![Performing at Asia Cultural Night during Asia Day at COP21]()
by admin | Jan 3, 2016 | #PowerShiftMsia, Blog, MYD2015
During Promulgation Ceremony of the Malaysian Youth Statement on Climate Change towards COP21, I met Winnie from Jaringan Orang Asli SeMalaysia (JOAS) or The Indigenous Peoples Network of Malaysia. JOAS is the umbrella network for 21 community-based non-governmental organisations that have indigenous peoples’ issues as the focus. As the focal point for indigenous rights and advocacy in Malaysia, JOAS provides the indigenous communities with representation not just nationally, but regionally and internationally as well.
From chatting with her, I found out that she will be going to COP21 too, as a representative of JOAS. Hence, we stay connected via whatsapp prior to the trip so that my team and I could contact her or we could take care of each other in Paris in case of any emergency. After all, there is no harm in making more friends.
Before we depart to Paris, she contacted me for assistance in helping her in her Sumazau Dance performance during Asia Day on 9 December 2015 (Wednesday). Sumazau dance is a popular traditional folk dance of the Kadazan Dusun in Sabah. It is often performed during the harvest festival celebration every May. I cannot find a reason why I should reject her offer, so I informed the team and they agreed to help out too. Deep in my heart, I was so excited because this will be my first ever dance performance and it will held at Paris.
During COP21, Emily and I met her on Monday (the same week as Asia Day) to learn the dance at Indigenous People Pavilion located in the Climate Generation Spaces (Green Zone) in Le Bourget. For your information, green zone is one of the officiate zone by COP21 that open to both public and accredited persons. It provides a huge space for debates, knowledge-sharing, discussions and conviviality. The IP pavilion will be focusing on indigenous people from Asia to showcase their cultures, ways of life and knowledge that provide solutions to climate change.
While learning the dance, Winnie explained to me that the dance was inspired by eagle flying patterns, symbolising freedom. For a first timer like me, the dance was not as hard as I expected as some of the moves are repetitive.
Asia Day was held on Wednesday with a variety of programme from morning till evening. Winnie was one the speakers for the panel discussion on Indigenous Peoples’ Contribution to Climate Change. She shared successful environmentally- friendly initiatives such as micro-hydro and community-led fisheries management system. The dance was arranged at the end of the programme which is “Asia Reception and Cultural Night”. Normally when I hear about cultural night, my first thought is that I can try food from different regions. My dream did come true and I will explain in a while.
My team and I arrived in the late afternoon for rehearsal. We met a youth delegate from Taiwan when we were walking from Blue Zone and he joined us for the dance performance as well. *applause*. Since the team is completed now, a clearer picture of the dance move can be seen. Still, practices makes perfect. After a few round of rehearsals, we were confident that we will be able to deliver the dance smoothly.
The cultural night was packed with a few traditional dance performances by indigenous people in Asia regions such as Mongolia, Indonesia, Vietnam and Bhutan. Each of the performance was unique and impressive. Our performance, the Sumazau Dance is arranged at the closing of the event. As a result, everyone, including the audiences and other indigenous people started to dance together with us. At first, I was very nervous but after a while I felt nothing but joy. That moment had indeed became one of my emotional anchors from now on.
As mentioned above, cultural night is normally linked with food. Yeap, traditional food from different Asian regions were served after the performances ended. To name a few, there were momo (dumplings) from Nepal, Hivana (Fish salad) from Malaysia, Salad Tea Leaves from Myanmar and Dim Sum. All of them taste really delicious. That made me felt a sudden pang of homesickness. I miss char kuey tiao, satay, laksa and bak kut teh back in Malaysia.
After the meal, we headed back to Blue Zone to attend Comite de Paris.
Written by: Thomas Lai
Edited by: Merryn Choong
![Personal Experience in Pre-COP Arrangement]()
by admin | Jan 3, 2016 | Blog, MYD2015, UNFCCC
Grocery store right opposite our apartment
When I was filling in the MYD feedback form, there is a question asking about which part of COP did I think I performed the best. To be honest, I think I perform well (not to say the best) during pre-COP period, where all the necessary preparation and arrangement were needed to be done. I really like what I was doing at that moment because my objective is, to have a proper team, to attend COP21 and learn together. This article will focus on my experience in pre-COP arrangement.
Accommodation
I took the lead in accommodation arrangements. A few type of accommodation search engines were used in order to make the best comparison in terms of prices, amenities and location. To name a few, there are hostelworld, booking.com, hotels.com, agoda and Airbnb. To speed up the shortlist process, I narrowed down the scope of the search. For example, I only search 1 to 2 stars hotel or apartment. Obviously, the price of accommodation from 3 stars and above are expensive and there is no reason for me to do so. We are there for work, not for holiday.
All shortlisted accommodation were compile into a spreadsheet to ease comparison. After much discussion with the team, we decided to choose Mim’s apartment from Airbnb. The apartment is situated at a strategic location. It was located near to Gare Du Nord. Gare Du Nord is like Malaysia KL Sentral (public transport hub) and it has a direct train line to travel to Le Bourget Airport (COP21 venue). There is also a grocery store just in front of it, which is convenient for us because we were planning to cook, in order to save money. Last but not least, the most attractive factor is the price! The host of the apartment, Mim is a nice person and he gave us a good deal. Thus, I highly recommended his apartment to those who wish to travel to Paris in a group of 4 to 6. Trust me, you will be amazed by the interior design and the amenities provided.
The whole process, from the beginning till the day the booking was finally confirmed, took around 2 months! It took longer than I expected, and it was not easy to coordinate among my team members. Insufficient funds also resulted in a delay for the booking. Well, nothing last forever, so goes to the bad days. We managed to get everything sorted out at the end of October and the apartment that we desired was booked.
Budget planning
To date, this is my second time working on budget planning since my university project 3 years ago. To summarise my experience, budget planning is not difficult but it requires constant monitoring. The price of some expenses such as Airfare vary from time to time. Today, the price of the Airfare is RM1800, tomorrow the price might fluctuate to RM2500.00 and, the following day it might fall back to RM1800. In short, my feeling is like riding a roller coaster.
To ease my job, I set up a daily update notification, to check for the airfare for a few chosen airlines. Besides, research done for the food expenses is also time consuming. Thanks to Internet, everything is possible with just a few clicks. The initial food budget per diem is 18 Euro (approx RM85) based on the estimated calculation I obtained from online and recommendations from friends that are currently staying at Paris. The budget per diem increased during mid of November as we have adequate funds and I also wish to have a better team welfare. Moreover, it is also advisable to allocate higher value during budget planning so that there are reserved funds available in case of overrun.
After staying a week in Paris, we as a team felt that the food budget is more than sufficient as some of the days we cook ourselves. As a result, we agreed to change back to the initial budget. Aside from these, different people have different eating lifestyle. For those who wish to have fine dining for every meal, i am sorry to say that 18 Euro is hardly possible even for a single meal. No offense but chinese food in Paris is relatively cheaper and the good thing is there is rices available. #ASIAN
Develop necessary documents
I also have the opportunity to work on producing a MYD2COP21 logistic handbook. In my opinion, a handbook is essential as it is the best way to share all relevant information to the team members. The handbook consists of all the information needed such as accommodation, public transportation know-how, registration for COP21, a list of parallel events and emergency contacts. Albeit COP21 is over, you are most welcome to refer to the handbook for future references. While developing the handbook, it gave me a clearer picture on how each “system” work, especially the public transport system.
Unlike Malaysia, the public transport system in Paris is way more complicated! Please click this link if you do not believe me and be prepare to get your mind go haywire. But again, technology has made our life so much easier now. There are 2 free public transport apps that come in handy when you want to plan your journey in Paris, namely RATP: Subway Paris and Visit Paris by Metro.
Besides, I also created a customised google map that pinpointed most of the location and description of parallel events that happened during COP21. I felt that the map is very useful as everyone can check on all the events in a single map. It’s so convenient! The only thing I regretted about it is, I did not manage to share this map to a wider audience. *what a waste*
Training series
In order to get ready for “war” during COP21, we need to equip ourselves with sufficient knowledge of understanding climate change and UNFCCC. From July until November 2015, a series of training workshops were organised by MYD to enhance youth skills and understanding in climate change & UNFCCC negotiations. The workshops were hosted by various climate experts, government bodies and civil society leaders to share on related topics with the youth delegation as well as the public.
For more information, please click here.
Written by: Thomas Lai
Edited by: Merryn Choong
![Climate Change is NOT only about Environment]()
by admin | Jan 3, 2016 | Blog, MYD2015, UNFCCC
After joining Gan Pei Ling’s training session one month before we departed to Paris, I started to think how should we explain climate change in a wider context to people around us. I like how she broke down climate change into smaller pictures by relating the issues to politics, geography, culture, economy, education etc. This idea further developed when I saw many people with different backgrounds and from different sectors attending the COP21 in Paris.
Photo credit: www.mindmapart.com
Many people around me always think that climate change is global warming and global warming is cutting down trees and the increase of numbers of cars on the streets. Sometimes it might be a bit frustrating to listen to that; it’s like how people is telling you that the fried rice is made of rice only while you know there is some soy sauce, MSG and oil inside of it.
What I am trying to say here is that people tend to focus on the superficial part of the problem and ignore the story behind the picture. So let’s see what are important elements of the climate change that we should also pay attention to:
- Politics – What is UNFCCC? It is a United Nation Conference on climate change which 196 countries will meet up and discuss about the ways and commitments that every nation should contribute to fight against this crisis. “Countries”, “discuss”, “ways and commitments”, these terms portray how politics play the game in climate change, especially in climate policy and climate finance. The efforts of controlling climate change is highly dependent on the political stand of the Parties.
- Social and Culture – Extreme weathers might cause the cultural heritage like monuments to be eroded at a higher rate. Indigenous people will lost their livelihoods and might need to move away from their original habitats. Changes in culture is inevitable for societies to adapt and cope with climate change. For instance, the awareness about climate change has risen over time and large population started to change their lifestyle to a more sustainable one.
- Education – As climate change exacerbate, the climate education become more and more important to build capacity and to increase the unity among the people and the authorities to curb the climate change. Campaigns, talks, videos, articles etc all are considered as climate education. Many people who are staying in the outskirts have relatively low accessibility to the information about climate change which will caused them to be more fragile in front of the alteration in climate.
- Economy – The efforts and the focus of the countries on combating climate change will be a very important pointer of the economy because the development of the green industry and the dirty energy industry will be relying on that. Besides, climate change will be causing extreme weather which affects the crop yield and increases the loss and damage of the citizens. This will further influence the price of food and the economy of the countries which main output are agricultural products.
- Geography – The rising sea level no doubt will be causing a change in the geographical size of the land while the extreme weather will bring about uncommon weather pattern and increase the fertility of the land. The landscape of an area would also be changed by climate change.
- Demography – When the landscape and fertility of the land altered, the people whose livelihood depends on the agricultural activities would have to search for other ways to survive, for example, shifting to the city and work in the factory or moving away from the lowland that has annual flood. This will result in changes of demography in the areas/cities. The climate migration might incur geopolitical problems like overcrowding, food shortage or even civil war.
- Biodiversity – Excessive logging is one of the reasons of climate change. Climate change makes the environment less conducive for certain vulnerable flora and fauna because some species are highly sensitive and is very “picky” about their habitats. Many crop yields decrease because of climate change and this will affect the economy and increase the climate migration.
- Human rights – There are many organizations which focus on gender equality and indigenous people are very concerned on climate change because these groups are usually the front-line victims of the climate issues. For instance, women in the Least Developed Countries (LDCs) are faced with difficulties in food production, household water supply and energy supply because of climate change. They are comparatively inaccessible towards technologies, capacity building and financial resources.
- Religion – Many spiritual leaders have already recognized the need to curb climate change, mostly by publishing religious statement on climate change. They urge the Parties and public to acknowledge the need to take good care of the God’s creation and to work towards the same goal of protecting the environment.
In fact, climate change is related to everyone and everything on this planet. We have to collaborate and give our commitments to address our common threat, the climate change, before it is too late.
Written by Elaine
![My time in Paris prior to Opening of COP 21]()
by admin | Jan 3, 2016 | Blog, MYD2015, UNFCCC
26th November 2015
Together with my team, we departed from Malaysia in late evening. I was so excited because this day has finally arrived! This is also my 1st time traveling on an Airbus A380. One of my highlights during the flight is, the food, or to be specific – bread! The bread was warm and soft when served. It tasted even more delicious with butter melted inside. *heavenly delicious*
27th November 2015
We reached Paris 6.00 am in the morning. We queued up for an hour for security check. Due to the Paris havoc that happened a week ago, I thought the security check would be very stringent. To ensure a smooth check, I prepared all relevant documents such as accommodation receipt, accreditation letter from MYD, my funder – The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus (UNMC) and acknowledgement letter from Embassy of Malaysia in France.
After we passed the border control, we met Scott from Northwestern University in Chicago. He is studying journalism and wanted to shoot a short documentary about youth activism cropping up in response to the climate talks. His partner, Miranda was also in Paris and we met her shortly at COY11. From now until 4th December, they will be filming us.
We went to 11th Conference of Youth (COY11) by taking train. We were a bit clumsy as both our hands were carrying luggage. We need to thank Scott as he helped to reduce some of our burden.
We reunited with one of our team members there as he arrived Paris earlier than us. After touring around for half an hour, we had our vegetarian lunch, served with a very sweet apple. Too bad I forgot to take a picture of it.
After lunch, we had an ASEAN Youth meet up session. Approximately 30 ASEAN youth attended this session. During the meet up, everyone was given a chance to talk about their passion in combating climate change. As youths, we really hope our voice would be heard.
We headed to the apartment after the session ended. An instruction was given by the host prior to our arrival. I felt like playing “Escape Room” because it took some time for us to locate the keys. The apartment was cozy and fully furnished. No complaint!
28th November 2015
Today I am not attending Conference of Youth because I made up my mind to stay in the apartment and do a little bit of reading regarding Malaysia’s INDC.
In the afternoon, my team and I decided to visit Paris De L’AVENIR. One of the event by Paris De L’AVENIR is an exhibition that consist of green innovative technologies that helps in curbing GHG emission. The event also featured immersed discovery of the future Paris around 4 themes which are energy, mobility and logistics, resource and recycling and urban development. The exhibition is located very near to our apartment, so we walked.
Along the river bank, each of the exhibition is located in a cargo container. I not sure about the origin of the cargo containers but I hope the organizers did consider re-using used/old container instead of using a brand new one.
Among all the exhibitors, there are 2 new innovations that really gave me a WOW impression. The 1st one is called a shower loop which is able to reduce 10 times water and energy usage. The state-of-art is kind of simple. There is an adapter that captures hot water from the drain, purified it with filter and pumps it directly for bath. They also claimed that quality of the recycled water exceeds both USA and EU standards for drinking water. In other words, you can also drink the water while bathing.
The second one is the production of “green” hydrogen. Hydrogen can be obtained by electrolysis process by applying electric current. Conventional ways of producing hydrogen gas required the burning of fossil fuel to generate electricity. In a plain text, it is a “dirty” hydrogen.
The production of “green” hydrogen is by using electricity generated from renewable energy such as solar and water. In my opinion, hydro dam should not be relied on because building a dam required a change in landscape and this will affect the ecosystem and also, intrude the land right of people. Whereas solar power would be more promising. With the advancement of technology, hydrogen can replaces fossil fuel in the future. Hydrogen is a good fuel because it does not produce any GHG during combustion. It emits water vapor as its side product which does not bring negative impact to the environment.
29th November 2015
I was getting mild sore throat. This affected my mood. I went down to the foyers and did some reflection. I realized that I did gain lot of new insights and knowledge on UNFCCC and policy tracking after I joined MYD 6 months ago. This cheered me up and motivated me again. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger right?
Lunch was prepared by Amalen. The Nasi Briyani Ayam was indeed delicious yet spicy. I was so tempted to eat more but for the sake of my health, I need to resist. Such a pity. After lunch, we headed to Le Bourget Airport (COP21 venue) to acquire our badges. Surprisingly, the public transport for the day is free of charge, which is marvelous.
Hundreds of pillars can be seen in front of the COP21 main entrance. Each of the pillars featured one country flag. Since COP21 will be attended by leaders from all around the world, security check is unavoidable. The security here is stringent too. To prevent everyone from bringing dangerous fluid, everyone is obligated to take a sip of the water contained in the water bottle. #smart. We were done with our registration in 15 minutes and the badges were securely acquired.
The ADP opening plenary was brought forward to today. Before the plenary start, we spent around 1 hour touring COP21 venue a.k.a Blue Zone. This venue is huge and there are 6 major halls within. During the tour, I was amazed by the Indian delegation pavilion. The layout and decoration of the pavilion totally stood out, so much win.
The ADP opening plenary started at 5 pm. The incoming COP21 President, Laurent Fabius and both of the ADP co-chair (Ahmed Djoghlaf and Daniel Reifsnyder) were delivering their opening speech. They emphasized on the fact that that transparency, trust, openness, involvement of all stakeholder and no surprise give legitimacy and success towards COP21. Albeit the speech sound promising, but things cannot be done without actions. Hence, I hope all the stakeholders can cooperate and work together for the sake for a better future.
Written by: Thomas Lai
Edited by: Merryn Choong
![Bilateral Meetings with International Youth Groups in COP21]()
by admin | Jan 3, 2016 | Blog, MYD2015, UNFCCC
So we have mission to accomplish.
The mission is bilateral meetings with other youth delegations during COP21, to understand what other youth groups are doing in COP and to gain exposure from their experiences. We are newbie and they may have been here for years. I think this exposure is worth an article because it was one of my exciting parts in COP.
Each of the MYD members were in charged of “adopting” a country’s youth coalition and arrange a meeting with them. I was in charge of contacting New Zealand Youth Delegation (NZYD) but it did not happen in the end because they were very occupied and it was a problem to find a mutual free time for all the members. The secured ones include meetings with the United Kingdom Youth Climate Coalition (UKYCC), Australian Youth Climate Coalition (AYCC) and Taiwan Youth Climate Coalition (TWYCC).
Fun fact: UKYCC and AYCC have more female members than male, but it is another way round for TWYCC.
UKYCC meeting was our first one on 10th Dec, in green zone. There are around 6 to 8 of them. We were quite excited as we have no experience in handling such big number of participants in such meeting. It was a bit delayed and I tried to take lead and to conduct the flow, just a simple one- introduction from both side on what we did before COP and during COP; then it will be a free Q&A or chatting session. It was fine initially but when it reached the free chatting part, the note taker – Shak got a bit lost because everyone was kinda split into small groups; with various diverse topics. I was sitting in the middle, trying to bridge the gap without spoiling the anticipated conversations, so you could imagine how challenging it was ! :/
The next day, we had lunch with AYCC, there were only 4 of them. Conversation was much converged given the advantage of us seated in a roundtable (now I know the significant role seatings play in a discussion!).
The session with TWYCC was in the evening and we did some serious walking to our meeting venue. TWYCC intended to interview and film some of us, resulting our meeting started a bit late. There are around 4-5 members from TWYCC (not the whole team). However, only 2 of them are the “real” members as the other 2-3 people were from the media team who exclusively worked on recordings and shootings (interesting team structure!). So those are the kind of problems that you would probably face when it comes to bilateral meetings- many things are uncertain- timing; venues; unexpected incidents like delays and number of people who turned up.
Lesson Learnt: It could be better if we could know more about the logistical information beforehand- e.g. number of people attending, so we can find a suitable place to comfortably fit us; and location, whether it is blue zone or green zone (travelling between these 2 places can take 15-20 minutes to and fro).
I personally felt at ease after talking to these bunch of youths because I am not the only one who was overwhelmed and lost in this COP circus; and I am also not the only one who thinks team problem is a shame because that’s what happened to everyone. Most importantly, I learnt from these youth coalitions that they all have a proper structure within the team, so at least they know how to coordinate stuff although they are all moving around individually. Great learning from them! I think this bilateral should be made another MYD traditions for the upcoming batches.
Written by: Emily
Edited by: Wanji
![Conversation with Tun Jeanne Abdullah]()
by admin | Jan 3, 2016 | #PowerShiftMsia, MYD2015
Tun Jeanne A
When Tun Jeanne Abdullah met the three MYD members (Jolene, Thomas, Emily) in Paris Declaration, we ended up chatting passionately about our tropical rainforests (I felt pity for the people waiting in line to talk to her though, we chatted for such a while).
The three of us were presented with the golden chance to meet our honorable former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Badawi and his spouse, Tun Jeanne Abdullah in The Declaration launching ceremony on the 7 Dec 2015. We were very lucky to get Tun Jeanne’s attention and that was how we ended up being invited by her for a casual chat on the same table. From there, we got to know that Tun Jeanne is the chairman of the Board of Trustee of Tropical Rainforest Conservation Research Centre (TRCRC), who had been working on forestry conservation for the past few years.
She was telling us the beauty and richness of our very own tropical rainforests, specifically on the valuable woods that we have, such as the precious Gaharu timber. Due to many of the illegal loggings and uncontrolled deforestation to make way for palm oil plantation, Malaysia’s timber production has been dwindling. It is a pity when we resolved to importing timbers when our fertile land could produce better quality ones.
Tun Jeanne also pointed out that we could acquire many new insights through learning from the forest, this include the indigenous people’s knowledge on forest management. Hence it is very essential to raise more awareness especially among the people in the urban areas who are quite disconnected with the nature so they will appreciate this golden national asset we have. It is as if there is an entirely untouched chapter on natural rainforest and indigenous knowledge that our people are missing. I understand that more need to be done in this matters and vowed to be doing more in this.
The day we had this conversation became even more meaningful when it was the same day where our Minister of Natural Resources & Environment (NRE) , YB Dato Sri Dr. Haji Wan Junaidi bin Tuanku Jaafar pledged to preserve 50% of our national land as forests with healthy forest and zero deforestation in the COP plenary this morning!
Oh let me share with you an awesome initiative by Tun Jeanne’s founding organisation- Landskap Malaysia, called the “3313” . Anyone can have a tree planted on behalf of them for just RM33 in the organisation’s living collection sites which are either in forest reserves or national parks. The coordinates of the trees planted will be revealed to their contributors and we can visit our trees ! I love this idea as it must be an exciting journey to revisit your own tree and watch them growth throughout the years. Imagine watching it looks so fragile and new and the next time when you come back, it is all tall and hard, offering shade for you (of course that depends on the species).
I found this particular initiative stood out from other tree planting events where they are normally a one-shot session and rarely let people to trace back the trees that they have planted. Plus, if I were to choose, I would prefer to plant my own tree in a real forest than in a city to be honest. To me, replant a forest is more important because of its higher biodiversity value and rich ecosystem services. But of course, fragmented forests and those urban forests should also be retained. As more population is going to stay in cities, it is essential to create more green space which is near to us. Remember, we are also part of the nature!
It was an inspiring evening for me, after all. Tun Jeanne inspired me by her down to earth attitude on doing all these amazing forest conservation work. Most importantly, she is very keen to share her knowledge generously with us- the youth. I am happy to get her acknowledgement and encouragement on what I want to do for the environment. This is definitely a booster for me. I would love to have more conversation with her back in Malaysia later! On a side note, she is a very caring and patient wife to Tun Abdullah Badawi. I found both of them really cute and loving even at this age
☺
Written by: Emily
Edited by: Wanji
