Create a climate for peace

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.