A moment to get my head clear…

So I attended the post-mortems of the Copenhagen conference and met up with the European Youth Forum to officially evaluate our presence there. We all agreed that we could have had more impact had more of us been able to get into the Centre on the days they cut youth out. They reduced the youth NGO passes to 12 on the Thursday and Friday which still riles me. And I have still no idea why – in comparison the other 6-8 official constituency groups had roughly 900 passes to divy up between themselves on Thursday and 300 on Friday.

So last Sunday we all met up to thrash out what our learnings were from the conference – where we felt we were most effective, how we felt we advanced the youth agenda etc. And the big thing was when we could participate we felt we could make a big difference – lots of us were able to get the youth message back to our national media because of mine and a few others work with the press. Many of us were able to change the text in the working groups of the conference to include youth an many parts of it. But the main area we felt we lost impact was on the last two days (for me) and the last four days for others, when people were not allowed in because of the over-booking of the conference for 45000 people when they only had 15000 capacity.

This year our Slovenian representative, Anela, was able to be accredited as a party candidate as an official youth delegate. So now Slovenia, along with Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Belgium are leading the way with their youth delegates which are officially part of their country’s delegation – hence they never were cut out from coming in. This is something we need sorted for next year in Ireland and as many other countries as possible. The UN have again and again recognised the importance of youth as a stakeholder in international delegations – we’re the ones the policy makers are determining the future for – it all harks back to the question we wore on our orange t-shirts around the centre (while we could get in) – “What Age Will You Be In 2050?”

I wonder, out of the few I met, would any of the Irish delegation still be alive?

Anyways the wrap up statement I brought home from Copenhagen, is that it’s not over yet. We’ll make sure of that. Here the Australian Youth Climate COalition sum it up:

Day of Action 2

So today (Friday) I decided I was going to get properly immersed in the youth climate movement, particularly since once again I wasn’t allowed inside the Bella Centre (the number of youth inside was something silly like 12)

So outside at 10am we all shaved our heads in climate shame – this wasn’t too bad for me as I had recently shaved myself (with long hair) for charity but a girl beside me had hair to her waist!

I’m so cold!!!! Did I mention that it was around -5 degrees and snowing? Not a pleasant way to cut your hair. On the plus side I was interviewed by the national swedish news and a web-newscaster (have been trying to find said news clips will update if any). Also will update shaved head photos!

After that was speech writing and then a candle-lit sermon spelling climate shame
this was great and alll got huge torged

Nodding off at keyboard now though so will proper update tomorrow (today)

Just to mention though i was at an impromptu rally on climate straight after Obama’s less than inspiring press conference – I’ll have to dissect more but seriously “i’ll see some of you on the plane” and then the hole digging that came afterwards – dig up!!!!

Day of action 1

So up until now, I’ve been mostly working as a comms coordinator, reporting on what is going on, as opposed to being in the thick of it.

This was ok when I was scripting the interventions for youth for the sessions and yet again today, i helped out with the last address which you can find below

It’s a terrible link so I’ve the script pasted below

Note the orange t-shirt which asks the question we keep asking all the negotiators who are happy to put their ambitious targets to the future – how old will you be in 2050?

SCRIPT
Thank you mister President for giving us the floor.
Good afternoon fellow human beings.

My name is Juan Carlos, and in the year 2050 I will be 64 years old. I am proud to represent the International Youth Climate Movement.
Christina Ora, a 17 year old from the Solomon Islands, addressed the opening plenary two weeks ago. She said “I was born in 1992. You have been negotiating all my life. You cannot tell us that you need more time.”

We have all worked for the past two years with the promise of a strong deal in Copenhagen to safeguard our future. Now it seems you will not get it done.

This is unacceptable. We placed our trust in you. You should be ashamed.

The United Nations was created to solve humanitarian and social crises, but instead of standing united, you are now the Divided Nations. Humanity can and must do better. Mother Nature will not negotiate with us.

You must set targets to get us back below 350 parts per million. You must agree on fair, sufficient AND additional financing to pay back the ecological debt to those most vulnerable.
The Youth dream of a sustainable future shared by all humanity. There is wisdom in the people’s hearts, and people are ingenious. We CAN solve this crisis if we just choose so. But this requires going beyond selfish national interests.
We support those nations who have refused to sign a suicide pact. We call on all nations not to accept anything that does not guarantee survival and climate justice.

The Youth believe that you care enough for the future of your children and grandchildren to sign a fair, ambitious and legally-binding agreement.

There will be no decisions about us, without us.
Rest assured that we will keep on working, and we will keep on pushing you harder and harder, until the deal is sealed.

Please do it now.

Thank you.

Youth Sit In!

Second last day of negotiations and I finally find the “add video” button!
here’s some footage I took yesterday of the Youth sit-in! (Which I must mention the National Youth Council of Ireland and the European Youth forum were not a part of!)

Video 1 – Guri from Spire, Norway explaining why they’re sitting in

My friend Hanna Mia was kicked out around this stage
Video 2 – A bit later – the sitters had been dragged to the side of the walkway

Anyways I’ll add more vids in a bit! In typical Irish fashion it’s like buses – none come and then a tonne do!

New venue, new methods

So the IYCM (International Youth Climate Movement) have moved to the Media Centre for Tck Tck Tck.

I got the update on what happened with the Youth Sit-In. The security came up to them at 1am and said if they didn’t leave, no civil society would get in the next day.

I thought I knew a bit about getting my message out on the web, now I realise I haven’t the first clue…. – read this webpage:

http://wiki.firedupmedia.org/Home

So now I’ve got to think about stumbling upon and rss feeds?
….oh dear

Oh and the Ice Polar Bear by the way, which is an excellent campaign, is looking very sorry for itself right now, will post pic as soon as I figure out bluetooth!!!!

Youth recommendations

So I received the recommendations from the young people from ECO-UNESCO’s climate change forum as part of the drive to bring over young people’s views to world leader’s while I’m here in Copenhagen and listed below is what I got from Claire Lyons – a brilliant youth worker over there in ECO.

“There were 175 participants from communities based in Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland and these were the recommendations that they made on what they think needs to happen on Climate Change.

Fund from taxes should be used to restore damaged ecosystems globally and help countries adapt especially in Africa.

Developed countries should help the developing countries to adapt to climate change by giving money and sustainable technology.

Environmental organisations should go out too all schools and give talks on the environment.

Every school should have an environmental action committee.

Environmentally focused events organised for all schools in their local area/provinces, different topics so we learn more.

Make environmental education more fun. Being involved more – more practical and hands on education.

Young people should learn more at primary level about the environment.

Adults in the community need awareness on the environment – young people tell them, adverts, news, information in community.

The government should make it easier for people to recycle more.

More information on the bike scheme.

More wind farms.

Use methane to generate electricity.

More information on BER scheme & funding.

Funding and increased information/availability of individual sustainable energy systems for householders.

To get more celebrities involved in campaigning against climate change in the media.

Make short comedy sketches about environmental issues.

We recommend that the government focus less on non-renewable energy such as peat and focus more on renewable energy like solar, wind & wave energy.

We recommend that the government influence the media on environmental issues and increase the awareness of important issues to the general public.

Encourage local government to support local produce and provide education on climate change/environmental issues.

Charge a few extra cent for plastic bags, petrol & coal to put into a social, environmental fund which can be used to invest in renewable energy initiatives. (e.g. Wind turbines & solar panels)”

Well they’re now printed up and put in the bottles I brought over to give the “message in a bottle ” to world leaders! More on that same bat-time same bat-channel!

So far I’ve been working non-stop for the YOUNGO communications working group and spent most of yesterday working among other things on writing a press release on the EU ministerial meeting with EU youth – I’ll post up that article when finished. I asked them about ESD and got a fairly standard reply from the Finnish special envoy, we have the podcast recorded for download here which we got Minister Gormley to attend. By doing this I missed talks by Al Gore and Arnold Schwarzenegger, I stayed out of plenary where Ban Ki Moon was talking with Prince Charles and Wangari Maathai (wonderful woman!!). I did manage to see our former president Mary Robinson present the UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer with a life ring) on behalf of the island nations that will disappear. So when I finally got to go to plenary, no NGO’s were allowed anymore! Gah!!!

Now it’s Thursday and I didn’t get the lottery to go in today. Maybe tomorrow but the NGO groups are getting smaller and smaller that they’ll allow in – I missed the lottery of 120 youth, not sure I’ll get into the lottery of 60 either. But in one sense it’s good cause now I’m able to go to the two alternative climate conferences today and I’ll update from that – also I have some video footage to upload from the youth sit-in yesterday as they protested and stayed in all night! at least till 1am anyways then I can’t find anything more – will meet up with folks later today and find out what happened.

So I’m now using this time to post links about previous events:

With the press conference, Severn Suzuki gave the International Youth Climate Movement an exclusive pep-talk which was great – to get more of an idea of who she is – she was the young girl who silenced the world in 1992 in Rio de Janiero

You can see the clip here

So through the wonders of editing I clipped a little of this and Christina Ora’s plea last week to opening plenary and added them to the clip Severn sent us this week (her mother won’t let her talk to anyone, as she is just after contributing to the next generation but she sent this clip exclusively to the youth movement)

You can see mine and my techy friend Ben’s craftmanship here - pretty snazzy if I do say so myself!!!

Meeting centres change – message change

So the way the international youth climate movement works is that we have a “spokes” meeting every morning where each spoke is a representative of a working group. These spokes all have a vote on all proposals that have to be submitted up to half an hour before. However now that 3/4 of youth are shut out of the conference because of the badge system, we’ve relocated our spokes-meeting to a college campus close enough to the centre.

Yesterday we had a really inspiring press conference – I worked on it for ages, getting a really good media clip to show to people, brainstorming the messaging, contacting the press, then I had an invite from the Irish Embassy to a reception with buffet, so I ran out at 7pm, got in at 7.30pm, had a glass of wine a a brief chat with Liz MacManus and John Gormley, thanking the minister for being the first minister to confirm he’d come to our EU ministers addressing EU Youth meeting, then ran back for 8pm saying I had a press conference to go to. I was the only male in that reception who wasn’t in a suit and boy did I get some odd looks! Don’t care. When speaking to the European Youth Forum about dress code for this conference they said to embrace the fact you’re a youth delegate and don’t feel pressured to wear a suit. I personally feel that a tie is an upside-down noose. So anyways I ran back to the Bella Centre getting there for 8pm and was not let in.

I had a badge! I now have a secondary badge for today cause the YFJ recognise how much work I’m doing. And I couldn’t get back to my press conference…. Gah!!

Not happy

But seemingly it went really well – we had an exclusive video message from Severn Suzuki which was really empowering

Today we had our spokes-meeting. We agreed on the following coherent messaging points to all our actions and demands -
- Bring back the global CO2 -or equivalent- concentration below 350ppm as soon as possible.
- Call upon every rich country to pay their climate debt.
- Provide 5% of Annex I countries‘ GNP for adaptation and mitigation developing countries, in addition to ODA.
- Provide 400 billion dollars public finance by developed countries for fast track financing
- Reduce at least by 45% Green House Gas emissions for Annex I countries by 2020 on the basis of 1990 level, with no offsets.
This is stronger than it was before.

Now we’re getting addressed exclusively by Naomi Klein – she believes in sealing a good deal not just any deal. So far it seems that the US/Canada and those country that want to get out of the Kyoto Protocol have been arm-twisting the developing nations – they have important groups such as G77, AOSIS (alliance of small island states), africa (bar south africa who has been disappointing) and others. Many indigenous groups such as delegates from Ecuador are disappointed that their text to a legally binding need to consult with them before their forests would be turned into commodifiable carbon sinks. Other groups have called this whole agreement the colonisation of the last free spaces of the world – the rainforest and the atmosphere

As one delegate puts it, the money being pushed at developing states now, in order to seal a bad deal, is the equivalent of the blankets given to native American for the island of Manhattan!

One of the AOSIS ministers said that what we’re currently working towards is a benign genocide.

A lot of really tough outlines right now!

Oooh – Naomi Klein just made a really interesting comparison between the drugs apartheid for ART drugs that greatly enhance the life expectancy for those with HIV/AIDS, that are only available to those who can afford them and said that how come green technologies are not seen like this – the injustice for countries to be able to heal themselves will be limited by those who can afford them.

Got a chance to address the press!

Click here!

Yesterday

Oh so there’s meetings and then there’s meetings! I had to facilitate this meeting on the European Youth Climate Movement and it got incredibly heated – if you don’t know about facilitation there’s a whole language of hand signals such as the hand up making a “C” shape meaning “point of clarification”. Waggling two pointing fingers like a kid playing at cowboys and indians in a particularly crazy shoot-out, means you have a “direct response” to a question and can skip the “queue” of people who have questions. Lastly one of my favourites is the “consensus” – I agree – which is waggling hands – kind of like “jazz hands”! It looks silly but really works!

So there I was, the NGO’s had just been kicked out of an area because an illegal action (not sanctified by the UNFCCC) by some groups outside the main meeting (the plenary), so security was ticked off! We were debating how we as youth respond to this as there were some youth involved in this and we thought we should bring it up at spokescouncil – it was crazy, questions were flying back and forth, some people were thinking that we should applaud the youth involved and some thought we should distance ourselves from these guys. It was divisive and charged and people were mock shooting cowboys all over the room and I had to dish out the speaking rights! Not easy!

I’m finding the youth movement much more organised than when I went to a friends of the earth conference in Berlin three years ago. It’s possibly because of what’s at stake – I’m not sure but it’s really a positive change!

Oh and I also wrote a paper on what the Youth want from the EU to Stakeholder magazine with another author: here
Let me know what you think!