My first session at COY was on “Taking Actions and Empowering Others”. I have always been curious about how exactly are climate actions taken in different places, and the session I attended did clarify my questions. The speaker for “Taking Actions and Empowering Others” was Dr. Dietmar Kress, the director of active support for Greenpeace Deutschland.
He started the session with a striking (and catchy) quote, “the problem is that the problems are problematic,” and stated that that is why it is difficult to use an optimistic way to talk about it. His view might be pessimistic, but they are definitely realistic. Dr. Kress mentioned that the interconnected-ness of all the complex issues in the world can be explained through the Sustainable Development Goals.
Dr. Kress explaining his presentation.
An Overarching International Environment Treaty
Lamenting over the Earth Overshoot Day, he mentioned that the problem of international treaties is its application back in Germany. This problem was previously mentioned during our third training series on understanding the Malaysian Constitution, guess we can draw parallel on this issue between Germany and Malaysia. Considering there is already three United Nations treaty on the environment (the climate treaty, dessert treaty, and a water treaty), there is still a need for a treaty of a higher level. That is why currently Greenpeace Deutschland is pushing for an international environment treaty that is general and overarching. Dr. Kress agrees that there are many papers in existence that could be worked towards the international environment treaty, but was frustrated by the fact that many countries are against the idea of the overarching international treaty because they would then need to be accountable to it.
German Youths
After covering the small part on Greenpeace Deutschland’s current policy work, he pulled up the result the organization had from a survey amongst youths on their views on environmentalism. It is optimistic to know that 92% of German youths are willing to be carbon neutral as long as they have the knowledge to do so. Speaking from experience, he mentioned that you only need 35% of the population to agree in order to change the status quo. That is why now Greenpeace Deutschland is looking at talking to the one-third of Germans who are willing to do something but don’t know how to do it. Dr. Kress was glad that sustainability is talked in German classroom because this helps in creating the awareness for their organization to work from.
Dr. Kress stresses that campaigns targeting youth need spontaneity and effectiveness because the youths care about their impact on the world, focusing on self-effectiveness. To organizations like Greenpeace Deutschland, this is a new culture of participation and cooperation. Dr. Kress mentioned that a campaign does not need to be successful in order to be effective.
Climate Change Displaced Persons
21.8 million people are refugees because of deteriorated environment condition whereas 6.6 million people are from violent conflicts. However, currently, most states do not recognize climate change displaced persons. Even Greenpeace Deutschland have a lot of problem in bringing up the issue to the right-wing party. However, Greenpeace is trying to bring this issue into public awareness, starting a “Disarmament and Climate” campaign in South Africa.
Greenpeace Deutschland has been working a lot on the ground to push the climate change awareness amongst Germans. It is an eye-opening experience to hear that it is hard to push the sustainable agenda in Germany, a country with a green image. I was surprised that even climate actions in Germany face many obstacles from the corporates. Hopefully, Greenpeace Deutschland can continue to influence the German public, and eventually the German government.
23rd Conference of the Parties (COP23) which took place in Bonn and was presided over by Fiji has come to an end on the 18th of November 2017 after a long night of negotiations.
24th Conference of the Parties (COP24) / 14th Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to Kyoto Protocol (CMP14) will be held in the city of Katowice, Poland from 3-14 December 2018.
Poland was chosen as the upcoming President by the Eastern European Group, whose turn it is to host the conference following Asia-Pacific in 2017. This will also be the 4th time that Poland has presided over a UN climate change conference.
2018 will be another important year for international climate diplomacy. Indeed 2018 is when nations need to finalise the guideline for fully operationalise the Paris Agreement (i.e global stocktake) in order to achieve the Paris’s ambition. It is the year to put meat on the bones.
About Katowice
COP24 will be held at the formal heart of Poland’s coal-mining industry. The first mention of Katowice dates back to the year 1598 and it had became a coal mining area since 19 century.
Now, the city has revitalised. The former Katowice Black Coal Mine has been named as Culture Zone as it has been transformed into a sort of “mine of culture”. It includes 4 iconic buildings:
The International Congress Centre
The Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra
SPODEK Sports and Entertainment Arena
Silesian Museum
Bird View of Katowice Culture Zone. Photo extracted from http://www.cop24.katowice.eu/
COP24 Whereabout
International Congress Centre and SPODEK will be the main venue for COP24. The International Congress Centre is a multi-functional centre which can host 15,000 people at a time. (Double the capacity of the World Conference Centre in Bonn). As for SPODEK, it is said that inside there is also a skating-rink and hotel. I sincerely hope that the skating rink will be opened during COP24.
Accommodation & Transportation
Katowice is small and space is limited. It is advisable to start booking accommodation for COP 24
There is a video showing information about accommodation at the COP24 official website. Based on the video uploader, it can be assumed that a company called Mazurkas Travel (Poland) will in-charge (or monopoly over) the accommodation in Katowice during COP24. All accommodation is otherwise frozen and cannot be booked by outside agencies.
Logistics info about COP24
It is said that 15,400 rooms already been booked by Mazurkas Travel which comprises of 1-5 star hotels, apartment and hostels. Due to space limit, some may need to stay further at other states of Poland such as Krakow. Public transportations are available but the transit time will takes up to 1 hour. In other words, one needs to spend 2 hours per day just to transit.
“Interventions” – it is one of the buzzwords at the UN climate conference. It’s a word the privileged folk in their fancy fur coats at the UN like to use to confuse the ordinary people (joking). But to break it down, it simply means the delivery of a statement or comment given during negotiations. And in this article, I would like to specifically talk about interventions given by constituencies.
The purpose of these interventions are to involve civil Non-Party Actors in the process of negotiations. Negotiations are only carried out by parties and blocs. Often, it’s a more symbolic act than anything else because there are also other avenues for civil society groups to influence negotiations (read, local NGOs stalking their local negotiators around and questioning them). But it serves as an important exercise for the constituencies to conceptualise their positions on the various issues and for negotiators to be reminded that the world does not revolve around their country and its’ national interests.
How interventions at the Conference Of Parties works, is that the various constituencies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) are given the chance to offer two minute interventions during the negotiations on behalf of their constituency. If you run longer than two minutes, the mic would be cut off. A little bit unfair considering how negotiators are allowed to run on for as long as they like and some of them take a while to get to their point.
Few infographics on what constituencies are can be viewed here.
Within each constituency there are certain ‘house rules’ if one can use that term. RINGO for example prefers to remain non-partisan and does not comment on the party positions per se. Their interventions normally calls on the inclusion of more research, transparency and a consideration of data into the process of negotiations. I am unsure why these constituencies follow such rules. It could be because they are afraid of being too critical for fear they do not get called upon in the future to speak. Or perhaps because of this unspoken agreement that everyone should be as nice and as indirect as possible in these negotiation chambers.
Drafting these interventions are led by small groups of RINGO members, of which a couple volunteers (usually the first ones to volunteer) take charge of it and the entire constituency is free to contribute on google docs, as far as they are willing and able to. Every morning after the RINGO coordination meeting concludes at 10am, a small team of drafters meet up to work on as much of the intervention as possible – a process which I found muc satisfaction in. The art of diplomatic and succinct writing is key in this and I had a challenging but engaging time putting those skills to the test. Subsequently the intervention is carried out in the negotiation chamber by one of the drafting RINGO members, whom is decided upon by consensus by the team working on the document. At one point it boiled down to a game of scissors paper stone between me and another lady because both of us had put in just as much effort and were just as interested in talking.
Xiandi giving an intervention on behalf of YOUNGO.
YOUNGO on the other hand, has a slightly different and somewhat more haphazard system of working on interventions. The list of interventions is sent out via email and someone (usually the Focal Point if no one is interested enough) will start up a google doc and people chip in as and when they want to online. The choice of intervention is supposedly carried out by putting the names of all interested people into a hat and getting a random passersby to pick out a name. However for one intervention, one of our fellow delegates who had worked on a substantive amount of the document by herself, was not allowed to speak on behalf of YOUNGO because another Malaysian girl had spoken at another intervention earlier. Therefore representatives of this constituency are not necessarily the ones that drafted the document. A case of equity over equality perhaps.
To be able to give the intervention at the negotiations, is seen as something of a matter of pride, especially to YOUNGOs. Perhaps it is our urge to be recognised and taken seriously despite our youth. Or perhaps the constituency just happens to attract individuals who are more enthusiastic about being in the limelight. There are often many names submitted as speakers (although the number of drafters is considerably smaller). RINGOs too looks forward to delivering interventions as everyone likes their two minute of fame but their preoccupation with this is somewhat less.
Seriously though, if you got to deliver an intervention in the famous Chamber Hall, that would be so cool!
Sometimes individuals wait for hours in the negotiation room for their chance to give their two minute intervention. I heard a senior member of RINGO mention that once a representative had to deliver the intervention at 3am. In our case (the other girl won) the APA closing plenary at which she was to deliver the intervention, got suspended after an hour and only resumed at 7.30 pm. And was then suspended yet again (because parties are unable to arrive at a consensus) and eventually the secretariat decided not to have interventions for that plenary. For the CMP closing plenary, the representatives gave their interventions at 5 am in the morning.
That is the face of a man (Mike) who has gone without sleep, to deliver an intervention. Dedication!
In conclusion, I would say that the system of interventions is important as it highlights the importance of non-party stakeholder interventions in the process of negotiations. However individuals could perhaps be a little less preoccupied with getting their two minutes of fame and focus on delivering a solid, insightful intervention that reflects the views of the constituency as a whole.
COP23 is an easy place to metaphorically and literally get lost at. Especially when you’re a first timer. First there is the issue of two zones which has you clearing security and hopping on the shuttle/ bike/ electric car/ brisk walking multiple times a day to and fro. Add to that the multiple sections per zone and the umpteen rooms and you have a lot of harried looking people running around trying to get to where they are supposed to be.
It is a rather picturesque walk/ cycle between the zones though.
I did not think I would get metaphorically lost as much as I did however. Prior to our departure to COP, we prepared through a mixture of self-study, group study sessions and training series. Feeling so ready, I descend on COP23 on my first day, eager and ready to throw myself in and found myself overwhelmed with the sheer volume of activities and negotiations. And amidst the 25 000 or so people who’ve descended on Bonn from all over the world, you feel like a tiny helpless fish. It took some time and effort, falling sick and getting injured to even begin to have a handle on things and to feel like I had a purpose and could contribute in some way.
By the end of Thursday of the first week, I was starting to feel unwell and the next morning I woke up feverish and nausea. I had successfully managed to work myself up and stress myself out over worrying about not accomplishing anything and not understanding enough. Friday became a break day for me, and I focused on writing one of my articles and going over the goals I had set myself to achieve at the COP. I started to realise the advice given by our seniors in MYD to not be too ambitious and which had fallen on deaf ears at that point actually made alot of sense. So I started to revise those goals. Come Saturday, the much awaited Climate Action Network (CAN) Party happened. It was a full night of partying, fun and letting one’s hair down. About 4 am, someone dropped a beer bottle on my foot which shattered. Let’s say I ended that night somewhat lamely (pun intended). Later that day, after getting a few hours of sleep, I awoke in excrutiating pain and could barely walk. The bottle had dropped right ontop of my middle toe. I was so thankful I had been wearing boots or I would have had to deal with a bloody foot too. I started inquiring into whether my travel insurance covered fractured toes. Thankfully by Monday the pain had subsided somewhat thanks to this awesome cream my host had given me and I knew it wasn’t a fracture.
So by Monday I had already found my footing, as best as one can anyway, with a near fractured toe. I found a negotiational track that had meaning for me: Loss and Damage and the Warsaw International Mechanism. Then I limped to my new home at the Research and Independent Non- Governmental Organisations (RINGO) constituency. I found that I enjoyed interviewing people for our FB page. This slower pace my body was forced to take enabled my mind to slow down too and absorb more.
Lunch sessions with our Malaysian negotiators is crucial to learning and understanding the process of negotiations.
The whispers around the corridor and at the coffee bars said that the Loss and Damage track was not going to be successful and the necessary technical details for the Warsaw International Mechanism would not be discussed sufficiently. However I found this stoked my interest and the divide it was creating between the developing and developed countries was intriguing to observe in the process of negotiations. Negotiators from developing countries were pushing for ironing out how the finances for this element were going to be like while negotiators from developed countries like USA and Australia would deliberately block this.
Drafting interventions was an intensive and tricky exercise in delivering crucial messages concisely and diplomatically. Interventions are an important formalised medium for non-party stakeholders to have a say in the process of negotiations. I worked on four interventions in total, three for the RINGOs and one for the youth constituency called YOUNGO. The interventions were delivered at the opening and closing plenaries of the various tracks. Unfortunately I did not get to deliver any myself in the hall as the other members of the drafting teams that I worked on got the opportunity but I found it to be a very useful learning process and a fun way to meet like-minded people.
Hard at work drafting an intervention!
Meeting people at COP is a good way to stay grounded by sharing your experiences with each other and learning. I found I was not the only one getting lost, which was immensely reassuring and the people with different backgrounds were able to help me understand, at least a little bit, the UNFCCC and its process from the view of the different stakeholders and parties. I took my task of conducting interviews as a way to bring different voices to the table to spread awareness via social media in Malaysia about climate change and the gravity and urgency of the issue. The process of conducting the interviews and meeting people gave me a sense of purpose as well, in transmitting what I knew back home. I managed to conduct 6 interviews in total, of which 2 have been published so far and the other 4 are work in progress.
Meeting people from all around the world! Featuring: Germany, Fiji and Sri Lanka.
Overall, the COP23 experience was a great learning tool both personally and professionally and it felt amazing to be able to contribute in some small way to this huge gargantuan process that is attempting to address climate change.
Well done (Malaysian Youth) Delegates #MYD to COP23 (UNFCCC), and to #PowerShiftMsia.
I was impressed how all of you immersed yourselves in the meetings and become so engaged and involved. You were all like veterans to the process even though the vast majority of you were first timers.
It says a lot about the effectiveness of your pre-COP preparatory process.
Syabas.
Best.
Nithi Nesadurai
President, Environmental Protection Society Malaysia &
Regional Coordinator, Climate Action Network South-East Asia
Sustainable has become a buzzword recently. We always heard words like sustainable growth, sustainable development, sustainable lifestyle, etc. So, is sustainable really the only way moving forward?
Maybe NOT ENOUGH.
Sustainable development is insufficient, we also need justice in it. For an instant, sustainable electricity is not just about counting on how many kilowatt (Kwh) one can saved or how high the efficiency is, but also accessible of electricity to public. In my opinion, is pointless to generate high efficiency electricity but the accessibility to it is only for urban dwellers.
MYD attended a side event during COP23 called “No job on a Dead Planet – Ensuring a Just Energy Transition” organised by Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung (FES) with Bread for the World (BftW)
The so-called sustainable development cannot be achieved without addressing climate change and the much needed element of JUSTICE. Raju Pandit Chhetri gave a good case study on Nepal during the workshop.
Nepal is a least developed mountainous and landlocked country. It is also one of the least contributors to the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs). Based on the NDC, Nepal is going to scale up renewable energy production to meet the country’s energy demand and also reduce dependency on fossil fuel. They are heavily invested in hydropower and planning to scale up to 13,000 MW by 2030.
So now here is the question. Is hydropower really a clean energy? Building hydro dam will destroy a vast landscapes, which will cause lost of biodiversity and lots of people are going to be displaced. Besides, the damn project are mostly outsourced to other countries like China and India due to lack of capacity. In other words, this does not help in employment and poverty eradication. Ultimately, anything happens to the dam in the future (i.e earthquake) is devastating to even think about it.
As he said, moving away from fossil fuel is not just, we need to see justice from many angle.
Different countries also have different starting points. For developed countries, they are shifting from one lifestyle to another while developing countries are solving poverty to development. Thus, the principle of common but differentiated responsibility (CBDR) is essential.
In laymen term, CBDR means every country acknowledges climate change is a common issue where each country should be responsible for addressing it YET NOT IN AN EQUAL MANNER.
But in reality, this is not always the case. Image extract from GWPF
It recognised that developed countries, which had been able to develop for longer time without any environmental restrictions, now need to take a greater share of responsibility. And one of the responsibilities should be providing support to developing countries. This is part of JUSTICE as well. In short …
CBDR is an expression of general principle of equity.
Furthermore, justice is subjective. It is easy to understand on the surface level but once we dive deep into detail, the line is blurred as there are a few dimensions to it.
Just transition originate from the struggle of trade unions to support those whose entitlements are threatened by climate action (i.e coal miner, workers from coal fired power plant).
Those who live in climate vulnerable countries call for justice in term of more ambitious climate action (Loss and Damage, Mitigation, Adaptation) in order to secure their survival.
As for us the youth, we call for justice in term of intergenerational equity. It means we inherit the Earth from previous generations and have an obligation to administer and preserve it to all future generations.
Climate Action in Bonn Zone during COP23
From the 3 examples given above, we can see that the concerns arose came from different domains of justices. Workers are asking for recognition and support; vulnerable countries are asking for distributive justice while the youth are seeking for intergenerational justice.
Real justice only can be achieved if we welcome everyone on-board. Leave no one behind
