Report from the Bonn1 Meeting
of the UN Climate negotiations process

Side Event on the role of Civil Society

The latest session of the climate negotiations just concluded late on Sunday night (11/04) after three days of negotiations focused on procedural issues. This meeting of the parties to the UN Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC) was the first to take place since the COP15 in Copenhagen. The main objective of this unusually short session was to consider how to move the negotiations forward from the confused situation that they were in.

SCI hosted a side event for the Youth constituency on the role of civil society with the objective of discussing the perspective of different stakeholders. Despite the rather awkward timing of the event (Saturday, 9pm!), a variety of participants spent ninety minutes discussing the importance of the participation of civil society in the UNFCCC process and the role of partnerships and cooperation between the different groups of stakeholders.

Christiana Figueres* from the Costa Rican government delegation accepted our invitation and brought highly valuable input to the discussion. We invited Ms. Figueres due to the fact that Costa Rica has been, in the past, very supportive of the role of civil society and youth at the climate negotiations. This is not to mention the position of her country as one of the very few true leaders in climate action. Christiana has played a role in the negotiations for about 15 years and thus was able to share with us her valuable insights on the place and role of civil society. After having described the role of young people in relation to the negotiating position of Costa Rica, she called on youth to become more active in the integral stage of the definition of the national negotiating positions.

Other participants at the event – representing different groups of stakeholders such as the trade unions, the local governments, the gender caucus, the secretariat of the UNFCCC and another governmental delegation supportive of youth participation (Switzerland) – shared their visions on the key added values of civil society participation. Increased legitimacy and transparency in the process and the possibility to remind negotiators of the true consequences of the lack of political leadership were mentioned several times among other elements such as the opportunity to build the capacity of tomorrow’s leaders and the fact that the presence of youth in particular “humanize” the negotiation process. The second part of the discussion addressed the question of the cooperation between the delegates representing different groups from the civil society at the negotiations. We agreed that, while cooperation is already taking place to a certain extent, there is a huge opportunity to increase this work and to benefit from a more diverse approach to our presence at the UNFCCC sessions and outside of the official negotiation process.

The side event concluded with a challenge launched by Ms. Figueres to the youth delegates: to work through the year in order to ensure that at least 50% of the governmental delegations include a youth representatives during the next Climate Conference in Cancun. Will we be able to rise to this challenge?

Sebastien (sebastien@youthclimate.org)

*Christiana Figueres is one of the candidates to replace Yvo De Boer as Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC. We welcome the application for this position by qualified and committed leaders, such as Ms. Figueres, and wish her luck.

Cochabamba Caput Mundi

Starts today in Cochabamba – Bolivia – the World People's conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth convoked by Evo Morales after the failed meeting held last December in Copenhagen.

Over 90 governmental delegations coming from the five continents will be attending as well as about 15 thousand delegates. Among them, Nobel prize winner Adolfo Perez Esquivel, the journalist and researcher Naomi Klein, the French farmer Josè Bove, the president of the United Nation General Assembly Miguel D'Escoto … And for the closing day, presidents Morales, Chavez, Correa, and Lugo will join the conference too.

This world conference is a major moment of debate for the 170 countries represented, but not only for them: for the first time ever, social groups, the academic world and governments will gather together to analyse and elaborate solutions to the climate change issue. What is expected by these days of confrontation is a shared position to be upheld in Cancun at the upcoming COP16. Core issues faced will be approval of the Universal Declaration of Mother Earth rights, the proposal for a climate justice tribunal, a world referendum on climate change, and the request to recognize the climate debt of northern countries towards the world south.

Following the 17 working groups:
- Structural Causes
- Harmony with Nature
- Mother Earth Rights
- Referendum
- Climate Justice Tribunal
- Climate Migrants
- Indigenous Peoples
- Climate Debt
- Shared Vision
- Kyoto Protocol
- Adaptation
- Financing
- Technology Transfer
- Forests
- Dangers of Carbon Market
- Action Strategies
- Agricolture and Food Sovereignty

The event starts in quite an important date for Bolivia: 10 years since the war on water when Cochabamba people started a mass mobilization against water privatization managing to have back water as a common resource. Moreover, the World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth will end on April, 22nd: right on the Earth date. There’s no better omen!

Follow the conference on http://pwccc.wordpress.com/

I am a canary, you are a canary, we all are canaries of eco-crises …

In 1995 Ismail Serageldin, vice-president of the World Bank made a statement about future wars. He said that as XX century wars has been fought for the control of oil, the XXI century ones will be fought for water.

After the GAIA seminar and after the march we took part, I couldn’t but think about the issue. I mean, the ring should bell in everybody’s mind every few hours for water is such a common sight in our life: still in a glass, running from the tap, boisterous in the toilet, tickling under the shower … water is just so present and so necessary.

According to Water Wars by Vandana Shiva, water conflicts have two sides. The first is the real war fought at regional or national level . Often – and reading the book you’ll find many cases – political violence stems from control of scarce water resources.

The second one is paradigmatic. On one front we find cultures valuing water as something sacred, something that must be preserved and duly shared, a human as well as an ecological need. On the other, we find the entrepreneurial culture of greed, privatization, and appropriation of common resources. And if we want to give a face to these two opposed worldviews we find a multitude of local communities willing to retain water as a common, vital resource fighting back to a global government trying impose elite rule through the WTO, the NAFTA, the World Bank, the FMI …

I guess we all know where to stand, but to have a clearer, more informed idea read the book or have a look at this interview by Vandana Shiva.
http://www.inmotionmagazine.com/global/vshiva3.html