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.