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.
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