COP15: the buzz and the battles

Young and future generations day at the UNFCC - photo by Robert van Waarden

The UN Climate Change Conference has entered its 5th day now. The Bella Center buzzes with people, delegates are rushing through the hallways, observer organizations- turned – activists are protesting as aliens, mumbling ‘Bring me to your leader’. In the big halls, hundreds of people are focused on their laptop, blogging discussing, most of them not more than a few hours of sleep last night.

If you are not aware that this is the Mother of all Conferences, – the most important conference since World War 2, and concerning the most complex, all-encompassing issue of our time, – then it looks more like a festival. The positive, energising and slightly stressy atmosphere adds to all of this.

What struck me especially is the enormous amount of young people around, all passionate future leaders.

Attending one of the sessions of the Climate Change Media Partnership (CMP), where delegates update the press and observer organisations about their key stances in the negotiation process, gives me a reality check again, for the seemingly cheerful atmosphere outside the official talks.

The recent panic last days about the leaked Danish draft text, and hysteric reactions from different sides (both developed and developing countries) clearly shows the state of affairs in climate diplomacy in Copenhagen: no recognisable progress on the 5th day of the Conference of the Parties. Developing countries (Annex 2 countries) are continually framing climate justice from an almost neocolonial perspective: they are the victims that will bear the consequences, and they will still have the right to pollute. A reaction by the Danish ambassador Falkenberg, on India’s and China’s view of climate justice, causes some uproar. ‘There is no such thing as the right to pollute’, according to Falkenberg. What about low-carbon development? The issue of climate justice still doesn’t seem to be universally defined…

Might we need even more youth at the next COP to challenge the status-quo diplomats? Should we cheer up the flawed negotiations even more?

Tags: climatejustice, cmp, engagement, falkenberg, Student Reflections, wscsd, YouNGO, youthclimate

This entry was posted on Friday, December 11th, 2009 at 5:23 pm and is filed under Student Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.