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.