COP: Approaching going back to reality

            Wednesday I spent so much time preparing for the forest action that my working group was planning that everything else seemed to be pushed to the side. I started the day by facilitating the YOUNGO meeting. I like facilitating meetings and it was fun. After I facilitated the meeting, I went on a quest for fabric. My forest working group was going to do an action, which happened today. For the action I needed fabric because we made a human tree.

            Ashley and I went to the Souq Waqif and went into the first textile store that we found. We bought green and brown fabric and quickly paid. Ashley felt sick and I was trying to get back to the convention center ASAP. Getting around Doha is impossible and takes hours and hours so the whole adventure took about 3 hours. It was really aggravating being on the bus for that long and feeling like I was getting nothing done. So I finally got back to the convention center where I attended some meetings and started my paper for my capstone class. I worked the entire night on both the tree components and the paper. We were waiting in the convention center for the Kyoto Protocol closing plenary, which was scheduled to be at midnight and then was postponed until 11:00 am the next day. It was annoying that we waited so long for the plenary that never happened, but I got my paper done.

            We headed back to the hotel where I cut out giant letters for the trunk of the human tree that was going to say “Finance our Future.” I taped all the papers on the brown fabric that we bought earlier that day. I also started to cut out leaves out of the green fabric. It got to the point where I was dozing off, and so I curled up on the couch and went to bed.

            After four hours of sleep I woke up to finish off the trunk of the tree. Adriana was sleeping on the chair next to me and she looked like a pile of clothes and so that startled me a bit. I had no idea she was there. After being startled we got ready for the day, and walked to the bus stop to go to the convention center. I spent the morning making leaves with messages of noncarbon benefits that forests provide that developed countries should finance to protect. Youth from all over the world helped me make these leaves by cutting out fabric, writing on the fabric, and making branches. It was really fun to make. I also helped out another youth in the working group with messaging for the speech and the press release for our event.

            At noon we started the action. It started off with 4 people lying down in the middle of the floor. No one really knew what was going on. Then Ashley and I covered the young men with the trunk fabric. A person that was holding leaves would be added every 30 seconds to the tree and eventually it formed the shape of the tree with great messaging. About 20 people were on the ground and Sam made a speech about these noncarbon benefits, and how a working group should be made to identify and address these things and support them. A lot of press came to the event and it was a really great action overall. What was better is that this human tree was under the tree shaped structures of the conference center.

            After the action I reorganized my life, answered emails and tried to breathe a little bit. I also did an interview for some students at the Qatar Foundation. I met with the Sierra Club and the Sierra Student Coalition for the last time for the conference. It is strange to think that tomorrow is my last conference day. It seems like I have been here so long, but also like I have spent no time at all here. It is surreal that I will be going back to my normal life, and I am not sure I really want to. Going back to finals, drama with family, and everything else is a miserable notion. Luckily I have super great friends that make it all worth it, but I still am not super stoked to go back.

            Oh well. I had one final adventure of the day. Maria and I went into the plenary room and wanted to take pictures with our country’s plaque while no one was in the room. We took a picture with Maria and the Somalia plaque first. Then I headed over to the US one. I saw an older gentleman sitting next to the plaque and he was on the phone. I sat next to him and Maria was taking pictures of me. The gentleman said that I should take pictures with a real negotiator. So he called over a young man, one of the lower level negotiators and he took some pictures with me. Then I realized who the older gentleman was. It was Trigg Talley, third in line in the US negotiating team under Johnathan Pershing and Todd Stern. He was on the phone trying to change his flight I later found out. I was asking the younger negotiator, or Trigg’s lawyer some questions about the technical aspects of his job, and Trigg started adding into the conversation. He told me how he came to be a negotiator, what kind of education he had received, and the timeline in which he completed all of this. He also told me more about what his job entails. It was really interesting listening from him, and he was very transparent and real with us. It was a really cool conversation.

            After that conversation Maria and I took some pictures around the room and the conference center. We were being super touristy and everything. It was great! It was a great day overall, and I am looking forward to the future, and working on a strategy to the international working group for the SSC. This has been a great experience and a lot of fun. 

COP: Beginning of the End

Warning: This blog is everywhere in thoughts and would make an English teacher sad. I just wrote and did not think about the structure much. I cannot believe that it is only three days until I leave. It was a total of 19 days all together that I will be gone including travel. I feel as if I have been here for months because I am busy at every second of every day, but it also seems as if I have not been here at all. I have some time to write this blog since it takes me about an hour to commute anywhere. They have traffic circles with traffic lights, which is not the point of a traffic circle, and they have incredibly crazy drivers here. This is coming from me, and anyone who has driven with me knows I am a pretty risky driver. These people I do not even compare to. Living in Doha would be difficult. I could not imagine having to do this day in and day out compared to my 12 minute bike to campus everyday.
The past few days have been jammed pack. When I get to the hotel I just want to fall over and go to sleep. It is like being in a vortex here. I seem to work all the time, go to meetings, talk to people, and learn new things, but I do not have much to show for it so it all seems to get eaten by the time monster. I know I have done some very cool work, and have worked with several youth individually from all over the world to help them with their projects/campaigns, but I feel my impact has been very limited here. I spent most of the time trying to figure out what is going on, and I think I am finally getting it with only three days left.
On Monday I started out the week with planning the action (planned events in certain designated areas around the conference, which are supposed to help show negotiators what the various groups want from the conference) for Tuesday with the Part of the Solution group. That is all I can think of for me actually doing things. It is all really a blur. Oh and I also talked to a young man from Sweden. He was part of the YMCA delegation, and is studying political science at his university. The coolest thing about being here I think is I get to talk politics, economy and the environment for hours on end, and I do not really have to worry about people getting bored. So we talked about immigration policy in Sweden and the US. In addition we talked about cultural perspectives of the environment. Shockingly (I hope you can sense the sarcasm dripping from this sentence) the Swedish populous is much more contentious about environmental issues then the US. It is interesting what differences there are. I am trying to teach people about something basic like recycling while Swedish people are wanting to set emission goals for their own country. We have some of that in the United States, however I would argue that it is pretty minimal compared to them.
Yesterday I remember more. I started off going to YOUNGO, the youth gathering meeting for the negotiations. There we talk about policies that the youth support, what each of the working groups are doing and things of that sort. I then worked on making signs and helping orchestrate the action that was going to be happening later that day. It is cool because with the Part of the Solution group that I work with is composed of primarily of people from Thailand, the Netherlands, Denmark, and girls that work in Africa. I would argue it is a really nontraditional group, and getting to work with people not from the United States is good. Their attitudes towards things, and the way that they approach issues is completely different, and easier to work with. People from the US are headstrong and never willing to listen. They also take things way too seriously. This group is really positive, was excited to have opportunities, and is willing to listen much more. Working with US youth is sometimes much more difficult because they are not willing to be wrong. I have this problem too I can admit it.
So the group I am apart of and I colored our signs, planned our speeches, and prepared for our action for later in the day. Between that  I met with the forestry group. I will write a blog about forest policy later because it is an incredibly fascinating topic in how they are handling it on an international level. Anyway, so I met with that group, and the REDD plus program essentially needs funding to protect forests in a way that does not damage communities, protects biodiversity, and a bunch of other safeguards that have been put into place. Basically if you do not have funding you cannot ensure that these things will be protected. I will go into the details of that in another blog later. What we decided to do in the end was to have an action that catches negotiator’s attention in financing our future.
What this action will be is we are going to construct a tree of demands out of people. We are going to have people lay on the ground in the shape of a tree. The trunk, which I just skipped part of the conference for to get some fabric, will say finance our future, while the leaves will say different things that they should finance or worry about while financing when considering forests. I am really excited for it because I want to make a video of it and use it to target negotiators. Also this tree will be constructed piece by piece so that every piece will have a picture taken of it to show how it builds up. We are planning the rest of it today, but those are the basics. I really want to take a more policy focus on forests next year, but for this year these kind of things are ok since I do not know the system that well.
I then went and did the Part of the Solution action. We made a little stage, and the point of this action was to give people the opportunity to speak out to say how they are part of the solution at home and here at COP. They talked about the simple things they do like recycle to more complex campaigns that they are running throughout their country. It gave everyone the opportunity to speak and gain the spotlight. The best part about it was that people from the Global South had more of a voice, and I feel like they were able to contribute more, and be proud of the incredible work they are doing. Sometimes the global north folks can be loud and almost demanding of attention, which I am sure shocks no one, but this highlighted everyone which was awesome.
When we were done after posing for the media for quite awhile we cleaned up, and one of the Taiwanese girls ran up to me and gave me dried mangos and thanked me saying I looked so busy that I probably have not eaten all day. She was wrong, but it was really sweet. The people here are so incredibly friendly and supportive even the US negotiators, who get bashed on all the time. One of the negotiators was excited that we were there at the conference. She really does want to move forward much more, but is limited by congress. I think that she was implying that we need to go home and change things so more can be done at the international level.
Seeing the complexity of issues that are here at the negotiations is pretty impressive, and I now see why it is so difficult to make extreme changes. There is way more to all of this then most people can imagine, and so many layers. From local constituencies at home, to different governments, different cultures, different interest groups, no wonder it is so difficult to alter the status quo. I see it being done though we just need to achieve a critical mass.
The remainder of the day I was in meetings and I went to dinner with the Sierra Club delegation in Katara at the same restaurant as before. When we got back to the hotel I just fell asleep even though I wanted to work on my paper so badly. School is just hard to care about right now, but I am somehow getting it done. Going through this has been a whirlwind of experiences, but it has been fun as well as an opportunity for me to grow quite a lot mostly from the conversations I have with others.

A Weekend in Doha

            This weekend went by in a blur. Between traveling all around Doha, working on homework, visiting the sites, and working on things at the Convention Center I am not actually sure how I fit so much in. Saturday I had slept in late after battling with myself in deciding whether or not I wanted to go to the first ever march in Doha. I decided I did not. There were a couple reasons other then the fact that I was incredibly tired. The cause was a good cause, and it was exciting that this march was even happening. This means potentially a more receptive attitude to free speech on the part of the Qatari government, but it also was a direct illustration of the changes that are happening in the Middle East. The downside to this march is that local residents might have a more difficult time obtaining the permits to do something like this. In Qatar there are a lot of migrant worker issues and abuses, and if a group of them wanted to protest I am not sure they would be able to with permission from the government. At least not while the UN is not here. I think Qatar wants to show itself internationally as a modern and free society with its hosting of this conference and the World Cup in a couple years, but they seem to be missing some key components to making this a reality.

            After sleeping in I headed to the convention center to work on homework and the Part of the Solution Campaign. It was a long day, and I am not really sure about everything that I did in those hours while at the convention center, but time slipped past and quickly. I was at the convention center until 7:30 at which point several people from the US and China met up to have dinner. We took several buses from the convention center to Katara, a shopping mall of sorts I guess you would call it. There was a beautiful auditorium in the middle and you can look out into the Persian Gulf. Scattered throughout Katara are restaurants. We went to one, and it was some of the best Middle Eastern food I have had. Considering I have only eaten twice outside of the convention center I guess I was also excited for something different. Hookah smoke filled the air with many different smells and there was a small group of men coming around to all of the tables and playing music. They served just baked pita bread and it was delicious.

            While at the dinner I got to learn more about carbon markets. I was sitting next to a gentleman from China that worked on pricing for carbon markets and research and another gentleman from the Sierra Club delegation that is helping develop and improve California’s carbon markets. It was an interesting conversation that I listened to and the environmental justice implications of the markets are pretty strong. You do not want to just allow those who have money to pollute because they can, and that is what happens in carbon markets, which limits the markets for other items more. It was interesting to hear the perspective of those who develop these systems though. We also talked about the differences in the United States and how the perspectives and opinions of some states can differ so much even when they are right next to each other such as Arizona and California.

            It was eleven by the time that we finished dinner. At that point of time we walked down the pathway to the expo center to catch a bus to the nongovernmental organizations  (NGO) party. Now mind you in Qatar alcohol is not allowed in the country except apparently at beach resorts about an hour away from Doha on the Persian Gulf. So we hopped on a bus not knowing to expect. The bus drove past huge refineries that looked like little cities that were on fire. I seriously thought for a little while that they were going to take us out to the middle of the desert and leave us there to look at the refineries then laugh at us because they got rid of the pesky NGOs J Just kidding sort of. Anyway.. so I went to the NGO party. There were small tables scattered throughout the beach area with blankets and pillows to sit on. It was about midnight when I got to the party and everyone was dancing by the stage. Left of the stage there were camels that people could ride on. It was a little crazier then I was expecting given that it was an NGO party.

            I awkwardly danced in several circles of people in the sand. It got more relaxing and fun as time went on. It was a nice gathering and I got to play in the water for a little while too. By the time I left the party it was 2:00 am. I did not know where anyone in my delegation went and so I hopped on a bus with one of the people that went to the US Chinese dinner because I wanted to get home. We were able to pass the magnificent refineries again… and at 3:00 am we made it back to the expo center. By the time I got back to the hotel it was 4:00am.

            The next day we were out the door by 10:30. Today was my day to explore Doha. We started at the Souq Waqif, which we walked to from our hotel. This would not normally be a problem but due to the lack of sidewalks it was. There was a maze of shops and vendors. They had everything from fine cloths, to spices, to figurines, books, shoes, jewelry, and even pets. They had a table full of baby bunnies. I was able to haggle and find gifts for my friends back home, which is always an adventure. I ended up with several rugs, scarves, a Qatari flag, and little camels. We then ate lunch at a quaint café. It was delicious and really relaxing. It was also the first meal I have had here where work was not discussed in any capacity.

            We departed the Souq for the Islamic Art Museum soon after. The museum itself was on of the most beautifully designed buildings I have ever seen. Palms line the walkway up, and on all sides of the building is the Persian Gulf. Wooden boats surround the building, and you can see the skyline of the modern buildings in the distance. When you get to the top of the walkway you are at a fountain in the shape of an octagon. The style of the building reflects traditional Islamic architecture and art. Entering the building there is a circular staircase that goes to the second floor. From there you can move up to the 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th floors all filled with art in some form or another. There is another fountain in the foyer as well as a 5 story window that show the waves lapping at the building below.  The art itself was amazing as well. I saw metal work, books, paintings, rugs, lamps, glasswork, and carvings. Arabic is a beautiful language and is incorporated into art so easily.

            The rest of the day I spent working on homework or in the delegation meeting. We do not have internet at the hotel really so that makes it a bit difficult, but I would say it was a successful weekend. 

COP 18: What its like...

The bus drove up to the convention center yesterday, and we parked in a dirt parking lot next to the main garage for the convention center. They have you enter the parking garage, which is a building that looks as if giant white vines are creeping up the side. Once in the garage, they have you enter a hallway and you take an escalator down to a security station. A standard security procedure is conducted. You walk passed the registration booths, and get your ID scanned at which point you are allowed to make the journey to the convention center under ground. It is about a tenth of a mile to the actual convention center, and you take escalators up to the main level.

            Taking the escalators up for the first time was overwhelming. I stepped off of the escalator and was at the end of a magnificent building. The main concourse is enormous, and monstrous sculpted tree limbs leap out of the ground to hold the ceiling in place, which is about four stories above my head. Art and monitors scatter the conference center as you follow the pack of people to the main foyer. The foyer has huge banners in a deep calming blue reading “7 billion people, 1 challenge, count me in,” a rhetoric I do not think many embrace. In the center is a two story iron sculpture of a spider. People weave in and out of its legs and gasp in awe of the unique art display. Through glass pane doors you enter a room with a pond like setting. A rainbow lighted pan of water spans a large area of the room and above skylights illuminate the room and hanging from the skylight are giant green leaf shaped molds. The building spans acres and acres of land.

            Delegates and negotiators swarm around you as you are trying to take everything in. Dozens of different languages are being spoken around you at all points of time. Media are stalking the outside of groups waiting for the right moment to take a picture, and you feel lost in a sea of noise. It was incredibly overwhelming and a little concerning because I did not even think I was going to be able to find the sessions in a building this large let alone understand what was going on. To tell you the truth for all of the first day and part of today this continued to be a problem.

            The whole first day I sat, listened, and followed veterans around the conference just trying to get a grasp of what was going on around me. There are so many interest groups, policy discussions, open and closed meetings, press conferences, and educational sessions that it is no wonder to me that not much is produced in these two weeks of meetings. I am a newbie though so all this confusion is not really a problem for those that have been at this for awhile so do not take that last comment too seriously. Information washed over me all day, and I know I learned a lot, but by the end of the day I was not really sure what I had accomplished. To be honest it was not a whole lot, but by today, the second day, I actually started developing strategies, asking the right questions and getting into the grove of things. I am a kind of sink or swim person, and I always want to be Michael Phelps and nothing less. We do not meet with our delegates until later in the week so I have some time to collect my thoughts and really get to understand what is happening hopefully. I know I will not get everything, or be anywhere close to knowing everything in these next two weeks, I am not sure I will even have all the acronyms down for different programs by then, but it is a work in progress..

            So that is how I am feeling and what is sticking out to me right now. A lot of this is emotional reactions to the situation. As I go through the negotiations I am sure it will develop into refection of the content of the negotiations more. I realized though that I have not described why I am here, how I was chosen and what I am doing here really though.

            I was chosen as a representative of the Sierra Club through the Sierra Student Coalition (SSC). I applied for the position in January and was notified in March that I was chosen as one of the 14 youth representatives for the Sierra Club. Upon receiving the position I was designated with the role of Sierra Club liaison, and I was to update the Sierra Club with what strategies, messaging and initiatives that the SSC was going to be working on. While at the conference my role has changed slightly. I am working as a youth delegate in an NGO to lobby delegates, specifically the US delegate into supporting climate policy more, enhancing funding, and to participating in more programs to combat climate change. In addition to this, the delegation I am working in is really working on engaging people at home via the Rapid Response Network and media outlets.

            I am personally working on two other initiatives. One is the Part of the Solution Campaign, which is essentially positively showing how countries, people, and corporations are all part of the solution, and then challenging them to do more. I am also working on the forest issues, although that has been more of a bumpy road because we are all new on the committee.

            A couple really cool things have happened here that I quickly want to highlight given I have been behind in blogging due to the fact that I have been working on homework. 1) I was able to go to a talk with Johnathan Pershing, one of the US lead delegates 2) I might get to train young people in Europe and other places about environmental campaigning and organizing 3) I was able to see the Deputy Prime Minister of Qatar Abdullah bin Hamad Al-Attiyah in a room with about 50 other youth. Ok I think that is all. 

Last Day of COY

A cool link for the politics of climate change

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/interactive/2012/11/20121118131411899744.html

            Today I am sad to say was the last day of the Conference of the Youth. It was once again a fantastic day. I unfortunately had to miss the second day because I was sick, and I did nothing but sleep in the hotel room. However, today I woke up early, took a shower, and wrote a good chunk of my paper before I headed off to COY with Adriana and Ian. We took the bus to the convention center to get accredited for the Conference of the Parties, which starts tomorrow, Monday. It was a relatively quick process and we received fancy badges, officially allowing us into the convention center.

            After receiving our badges we trekked to the student center of the Qatar Foundation. It was a bit hot outside, which I thought I escaped once I left Arizona, not so. We made it to the student center, and then waited until the conference started. The rest of the delegation was figuring out hotel stuff because there was some confusion with the rooms. I worked on my homework and relaxed for awhile. Eventually a session started that went a little bit more into the structure of COP and the role that we would be playing in all of it. I was able to meet a few more people through this activity and was able to grasp what is going to happen a bit more.

            Once that activity was complete I met a new person, and he and I talked for about 45 minutes. He is a 19 year old from Sudan. He showed me his blog, and told me amazing things about his country. All I know about Sudan is the limited information I get from the American media about Darfur, and it does not cover anything. The student I was talking to is really passionate about his country and excited about the potential it has especially if the leader is replaced. He also described the process and what occurred when South Sudan and Sudan split last year. It is a little messy there, but in the village or town where he lives he feels relatively safe and gets to watch the stars as he goes to sleep at night. He was also incredibly knowledgeable about US politics and goings on, which astounded me because he was more knowledgeable then most US citizens. It was great being able to talk to him.

            I then was able to sit in the Climate Action Network strategizing session for awhile. It was interesting to see all the NGO perspectives from different countries, and what kind of issues they wanted to put forward or strike down based on their backgrounds. The conversation started to die down to a point where I could leave to find a working group to join in YOUNGO. I looked around the room at all the working groups I could join. There were some about finance, communication, human rights, gender and women, youth action, and things of that sort, but the group that stood out to me the most was the Forests and Agriculture Group. I have always been fascinated by forests and surrounded by them. I played in the forests as a child, went to forestry camp as a teenager, and was quizzed on forest knowledge as a high school student in Envirothon.

            I walked over to the group and it was composed of a very interesting collection of men. The facilitator was a tall New Zealand man, and the other 4 people included a man from Turkey, a man from Liberia, a man from Germany, and finally a man from my delegation from Puerto Rico. We had a very long conversation about forests and what needs to be done by the UN in order to protect them. This included the prevention of slash and burn methods, enabling communities in using forests effectively and framing the issue in such a way that shows the real impact to humans and their livelihoods. It was a great conversation, and it is obvious that I need to learn quite a bit more in order to really understand how to approach the problems. I am really excited to be able to work on this issue because of my background with them.

            We wrapped up the night with a couple speeches from delegates and youth leaders. After that we had an adventurous taxi ride back to the hotel, and then we came up to the hotel room to meet the rest of the delegation that had arrived today. I am really excited for tomorrow when the COP starts, and the delegates fill the convention center halls. 

Conference of the Youth

Today was the first day for the Conference of the Youth (COY) 8. For eight years youth from all over the world come together to strategize about what they are going to do for the next two weeks at the Conference of the Parties. Youth have a particularly important role in climate negotiations. They have more support rallied around them with media, and in general national delegates tend to pay attention to them because of their ability to create action around them. This power that youth have is pretty impressive, and I am quickly realizing what can be done with this to change the way people around the globe think about issues. 

            We started off the day with a quest for cell phones and money (Riyals), but we ended up getting on a bus with the Arab Youth Climate Movement (AYCM) to go to the convention center, which we were not anticipating. We ended up at the convention center and it was pretty far away from everything, so that was fun. We followed the AYCM to a place where a bus picked us up to go to the Qatari Foundation. The building was magnificent, and the architecture was beautiful. There is a huge food court with art surrounding all of it. Then there was a corridor that entered into a garden. The garden has rocks and water symmetrically surrounding a white tower. The tower has white looking branches creeping up it. The surrounding to that garden, aside from the doors, also had the walls and windows with white branch mazes encircling it. Granit slabs line the hallways with huge sitting areas, and this creates a pretty remarkable and welcoming atmosphere. The venue/university for this conference is amazing.

            After exploring the building for a couple hours, because we were stuck in it since we were in the middle of no where (at least not in walking distance from anywhere), youth began to come into the conference area. We met a group from the UK and SustainUS. They were super friendly and even though we had never met we had great conversations. Jessica, Jahdiel and I shared a Papa John’s pizza, which was entertaining considering that Papa Johns is everywhere on my campus.

            We entered the COY for the first session and it was very relaxed and open I was really excited. They started off with an Anti Oppression training. They asked us to stand for concepts that we identified with. It was interesting to see how many people related to items that I did not think really crossed boundaries as much, or that I do not acknowledge that they did. People from the UK, US, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and many other places were standing to acknowledge things that really do cross cultures, which lead to oppression. It was a really great exercise, and I felt was a great opening into the space of COY.

            We then did a ice breaker. The facilitators put Gangam Style on and we walked around, and once the music stopped we had to introduce ourselves and tell the other about an interesting fact. I cannot believe they played Gangam Style. I thought I left that at the UA ;-). I met two people from Germany, one from Greece, one from the UK, one from Taiwan, one from the Philippines and a couple others. Doing that activity, it immediately hit me how diverse, and how many stories each of these people have.  I am actually impressed at how many different people were here.

            After a short break we got to hear from the AYCM. This was really cool. In a few months several Arab countries had youth that stepped up to do some sort of day of action to get decision makers attention. Their demonstrations are small but it is a huge step for the Arab countries. I did not realize it until a cab ride that I had with two Bahrain women later, and they really broke down the realities which they are dealing with.

            I was incredibly tired after that and so I do not actually know what happened. I ended up laying down on a really uncomfortable wooden bench and sleeping for about an hour. We then listened to a video that Bill McKibben made, which was not all that positive, but was a nice jester I suppose. He does not see the UN as the venue to go through anymore because nothing is getting done, which I can acknowledge is essentially true. However, I think there needs to be a multipronged approach, and giving up on the UN will not get us anywhere either. I think that there needs to be action on multiple levels to build the capacity that is needed to alter the power and to get countries to act on climate change. Actions need to be made in the countries and on local levels to show that citizens are concerned and demand change, it still needs to happen at the UN to hold them accountable, and then finally I think building huge coalitions internationally can make a huge difference. Climate change issues are in no way going to be easy to deal with for any country, but it is about more then that too. By developing cleaner technologies the health of people improves, by having a fundamental appreciation of the environment areas of the glove will at least be conserved if not preserved, and if done correctly it is not a limiting factor to economic movement. Without the outrageous subsidies and gifts that the oil and coal companies get they would pretty much not be able to function because it would be too expensive to operate effectively. Prices would be too high to the individual consumer at that point. So I think there is opportunity for governments and people to make the right choice. Who wants their economy to hinge on one industry anyway? Diversity is important in any situation so that one is not dependent on another entity for its survival.

            Finally came the cab ride, which was probably the highlight of my day. The two women, Heather, and I shared a cab for the hotel ride home, which is about 30 minutes away from the hotel. I hear about the issues in the Arab world all the time from the media, and it has honestly become background noise because I hear about it all the time, but talking to people who live and breathe the problems is pretty remarkable. In Bahrain there are many environmental problems, and most of the population lives on the north side of the island while the government ravishes the rest. It is also a oil producing country. The women we were talking to have been working to get climate change in their regional planning scheme. They were expressing the difficulties with this because there is so much conflict it is hard for people to care. They do not even know if they will be living in the same place for the next several years so caring about the environment is a luxury. Everything is very uncertain, and it is hard to care about climate change when you are concerned about safety. The desire for democracy has made everything worse too because they do not really know what it looks like or should be. Trying to get people to pay attention to the environment is hard, and it gets worse when the economy thrives on destroying it. This was very eye-opening and it put things into perspective for me. I have never thought about losing my house or life due to war or conflict, and odds are I will never had to. I am amazed at these women and what they are doing despite the incredible difficulties they have to face daily. I am really excited to see what the rest of the week will bring. 

COP 18 Doha Day One

            This was my first Thanksgiving away from the states. It was definitely not filled with Turkey, the Macy’s day parade, or warm stove fires, but it was memorable for the 4 hours that I was not on the plane. We entered the airport and immediately I felt like I was in another world. People here act, walk and talk differently, which is not a bad thing. So far everyone I have encountered has been incredibly friendly and helpful. We were picked up by the hotel shuttle and brought to the Al-Ghazal Hotel. The hotel is in the middle of sky rises and is camouflaged in an alley. Needless to say it is an adventurous place to stay.

            The lobby was innocent enough. It was when Heather and I stepped in the elevator, which can fit a maximum of 4 people in it while being quite snuggly. After going up seven floors we were immediately greeted by room 702, my home for the next two weeks. It has several quirks such as: no lightbulbs in the multiple lamps that are scattered throughout the rooms, a sink in the kitchen that has a faucet the shakes when it is on, a TV that does not work with remotes void of batteries, a shower without a shower curtain, a sink in the bathroom that showers your feet when it is turned on, several appliances that do not like to work but still exist like a blow dryer, and a door that you have to lock to stay in or out with a key. I like the hotel it has character, and you can know this when you think that a dead cockroach on the wall looks like it is part of the paint job. The cockroaches I anticipate will try to befriend us.

            After exploring the place where I will be staying for awhile, Jahdiel and I decided to take to the streets and see what was around us. We walked out, and found out that we were on the street where apparently Dohaians go to buy furniture. I have never seen as many furniture stores in one single location as I have seen here. I know where to go now to get furniture. We went to several supermarkets, and surveyed them to see which ones would be good to go to for the next several weeks. While out we acquired bread, Nutella, bananas, apples, and Mr. Potato Heads sour cream and onion chips (staple foods of a college student, sort of).

             We then tried to find a restaurant for our Thanksgiving feast. This was interesting. I had not noticed it before we started entering restaurants, but I was one of the only women out at that hour. We tried three places in a row and not a single woman was in any of them. I have never felt so out of place because of my gender. No one criticized me or was mean to me about it, but I have never been in a place where norms for gender roles were in my face as much as they were here. It might have been stranger actually that no one had said anything to me about it, but I just felt like what I was doing was wrong by being in those places. Eventually we found a restaurant that had a section upstairs for family. Downstairs was still filled with men, but at least here I felt like I had a place to be. Jahdiel and I had fun fresh fruit drinks at EastWest Restaurant, and I had fish tikka masala for my Thanksgiving dinner. I have no doubt that this will be an excellent and interesting experience. Tomorrow I go to the Conference of the Youth to establish connections with youth around the world working on climate change policy. I am excited and nervous to meet everyone at this conference.