So I’ve just spent three weeks in Durban, South Africa to attend the United Nations climate change negotiations. It was the hardest experience of my life, but also the best experience of my life. Although making change in a place with so little agency was demoralising, to attempt it with hundreds of fellow young people of incredible enthusiasm and intelligence from around the world was wonderful. I’ve made friends I’ll never lose, from the UK Youth Climate Coalition delegation with which I went to Durban and from all over the globe..
My friend is heading to the UN in Durban later this week for climate change negotiations there, and it got me thinking about climate change and the psychology of such a world-changing issue. Conveniently, a recent edition of the BPS research digest had the perfect report!
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The interesting bit is this - when asked to justify their decisions about the environmental problems, 74% of answers were ”biocentric” - e.g ‘the tree is alive and they have hurt it’, with 26% being ”anthropocentric” - e.g ‘without trees we’d have no oxygen’.
So the first line of this article was ‘children in NE USA see harms to the environment as worse morally than bad manners’, but psychologeek’s conclusion is this - why is harming the environment seen as actively more ok than harming another human being? And then contrastingly, why is harming the environment viewed only by a minority as a wrongdoing to humanity?
I know my friend heading out to the UN views climate change as a very human issue. And I think I’ve got to agree. The likelihood is the earth will survive whatever we throw at it. It will warm, and cool, and carry on turning. We won’t. Humans won’t survive flash flooding, tsunamis, hurricanes and drought. So while it’s great that children acknowledge harming the environment as a bad thing, it doesn’t seem to have gone far enough. Harming the environment is synonymous with harming another human, in fact worse - it’s harming humanity as a whole.
I’m heading out to Durban, South Africa for the UN climate change negotiations in just four days time! Here’s some stories and videos about the hopes and expectations from different quarters. I’ll be sending out four or so updates like these over the course of the conference: contact me if you’d like to be added to my mailing list.
In this update:
Our reflections after our final training weekend
Introduction to the UN climate change process
How to follow the negotiations
New study shows links between climate change and extreme weather
Still confused or want to follow the negotiations for yourself?
If you’re still a little confused by what the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is all about, then earlier in the year Kristina from the delegation did an excellent blog for those unacquainted with the weird and wonderful world of the UN climate talks.
“ For those who believe climate change is about some distanct future, I invite them to Kiribati. It’s lapping at our feet, quite literally.
United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on his visit to the pacific island nation of Kiribati last week. Climate change will cause Kiribati to sink under rising sea levels if greenhouse gas emissions are not cut.
On Wednesday Green Vision are co-hosting a special screening of ‘Just Do It’ at the Little Theatre Cinema, Bath. The documentary, which describes itself as ‘a tale of modern day outlaws’, follows several groups of UK climate change activists using civil disobedience as a means of protest. Even if you find the methods used by some of the groups controversial, you won’t fail to be amazed, fascinated and inspired.
The special screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring the film’s director, Emily James, Deputy Leader of Bath & North East Somerset Council, Nathan Hartley and a representative of Green Vision.
Rather less exciting than my last publication, this time it’s a little piece explaining what the phrases ‘Annex 1’, ‘Annex 2’ and ‘Non-Annex 1’ mean when mentioned (as they often are) at UN climate change negotiations. Covers more interesting issue than it sounds like from that - historic emissions and responsibility for climate change, trade-offs between carbon cuts and development and the changing role of ‘BRIC’ nations such as India and China.
Extract:
One of the trickiest areas of climate change negotiation in the United Nations is differentiating between ‘developed’ and ‘less developed’ countries. The ‘historic emissions‘ of greenhouse gases by countries such as the UK, USA and Germany allowed them to reach the high level of development and wealth that they now enjoy. Less developed countries are unsurprisingly reluctant to pass up opportunities for development and improvements in well-being in the name of carbon emission reduction, especially when the historic emitters are still the largest per person polluters.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) made sure this was accounted for when it came into force in 1994, dividing countries into two sections: Annex I and Annex II. The Annexes divide countries into groups based on how responsible they are for climate change and how able they are to reduce global emissions. The forty Annex I countries are ‘developed’ economies and economies ‘in transition’; Annex II is a subgroup made up of twenty-three developed economies.
Earlier today the DECC Youth Advisory Panel (myself included) met Charles Hendry, Minister for Energy, in the Houses of Parliament. David of DECC’s Comms team got a bit arty with this one. (by DECCgovuk)
I wrote an article a couple of months ago for The Ecologist on environmental activism, when it’s most effective and the direction I think it should take. The strapline given to it is pretty apt: “constructive engagement, optimism and campaigns that benefit local residents are the best tactics to move eco-activism forward”.
After Copenhagen, I sat down with the twenty or so pupils in the ‘Environmental Action Group’ at my school. I thought I’d get the Copenhagen Accord up on the projector and try to make sense of what comes out of two weeks of negotiations by the leaders of the free world. The only thing worse than a bad response is no response at all. There was nothing to make sense of, nothing to comment on. Twenty teenagers waited for me to tell them that something good had resulted from the conference. As I struggled to find anything worth pointing out in the document, twenty teenagers sat in silence. Some of them never came to our weekly meetings again.
What COP15 proved is that we cannot wait for our elected representatives (and for those my age and younger, representatives who we have no chance to elect) to take the first step.
Some of you may have seen the Guardian frontpage article about removal of climate change from the national curriculum earlier this month. Helen Markides, a fellow member of the UK Youth Climate Coalition delegation to COP17, wrote this fantastic blog post (with input from myself and others) on the UKYCC site regarding it.
In many ways this is about much more than climate change – this is about the principles of fairness and sustainability which lie behind concern about climate change. A broader, sustainable education is essential – something instilled throughout a school’s operating ethos. This is already happening in many schools – largely through the ‘Eco-Schools’ program – where pupils and staff work together to create a sustainable environment for education, whether through setting up recycling schemes, caring for the school grounds or improving participation in decision making. If taught in a way which engages young people then sustainability and climate change actually presents an opportunity, providing the incentive for communities to work together, for young people to gain citizenship, and become empowered by taking change in their local environment. Government should take its cue from schools like these, not from Oates’s misleading and damaging advice.
I’ve just read this fantastic blog post by Sarah Arnold, a fellow member of the UKYCC delegation to the United Nations’ climate change talks. As she stresses below, the real importance of the youth at the UN is positivity - to remind negotiators that this is about humanity and compassion, not just a complex agenda.
But if I’m feeling this stressed and frustrated, the negotiators must be feeling similar. They are human (apparently) after all! And tired, disheartened negotiators are not going to produce an optimal outcome – and it is an optimal outcome we all need right now!
And I think that’s why I’m here. As a young person, I think it is my role to bring that energy to negotiations, and the UN in general. We need to put aside our cynicism and weariness and remember that we can sleep at the end of the week, but right now we need to be positive and not allow anyone, not even ourselves, to lose enthusiasm.
In the last week, we have danced, we have high-fived negotiators, we have patted them on the back and presented them with awards and ‘Ray of the Day’. We have painted flags on our faces, worn capes, and sang songs as loud as we could. Sometimes we’ve looked like idiots, but negotiators have come up to us several times this week and thanked us for bringing life to the process.
