I have the time, I roamed around the NGO booths (spotted the Facebook booth) in Hall 4 and country’s pavilion in Hall 2 & 3 (COP21 Hack#5: freebies are hidden in many of the booths or pavilions!). Quite a number of the pavilions have their own list of events going on. Some of them even prepare refreshments, if you know what I meant *winks* (COP21 Hack#6). I was amazed by their grand decoration s- of course it depends on the country’s budget too. You can see the trend from these big countries’ pavilion like India (total win, their water feature grab a lot of attention), USA, Germany, China, Korea, French etc. Malaysia do not have a pavilion by the way, in case you are wondering.

In second week, I swore to myself to get myself proper meal everyday, so I have my lunches in Hall 4’s restaurant; or at this soup stall opposite Hall 4 that I visited like 5 times – definitely one of my favourite! Throughout the afternoon sessions, apart from side events such as forums and press conferences, I attended daily NGO meetings, witnessed several actions/mobilisations; and I guess the most exciting one would be “Fossil of The Day” which happened every day at 6.00pm in Hall 4’s climate studio! It was an initiative by CAN, to give out “award” and recognition in an entertaining way to countries whom they think performed badly and worth praising in the previous day in COP21. I have also managed to witness how a live reporting looks like from the media working space in Hall 4!

Oh, and I found a heaven in COP21- the RELAXATION ROOM & MEDITATION ROOM (COP21 Hack#7)! Thank God for sweet organizer, taking into account the need of stressful participants to rejuvenate in a designated space.

I have been going in and out between blue and green zone in my second week for different purposes. Green Zone, aka the Climate Generation Area, is around 10 minutes walk (under the freezing temperature PLUS strong wind), but luckily with friendly COP21 volunteers along the way to kinda cheer me up by greeting me with smile ;D Green Zone is opened to public, thus with tighter security check. So imagine if my daily schedule needs me to travel from blue to green then back to blue, I have to go through 3 times of security check (!!! COP21 hack #8: Plan your schedule properly to avoid unnecessary travelling and hassle).

Finally come to the Green Zone! Climate Generation Area. Loving the youthful settings 🙂

This place is another world. Everything here was much more casual and relaxing, more youthful as well!

Loving the colours and energy here. There were mainly organisation booths here, with similar facilities as in blue zone but in a slightly smaller scale- press conference room, media space, open working space, cafeteria, and event rooms as well. I came here mostly for bilateral meetings with other countries’ youth climate coalition; then one time to perform Sumazau Dance at the Asia Indigenous People Pact booth; and another time for an interview. But sadly, it was all for work. I didn’t actually have time to look around green zone properly 🙁

Cycle to generate electricity and the stage concert will produce sound! Green Zone rocks woohoo

In a nutshell, I think I have fully utilized my 2 weeks in COP21 to explore and experience the main places and facilities here. I would have to admit this saying that COP is a circus. Indeed! If you were to attend the next COP, hope this daily routine sharing provides you a better picture on what’s happening in COP, and act as a good start pointer to plan on your journey 🙂

Written by:Emily
Edited by:Wanji

Emily’s typical daily routine in the not-so-typical COP21- Week 1

by admin | Jan 4, 2016 | Blog, MYD2015, UNFCCC

Many of my friends and family members are really curious on what exactly I am busying about in COP21. Why am I always on-the-run? Why did I sometimes skip my meals? What exactly is happening within COP21? All the 5W1H questions goes on and on and on. I bet many of you out there are curious about what I did too, so I thought of sharing it in a daily routine form. Enjoy!

After overcoming the jet-lag in a few days, I finally managed to feel alive. Normally, all negotiations meetings and side events in both Blue and Green Zone stared at 9am, and it took 45 minutes to reach Le Bourget on time, including the traffic; that explains why my breakfast is always on-the-run (especially in cases when overslept). Speed walking while transferring through the busy metro is a norm in Paris every morning. You will hear a lot of “pardon” (sorry in French) or “excuse moi” (excuse me) in metro. And there I went, taking the final RER-B train from Gare Du Nord station to Le Bourget station.

Accredited personnels to COP21 were all provided a free access transport card within COP21 period for all public transportation. That sped up our travelling a lot. A shuttle bus from the Le Bourget metro station to the COP21 venue was available and the average shuttle bus travelling period was about 15 minutes but If you were here during peak hour, good luck and have fun 😛

The most tiring part was when everyone squeezed into the bus and the bus tightly packed with human flesh of all sizes and flavors was stuck in a severe traffic congestion. ughhhhhhhhhhh! The marination of homo sapiens at its finest. (COP21 Hack#1: use the shuttle bus during non-peak hour)

Last stop before OFFICIALLY entering COP21 was the infamous security check. SECURITY SCAN is a pain in the a** seriously. It was all done by their very own UN securities. We were asked to separate our electronic devices (that’s okay); winter coats (that’s okay too) but the most, MOST ANNOYING PART was the liquid part. They wanna checked through all the liquid that was to be brought in, yes even H2O WATER. You would be asked to drink a sip of your water to show that it is really water.

Oh well, this tighten security was expected after the attack, so deal with it. Then, you can finally proceed to the legendary COP21 venue!! Welcome! Bievenue! (You gotta scan your name tag’s barcode for facial verification before entering, that’s the final step actually)

Oh by the way, Carrefour is kind enough to distribute free apples to all COP21 visitors/participants at the entrance every morning (COP21 Hack#2: arrive early to grab the free apples).

Daily free apples brought to you by the kind Carrefour!

The breeze welcomes you after the final barcode scan; coming up with Climate Action Network (CAN) volunteers distributing ECO newsletter to you (COP21 Hack#3: you can get soft copy of the newsletter too, save paper and save space in your baggage); then tadaaa- that’s where the different routine came in.

In my first week, I mostly followed the nerd tract- negotiations. So my immediate destination was always Hall 6 (where all the meeting rooms were). I would pre-checked the meetings/plenaries I plan to attend, which I could do it on the big screen CCTV (They call it the climate change TV?, not sure though) for latest schedule. Then I would spent almost my whole day just in Hall 6, except meal time. Not even kidding. Meetings were normally back-to-back, each took approximately 2 hours. Walking from Hall 6 to the restaurants/cafeteria took me 10 minutes to and fro; so sometimes I just ‘tapao’. Occasionally, meetings ended way into the night so my first week here was literally like, camping in Hall 6. Oh wait, I did went to another hall where the plenary was. The setting of the plenary hall was, oh so grand! With very efficient translators who translated INSTANTLY in all UN languages. Fun fact: I actually tried to switch to Chinese translation channel (it’s adjustable if you are wearing headphones) and found out the translators were translating in emotionless way compare to the English translators.

This is how a negotiation meeting room looks like. Negotiators are discussing with each other before the meeting starts.

Overall, my daily routine in Week 1 was quite hectic because I was just drowning myself into the negotiations- flying here and there trying not to miss any of the meetings worth attending. Finally I couldn’t tahan any more, I fell sick :/ (COP21 hack # 4: DRINK PLENTY OF WATER AND GET ENOUGH REST) I guess I should slow down a bit next week.

Written by: Emily
Edited by: Wanji

Alternatiba, A life changing experience – Amalen

by admin | Jan 4, 2016 | Blog, MYD2015

On the first weekend of COP21, 4th-6th of December 2015, the Alternatiba was held in a small suburb on the outskirts of Paris. The Alternatiba is a parallel event that runs alongside COP for the past few years that highlights and showcases alternative living practices. This year they revolved around 5 main themes with an additional 4 smaller themes.

The main 5 were :

Agriculture- which was mainly a small amount of exhibits which then lead to a huge farmers market come educational grocers that not only sold their alternatively made produce but also had educational information on the processes used and the way they make their business sustainable.
Climate and energy – which focused on new energy practices and renewable energies that can be easily accessed to assist us in daily life such as efficient and cheap solar cookers and self produced energy via dynamo systems.
Mobilisations – which highlighted the actions and campaigns being run throughout the world on sustainable living and alternative sustainable lifestyles
Eco-housing- which focused a lot around hemp style production and utilization for insulation systems as well as building blocks.
Education- which was mostly focused on educating tools and styles to be used to educate primarily younger children and how to nurture this responsibility of the environment into them.

There was so much passion and love in the eyes of all the people there. They knew so well what they wanted and what they were fighting for. They were fighting for a better tomorrow and they had found an awesome alternative to it. It truly was inspiring to be around all these amazing people.

Seeing this and whilst I was seated on the side of the road listening to a random group of Accordion players play a medley of songs whist the sun set really brought out something completely different and new in me. I had this strange feeling and it felt like an epiphany moment. I started to feel like I could be doing so much more but I don’t. I now started to understand that I can’t do it all, over the first week of COP I’ve learnt that, I’ve started to understand my place in the big picture of this climate change movement, actions and I understand I need to focus on it. However, I do feel that I need to do more in this field of focus that I have discovered. I feel maybe hey I’ve just found my focus maybe I should cut myself some slack, don’t be so tough on yourself so fast.

Moving forward from this, I know who I am in this movement, I know what I need to accomplish and how far I can go. I want to make more positive change back in my country, I want to learn as much as I can in cop and take that back and find people who are willing to take action with me and bring our social and environmental issues up to a bigger platform so that we can be heard and hopefully make a difference.

However said, in Malaysia, from my experience, yes people get involved and people want change but I feel one reason things don’t go anywhere with actions and campaigns in Malaysia is because we lack love, we lack that passion for what we fight for. This is something very clear in the French, when they have a cause to fight for , they are embodied with love and passion. That is, to me, what makes them strong and noticed. Maybe that’s why the French Revolution is still talked about till today.