Adopt A Negotiator » United Kingdom
Adopt A Negotiator » United Kingdom
Adopt A Negotiator » United Kingdom
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Posted: 09 Jun 2009 04:42 AM PDT  "You're fired!" Yvo de Boer the Alan Sugar of the UNFCCC, if only he was allowed to fire the countries who have done the worst! Negotiators are people too. Hard to believe when you’re wandering around the halls of a UNFCCC conference, but it’s true. Last night I bumped into Jan in the hotel lobby dressed in jeans and looking very ‘off duty’, and it reminded me of this fact. I really wouldn’t want to be a negotiator, basically they’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. Their title is pretty deceptive, because there is only so much negotiating they can actually do. Countries come to these talks with their positions already decided and the negotiators can only work within these confines. Though we need to make sure our negotiating team are pushing as hard as they can within their mandate if we want things to really change it isn’t them we need to be hounding. It is our government who set their mandate, so it is them, and them alone who can provide our negotiators with the tools to push these talks forward. Yesterday we had a meeting with Yvo do Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC. Basically he’s the man who is supposed to keep this whole complicated, and very long- winded, process on track, the chief negotiator tracker you might say! When the floor was opened up for general questions the entire tracking team immediately stuck our hands in the air. Our team approach (and probably eye catching bright red t-shirts) worked, and we were quickly called on to ask a question! I stepped forward and introduced the adopt a negotiator project before asking Yvo … “What’s the one thing we could ask everyone who’s following us at home to do, that could move this process along and inject the sense of urgency we so desperately need before Copenahgen?”
His answer.. “Call your MPs, call your governments, hound them (ok so he didn’t use the word hound!).” But that was his basic message. The only way we are going to get a deal in Copenhagen that is even remotely acceptable is if there is so much pressure in every country that governments are forced to come to the table with better offers. Now we can’t take responsibility for the whole world but we can take responsibility for the UK. Negotiators are humans too, they want to do the right thing, they want to get a good deal. But without our support they can’t. It’s time to up the pressure! Already the climate movement in the UK is growing daily, but we still need to mobilise like there’s no tomorrow (if we don’t there literally might be no tomorrow). The action you take in the next six months could be the most important thing you ever do in your life…the most important thing you ever do in your children’s life. Nothing is more important in the next six months than making sure our government (whoever they might be….) know that we want them give our negotiators in Copenhagen the ability to push for a deal that will safeguard all our futures. They need to be setting positions for our negotiators to work with that are progressive and ambitious! It’s time to do what we have to do to achieve this! And to make sure Yvo keeps all the negotiators on track we finished by presenting him with one of our lovely, bright red, negotiator tracker t-shirts. I hope I see him wearing it around!       |
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Posted: 11 Jun 2009 03:56 AM PDT Yesterday someone scoffed at the idea of the UK doing enough to secure my future on this planet. They told me that the idea that the UK could go to the EU and push for 40% emission reductions was “laughable”! That person was Pete Betts the director of international climate change at DECC (The Department for Energy and Climate Change). Also known as Jan’s boss! He was in town for a couple of days to take part in some bilateral negotiations and meetings. The UK Youth were given time to go in and speak to him and put our views across of how we feel the UK is doing. One thing we raised with him was the question of the UK pushing within the EU for the strongest possible targets. Currently the EU is at 20% there is the opportunity for us to go to 30% if lots of other things happen and other countries do certain things, but even that is looking unlikely. We wanted him to be more ambitious than that, we wanted him to go to the EU and push for 40%. 40% is the minimum the science demands if we are to have any chance of stopping runaway climate change. 40% is the minimum vulnerable people demand if they are to have any chance of mere survival. 40% is the minimum I demand if I am to have any chance of a future. 40% is not laughable. But the feeling in the UK seems to be that we are already leading on emissions reductions and that basically we are doing enough. Undoubtedly the UK is ahead of many countries, but that’s not saying much- it would be hard not to be ahead of countries like Canada and Japan. So we do have the opportunity to take a leadership role, but presently we are sitting back enjoying not being the bad guy for once. The time for that is over! If the UK is to lead we need to push for targets as strong as the science demands and work hard to convince others to join us. To do this we also need to lead domestically, how can we claim we have the integrity to lead when we are still making decisions like Kingsnorth and Heathrow. How will we ever lead if we view the minimum we need as laughable. The young people in that room didn’t find the chance of not having a future laughable. And with quite some emotion we told him. We told why we are here putting our lives on hold. We told him why we are here, working 16 hour days, getting only 4 hours sleep a night. We told him why we are here speaking to him, pushing him, begging him, to lead. We are fighting because our very lives depend on it! But I’m not sure Pete was really taking it in. So if you are with us please contact Pete and let him know that it is our future he is messing with! Let him know we want better leadership from the UK, on targets, on finance, on domestic policy, whatever he may think we do not believe we are doing enough! Please tell him to pass this message on to everyone in his department because they hold our future in their hands.
The only thing laughable about 40% is that is only the MINIMUM we need! |
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Posted: 12 Jun 2009 08:50 AM PDT  Looking out over plenary. I’m currently sat at the back of the closing plenary of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments to Annex I Parties under the Koyoto Protocol. What a mouthful… Basically they are all discussing emission cuts by developed countries! We have now had several developing countries calling for developed countries to commit to cuts of a minimum of 40% on 1990 levels…I wonder if Pete’s listening? Over and over again we hear it ….AT LEAST 40%! They obviously don’t think it’s a laughable idea! But these discussions will be going on for a while, so as they do I thought I’d take the time to tell you about a meeting I had yesterday with Jan and Harry (another member of our negotiating team). I set up the meeting so that the rest of the UK youth here could get a chance to meet, and get to know, some of our negotiators as I have been able to do. This way we are also putting many more faces in Jan’s head for her to think about while she is in negotiations. More futures for her to remember when making those compromises!
We chose to not talk policy, we’d done that enough with Pete, but instead we tried to get a view of where the UK team think these negotiations are up to, and their thoughts on the coming months. The answer: we’re moving so slowly that in 2050….we’ll probably all still be sat in this room! (I’m sure Jan and Harry will excuse me for my slight paraphrasing…) And the best thing about the talks….”well no one walked out and refused to talk, which is a start”…. But with the urgency of the situation increasing every day, with whole islands contemplating moving, with bush fires in the USA and Australia growing in intensity every year, I think we all agreed, the youth and the negotiators that we need a little more pace. So we asked Jan and Harry what we could do to speed these talks up and we got a very familiar answer… We need the people to provide the political will! We need every country in the world to call out for their politicians, for their leaders to stand up and take action. We need them to know it’s ok for them to stand up and lead. Without the political will no country will move forward in these talks. This same answer keeps coming up over and over again. The more it does the more it makes me think. These may be the most important 6 months of my life. I am committed to doing everything in my power to push this process forward. We don’t have time to rewrite the system, we need to work within it. But it definately needs a kick start! I plan to spend the next six months of my life being that kick start, in as many creative and powerful ways as I can. Will you join me? |
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Posted: 14 Jun 2009 08:51 AM PDT  The youth are watching-final plenary. Photo Credit Robert Van Waarden Sitting back at home after my first ever trip on the euro star (Is it usual to shout WOW quite so loudly when you come out of the tunnel?). I now have time to reflect on the events of the last two weeks. I have come back from the UN talks, scared and frustrated and yet more motivated and passionate than ever. We have six months left until Copenhagen, and presently it’s not looking good for getting a deal that will safeguard our future. But as I’ve said before, at heart I’m an optimist. Though at the minute the hope is only a glimmer, I’m not willing to give up yet. But the time has come to stop activism as usual. Just as business as usual is killing the planet, so activism as usual is not coming up with the solutions. The time for creativity is here, we need powerful activism that will really change the face of the debate.
Yesterday at the closing of the talks the international youth took this idea and we really stepped it up. We came out in force wearing our blue “How old will you be in 2050?” t-shirts- you couldn’t turn a corner in the conference centre without bumping in to one of us. To begin the day we illustrated the deep inequality within the negotiations by the simple actions of playing football as the delegates came in. Global North vs Global South – 20 on one team 4 on the other. We had rules such as every time the Global North shouted secret meeting the Global South had to leave the pitch, and we had a referee who just ran around shouting acronyms that no one could understand! It was a really effective way of presenting the unfairness in the size and capacity of the official delegations and definately made people stop and think. We also had camels, yes that’s right camels, outside the conference centre, along with a huge amount of sand. They were to show the consequences of doing nothing about climate change. Our message…Shrinking targets, growing desert! Within the conference centre we hand delivered notes to every delegation, with a personal message to their country from a member of the youth movement. In the notes we asked them for progress and leadership, or let them know our frustration with their postion, or simply supported their positions. Every note conveyed the personal feelings of the youth that wrote it. Before the closing plenary we sat in some delgate’s chairs and didn’t move until asked (or eventually moved on by security). We were demonstrating that we have a right to be in these talks, that it is our future they are negotiating with. Those chairs belong to us as much as them. And biggest of all (as you may have already seen on the blog) we rapped in plenary! Now you have to understand that plenary is like the Holy Grail, you don’t mess with plenary. Even clapping after a speaker is not really allowed. Also all actions within the conference centre are supposed to be approved by the secretariat, we hadn’t let on a thing about what we were about to do. We chose to rap as we thought it might be the one thing we could get away with. That it might be received as being youthful and creative (so we wouldn’t all get chucked out and loose our accreditation). But it was still a risk, none of us knew what reaction we would get. As we waited at the back of plenary you could feel the tension in the air, I thought my heart was beating so loud that the whole room could probably hear it. As the chair wrapped up the final LCA (long term cooperative action) session about 30 of us simultaneously stood up on the balcony. That caused enough of a stir, we had definitely made our presence felt. They knew at that moment that the youth were watching! Then as the chair brought down his hammer to close the session we did it! It may have been a youthful and creative thing to do but our message was deadly serious (Check out the lyrics in Florent’s blog on adopt a negotiator). And the result, well we were really well received! No problems, no trouble. It just goes to show that rules can be pushed to their limit, if you do it thoughtfully and peacefully. On the final day of these cold, hard, UN talks, the youth made our presence felt and reminded everyone of the real reason we are here. We made the UN sit up and take notice. Now we all have six months to make the whole world sit up and take notice. The whole world needs to know what is happening right now, in these negotiations and at every meeting our leaders have. And the whole world needs to show them we want action. We want a deal that ensures the survival of all nations and peoples. We want a deal that ensures our future on this planet. The youth are stepping it up. The movement is growing and drastic action is planned. We are prepared to do whatever is necessary. We will be getting more creative and more powerful, and we need you all to join with us. As this round of talks finishes my blogs will get a little less frequent, but rest assured that’s not because I’m not working on this, in fact quite the opposite. As I return to the UK the fight just gets bigger and I’m ready to do what I can, to do my best… …because in the face of something so huge that’s all I can do! And that’s all I can ask of you. |
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