Month: December 2018

RINGO (Research and Independent NGOs) is committed not to advocacy but to evidence-based policy making and good process. Beth Martin, one of the two “focal points” of RINGO, gave us a great overview of where we stand in the process and where to find relevant materials and texts. In case you’re interested in following along at home, here’s some of what Beth pointed us to…

WARNING: this is a geeky post. It’s long and detailed, but it might give you a sense of how this meeting operates (perhaps)—or at least as much of that operation as I’ve managed to gather here.

This second week kicked off with a note from the COP President–Eriko posted the link back on Sunday. That note said a couple of things:

This note is a wake-up call. We’re not moving fast enough! Time to bring in the big guns! No more open discussion! The officers in charge of the subsidiary bodies are going to act as experts helping facilitate dialogue, and pairs of ministers (from different countries) will also be in charge of moving things forward. Part of the problem here is that the basic text of any agreement has to be settled by the end of Tuesday because then the ministers or high-level negotiators have to work out political disagreements and then the agreements are sent to Nairobi to be translated into all the UN languages and checked multiple times—all before being released on Friday.

This lets us know what are the major issues still needing to be negotiated. You can actually trace the process of negotiation up to this point if you go to the home webpage of the conference: https://unfccc.int/katowice. That takes you to something that looks like this (only the first image is a green-y picture of the venue):

If you scroll down, on the right hand side, below the grid of options, you can see “Session Information” and under that “Session pages.” You may have to squint to see it here:

If you click on APA 1-7, that takes you to a page for the sessions of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement:

Click on “APA 1-7 draft conclusions” and you can open a document (English) that looks like this:

And on later pages of this document, you can see the elements that have been under discussion:

This is how it works when a document is written by committee. You work on the problem parts rather than trying to write the document as a whole.

There’s been a lot of controversy over financing, especially “9.5” and “9.7”–Article 9, paragraphs 5 and 7. The debate on 9.5 addresses climate finance and 9.7 addresses “transparency” (also described as accounting). If you click on the link for SBI (Subsidiary Body on Implementation) on 9.5, you see the following:

Okay, that’s quite a few words to think about and argue over when you’ve got 10–20 people in a room negotiating. One key thing to know: brackets indicate something not everyone is wiling to agree to. So the entire document is in brackets at this point: nothing is set in stone. But the more detailed disagreements appear both in the preamble (before the numbered items), focused on which elements of the Paris Agreement are relevant to “recall,” and in the question of which part of the climate regime is officially going to look at the reports issued biennially (every two years): some people want the SBI (Subsidiary Body for Implementation) to be in charge; others want the synthesis to be sent to the CMA (Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement). Overall, though, the text is pretty free of brackets, once you get past the fact that the whole thing is bracketed.

Here’s another example, from SBSTA (Subsidiary Body on Scientific and Technical Advice): again, the entire body of the text is bracketed, but beyond that, there’s debate about whether or not to include points one and two, five and six, and nine.

This is the text that was sent to the COP Presidency on Saturday, completing the work of the APA (Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement). Add all of the pieces of this work together (and I’ve only included two examples from a much longer list) and you begin to see how complicated these negotiations are.

We finally made it in! Just the walk back to the first meeting was fairly impressive. Most of the day, these ottomans were full of people conferring, resting, shmoozing.

Just past the elevator was this little corner for a “people’s seat.” Around the corner to the left are the big rooms for the plenary sessions.

The pavilions are fairly ornate: one woman was dancing in traditional dress in the Indonesia pavilion in the middle of the day.

This was right at 8 am, before the crowds. Much of the day, it’s all a little overwhelming and high stimulation.

Poland is pushing a “just transition” from coal to a green economy, but as with this exhibit, there seems to be more coal than green in the mix just now.

Still, Saadiq and I learned in the Food Loss and Waste side event that the apples given out freely are all “rescued” (from destruction on the basis of imperfection).

The RINGO meeting at 9 am was larger than I expected (about 100 people in the audience), and it was nicely organized and implemented. This was only about half the panel, a few minutes before the start of the session.

 

Melissa mentioned that we attended a Yale Network Dinner on Saturday, December 8, only hours after arriving in Katowice. One of the speakers at that event was an inspiring woman who said that she always numbers her points because people tend to remember numbered items better. So here’s my list from the day and a half that we’ve been here:

1. Saadiq and I moved on from the Yale dinner to a party hosted by the Climate Action Network in a club with an eclectic playlist. We were impressed by the venue. Every time we tried to leave, we would stumble upon another room with even better music. It beat any Swarthmore party I’ve attended till date (which isn’t a high bar). I noticed there were only a handful of attendees from the G77 countries at the party, and most guests were either from Europe or the United States. It was strange to be in a crowded club with deafening music and people of all ages from all over the world, and even stranger to think that we were dancing with negotiators at one of the most important climate change conferences. As Martin, our Uber driver from the airport, said, “it’s all one big party”. So far it seems like that to me too. Hopefully, that will change tomorrow when I actually attend sessions.

2. On our way to Krakow today (December 7), I sat next to an interpretor for the UN who translates from English to French, and English to Spanish. Surprisingly, she knew about Swarthmore (but she kept referring to it as “Swarth”). She was a Columbian-French freelance interpreter from New York who most often translates for the African Union, European Union, and UN bodies such as UNICEF and UN-Women.

I learnt some interesting facts about the work of interpreters. For example, they are officially only “allowed” to work for five-and-a-half hours a day because they tend to hit fatigue beyond that time frame and start making mistakes in the translations. Interpreters work in pairs and switch every half-hour. I asked how translating simultaneously works, whether doing everything in real-time meant that she occasionally missed words and whether she’s able to translate everything from one language to another when some languages do not have the same vocabulary. She gave me a bewildered look and said, “that’s the job”. You have to know when to stop yourself from working because it’s a high stakes job. Misinterpreting something could have wide-reaching implications at the UN, where translations are often published and incorporated in texts.

She translates from English to French 75% of the time, and one of her favorite words to translate is “accountability” because apparently, that word does not exist in French. There’s the word “responsibility”, but of course it’s not the same. She liked the precision of the word accountability, for which she needs three words to communicate the same meaning in French (Google translate does not have the French translation for accountability as I now know). French is about 16% wordier than English, so when speakers speak fast, interpreters can often sound like robots trying to squeeze in meaningful translations.

It’s another problem when speakers have thick accents that she cannot understand. “But then I look around in the room and realize that nobody else understood it either, so it’s okay. It just gets lost. So it’s the responsibility of countries and organizations to send speakers who are articulate when they speak.” That was an interesting take. Having the text in front while she’s translating always helps, she said. Even if she’s looking at it for the first time. “Then I can add intonations and make the speech more interesting.” Otherwise what gets noted down is a dry speech. “The UN Secretary General’s office is always very organized.” They share speeches with interpreters at least a day in advance. On the other hand, most other countries and small organizations that make speeches almost never share their speeches in advance, which makes it more difficult for interpreters and for the speakers to get their message across.

3. At the end of our day, we got a text saying the Polish delegation just published a document for how they want to second week of COP to proceed. Here’s the link: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/Information%20Note%20by%20the%20President%20on%20the%20mode%20of%20work.pdf

On the bus ride home from Krakow, Monica made space for me to sit with her. She is attending the COP as an observer, as part of an NGO: the Inuit Circumpolar Council. As we got on the road, it was already dark though it was only 4 pm. “When does it get dark for you?” I asked Monica, who lives in Nunavut. “It’s not as bad as here!” she exclaimed, taking a photo. I followed suit.

Nunavut. Monica’s community is the largest in the territory with 7000 people. Other communities are smaller: 700 or 2000 or 3000 people. There are no roads between communities: the travel is all by airplane. I was surprised to learn that we live in the same time zone, however, because I always think of northern Canada as slanting westerly. Clearly not.

The Inuit Circumpolar Council includes members from Canada, the USA, Greenland, and Russia. Each country provides support for its own section of the council: the Canadian staff is largest, followed by the US, then Greenland, then Russia. They speak English (with the exception of the Russians, who presumably work with translators). They could speak their own language(s) as well—and Monica switched seamlessly from English with me to Inuit on a phone call—but the dialects are so different that comprehension would be slow and they would be less effective than they can be using English as a common language.

The Council works on many issues, climate change among them. Every community Monica represents needs health care and education and recreation centers and funding is scarce, so communities have to prioritize among their needs.

Because it was dark, and Monica was tired, having flown in from Anchorage via Seattle, I spared her my normal request for a photo and a card. Here instead is a link to the Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource Development Principles in Inuit Nunaat:

declaration_on_resource_development_a3_final

As Betsy wrote yesterday, Swarthmore’s Week 2 delegation arrived in Poland yesterday (Saturday) afternoon. It’s been a whirlwind day and a half, with things sure to stay busy as the COP resumes tomorrow.

Day 1: Katowice

Yesterday evening, for our first event of the trip, Saadiq, Eriko, and I (Melissa) attended a dinnertime gathering hosted by Yale University. It was posh – with hors d’oeuvres and wine – and clearly intended to be a networking event. We chatted with undergraduate and graduate students with similar elite US university affiliations about their research and how they ended up at COP. Toward the end, three big-name speakers gave short speeches: Todd Stern (former US Special Envoy for Climate Change), Susan Biniaz (former Deputy Legal Adviser of the State Department – serving as lead climate lawyer), and Tom Steyer (philanthropist/environmentalist). If nothing else, it was a relatively familiar way (oh, academia) to ease into an otherwise overwhelming setting.

 

Day 2: Auschwitz

The COP was closed on Sunday, so we took the day to explore – splitting up for different activities. I went my own direction, leaving before sunrise to get to Auschwitz early (the others will go next Saturday). It was an appropriately horrible day: cold, with high winds and rain.

I booked an English-language, 3 hour tour of the remnants of the grounds. We spent about 2 hours at Auschwitz I, and then another hour at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. The entire grounds is now a museum. I was moved to hear that it had opened in 1947 – at the request of survivors, some of whom also served as the museum’s first tour guides. That this experience is exactly what the survivors wanted of us made me even more motivated to go through with the visit, abhorrent as the place is.

Auschwitz I consists of many brick barracks, some of which have been refurbished for educational purposes. The tours are carefully designed to take visitors through a sequential program. First, we learned about the process that the Nazis put arrivals through: often after train rides in lethal conditions, Jews were distinguished from non-Jews, and ‘healthy’ Jews from ‘non-healthy’ Jews. Gentiles and healthy Jews went to the concentration camp, where they were likely to die from starvation or heavy labor. Non-healthy Jews (and children, elderly, pregnant women, etc.) were sent directly to the gas chambers. Next, we saw the sorted piles of the belongings of the massacred. Most Jews arriving at Auschwitz, many from other countries, had been led to believe that they were being relocated and had brought (with Nazi encouragement) bags of possessions. It wasn’t just material goods either; I cried in the room showcasing nothing but piles of hair. Finally, the tour of the first camp ends with an enforced silent walk-through of an intact gas chamber.

Auschwitz II-Birkenau is many times bigger than Auschwitz I. It is also less intact, partially because some barracks were made of wood, partially because the Nazis successfully destroyed much of it just prior to liberation. The several gas chambers, for example, were reduced to rubble. At this camp we also saw in more detail the standard living quarters (such as they were), specifically for women.

After the camps, I went directly to a Jewish museum nearby. It is one of the few representations of Jewish culture in the area, and served as something of a balm. The museum also answered a growing question of mine: why does Poland not seem to have a resurgent Jewish population, when in the early 20th century it was so huge? The answer is that anti-semitism did not end with liberation, and many Jews who initially returned home after the war soon left due to continued pogroms. But still, for this museum to exist there was a reassurance that the long history of Galician Jewish culture has not been completely erased.

This is only an extremely brief reflection on this experience – a pilgrimage of sorts for this Ashkenazi. Auschwitz is a name from my childhood nightmares, a hell that so many of us have imagined ourselves trapped in. But until planning for this trip, it was not one that I ever imagined actually physically stepping foot in.

I know this isn’t directly related to the COP, but I hope you’ll agree that it’s immensely important. Certainly other COP attendees did, because it was clear that hundreds of people made the same decision today to make the trip down from Katowice. We’ll go into this second week of the conference with, perhaps, a reminder of the devastation that humans are capable of inflicting on each other. We’d do well not to forget, so that protection of the vulnerable might be woven into the fabric of these negotiations.

Sunday the COP was closed. Roughly half of the attendees went to Krakow, the other half to Auschwitz. Eriko, Saadiq and I went to Krakow, Melissa to Auschwitz. (Eriko has already been to Auschwitz; Saadiq and I will go at the end of our time here.)

The path to the shuttle bus to Krakow (leaving from the COP) was full of one of the Christmas markets the first week’s delegation described.

People here are really into Christmas!

On the bus to Krakow, I had the great pleasure of chatting with Sr. Saddy Rafael Pineda Castellanos, part of the Honduras delegation. Señor Pineda is the head of the Forest and Climate Change Department in Honduras. He is part of a twelve-person delegation and his primary focus is on mitigation, with some attention to adaptation and financing, which others are also helping to cover. The delegation is spread around the area, with some people staying in Krakow, and others in small towns some distance from Katowice. This makes it hard for them to meet and plan each days’ negotiations, but they make do with WhatsApp.

It sounded to me as if the Honduras forestry department is doing a lot with the resources available: they have plans for restoring one million hectares of forests. They broker deals, providing restoration plans for private landowners and connecting people to funding when needed. Honduras is also working hard on watershed remediation, especially in the dry corridor.

I was pleased to hear that a recent extradition law (extradition to the US for drug trafficking) had decreased gang violence. Food security continues to be a big issue, and climate change is driving migration, but so is the differential in wages between the US and Honduras.

Señor Saddy Pineda will be happy if this COP24 produces three things: a completed Paris Rulebook, a completed Talanoa Dialogue, and a financing mechanism. I’m crossing all my fingers and toes that this may come true.

In fact, in Krakow, at the Wawel Castle and surrounding buildings, I climbed the bell tower of the Cathedral. The audio guide says that if you put one hand on your heart and touch the clapper of the bell with your other hand, your wish will come true. I tried it both way: left hand on heart, right on bell, and vice versa.

 

Sunday the COP was closed. Roughly half of the attendees went to Krakow, the other half to Auschwitz. Eriko, Saadiq and I went to Krakow, Melissa to Auschwitz. (Eriko has already been to Auschwitz; Saadiq and I will go at the end of our time here.)

On the bus to Krakow, I had the great pleasure of chatting with someone who is part of the Honduras delegation. I won’t say any more about that conversation until I get approval from my new friend, but the conversation made me think about the broader context of the negotiations here.

For those following along at home, I thought it might be worth laying out some of the groupings and negotiating blocks operative here. (Lots of lists and names coming up below, but this chart lays out the blocs more visually.)

The UNFCCC organizing Parties to the Framework Convention into three groups: Annex I, Annex II, and non-Annex I. This division is based on earlier groupings of countries through economic development, most notably the OECD or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Annex I countries were either part of the OECD when the UNFCCC was formed in 1992 or they were Economies in Transition (Russian Federation, Baltic States, several Central and Eastern European States); Annex II countries were a subset of OECD countries “not in transition:” because of their level of economic development, Annex II countries are required to provide financial and technical support to developing nations. Developing nations are sometimes called non-Annex I nations: the point is that they should be recipients of finance and technology transfer.

The UNFCCC also operates in terms of regional groupings, mostly for the purposes of electing representatives to the Bureau. The regional groupings are African States, Asian States, Eastern European States, Latin American and the Caribbean States, and the Western European and Other States–the “other states” include Australia, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and the United States of America.

But negotiating blocs have arisen separately from this geographical grouping.

Honduras is part of AILAC, a negotiating group including Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru. I asked why Nicaragua was not part of this group and Paraguay was—the map of this group stretches oddly to allow for exclusions and inclusions. My seatmate explained that Nicaragua was more aligned ideologically with Venezuela and Cuba and Paraguay was not part of ALBA, so they needed a different coalition. Indeed, in the chart below (same as the one above) which was drawn up by then-student Jonas Haller, Nicaragua and Bolivia join Venezuela and Cuba as part of ALBA as well as forming part of the LMDCs group. Venezuela along with Ecuador is also part of OPEC.

The UN always offers ample portions of alphabet soup. In this case, AILAC is the Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean; ALBA stands for the Bolivarian Association for the Peoples of our America. The G77 was originally the Group of 77 formed in 1969 during the UN Conference on Trade and Development; it now includes about 133 Parties. Because this large group is also very diverse, smaller groups have formed within it: the African Group (54 Parties; established at COP1 in 1995), SIDS (Small Island Developing States; roughly 40 Parties; first to propose draft text of reducing emissions in Kyoto protocol), LDCs (Least Developed Countries; 48 Parties). The LMDCs are Like-Minded Developing Countries, including both Iraq and Iran (while Iran is left out of the Arab group). EIG stands for Environmental Integrity Group. OPEC stands for Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries; OECD stands for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Umbrella Group came together after adoption of the Kyoto Protocol; the subgroup of Annex II nations in the umbrella group are also sometimes called Juice Cans (Japan Iceland US Canada Australia Norway New Zealand: JUISCANNZ is how I envision this, but I have no idea whether or not that’s correct).

The chart suggest how confusing it can be to think about any given Party’s allegiances and/or negotiating priorities. It also shows the impact of history. China, for instance, might have had more in common with African nations in 1969, but its development trajectory has been quite distinct in the past few decades–but the negotiating alliance remains intact.

In addition to these three categories of Parties (rich Annex II, doing-pretty-well Annex I, and developing non-Annex I), there are also a host of “constituencies,” including observers like our little Swarthmore delegation. But that will be another post, full of its own alphabet soup.

 

Networking at the COP began well before our arrival in Katowice. By the time we were on the bus to board the plane to Poland, it was clear that we were mostly all heading together to the COP. (Yes, I am as tired as I look in this photo!)

Ranier, my seatmate, works in International Climate Protection and Emissions Trading for EnergieAgentur NRW (short for NordRhein Westphalen, a western German state). He was flying in to help put on three side events: the first was happening at 4pm this afternoon in the Market square of Katowice, explaining the importance of the COP to the general public. This was his tenth COP! We talked about discouraging it was to see nations making irrational decisions both on climate and on other issues of governance. Ranier acknowledged the difficult regional politics leading to a slow-down in the shift to renewables in Germany.

Across the aisle, Dr. Maria Francesch-Huidobro was flying in from Hong Kong, where she has lived and taught and worked for 31 years. She will be presenting at the WWF’s “Panda Pavilion” on the 13th about efforts in monitoring progress toward the Paris Agreements and also (I think) about sustainability efforts and collaborations of large Asian cities such as Hong Kong. Maria is a political scientist who has run environmental studies programs in Hong Kong and is now working with various think tanks, including “Carbon Care InnoLab, a charity for sustainability,” which provides a platform for young entrepreneurs to work on sustainability innovations. Maria and I talked loosely about the possibility of bringing her in via Skype for a guest lecture in some environmental studies classes. I was very taken with her charm, her breadth of knowledge and her good-natured teasing of our different nationalities. (Despite her decades of living in Hong Kong, Maria herself is Spanish, and her discussion of Brexit was hilarious. “The British, they have a mandate, and so they set everything aside, no matter if it means pounding their heads against the wall. In Spain, we don’t do this. We say, this is a bad thing, we won’t carry on. Teresa May, she says, ‘I will do this thing; I will be a martyr.’ ‘No, lady, no!'” Maria says, waving her hands, “Don’t be a martyr!”)

Beyond Maria, Olivia Reshetylo is flying in from Vancouver, where she works with Student Energy, a group that works on teaching energy literacy to college students. I think she said the group is composed of 50,000 students now and just starting to expand into the USA, currently at Berkeley, Stanford, and Rhode Island. Perhaps Swarthmore next!

As we came close to landing, I was struck by the monoculture woods near the city.“You can see,” said Ranier, “why wood is so important to the Poles.” This visual image did indeed give a different kind of context to ongoing debates about whether or not biomass or biomass + coal should be included as a pathway for low emissions. (The Climate Action Network, for instance, points to evidence that biomass is worse for the climate in the short term than fossil fuels.)

Once we were on the ground, we looked around for transport. Other, more experienced COP attendees insisted that there would be free public transport to the meeting, but that turned out not to be the case. Quite a lot of head-shaking and clucking ensued. Melissa called an Uber for our four-person delegation to get into the city.

Martin drove us in: he was very patient with my attempts to speak Polish with him, as well as our inability to work out how to ask basic questions, such as, “Was that a quarry we saw from the sky?”

Martin drove us past farmlands (“No one farms anymore; they work in the city”) and a power plant:

and signs of globalization:

He couldn’t really explain the little green puff-balls in the trees (a different species? a particularity of this species of tree?) but he did say that Poles will climb the trees to gather those woody balls and paint them gold for Christmas decorations.

I asked Martin what he thought about the COP: was it urgent? Did he want people to get serious? Or did he want them to go away? “It makes no difference to me,” he said. “It’s just an expensive party.” (Ouch!)

The driving got a little more complicated as we drew close to the International Conference Center. Liz had warned us that there was a demonstration planned with heavy police presence. I had asked Martin about it earlier (with translation assistance from Melissa and Eriko) and he had snorted: “This isn’t France!” he said, with some disdain. Still, in the end, the roads were blocked off. Martin finally dropped us off a couple of blocks away and we walked down to the venue past something like 40 or even 60 police vans,

and an astounding number of armed, massed police. We heard some drumming and eventually saw a handful of rather bedraggled marchers–but they were outnumbered by the police at a ratio that seemed like 100 to 1.

Finally, we arrived at the venue and registered!

Only to discover that our badges won’t let us into the venue itself until Monday.

But wonderful Liz Nichols came out to greet us and tell us more about the functioning of the COP than our jetlagged brains could really process, much as we tried.

Off we go, into the darkening skies, past more police, in search of hotels…

Hard to believe we’re really here!

Friday marked my last day at the COP, and I am officially home! In addition to attending some final negotiations and side events that interested me, I spent a good deal of Friday thinking about how to bring my experience at the COP back to the States with me upon leaving Poland. I therefore attended a couple of wonderful interactive events hosted by We Are Still In (an organization of substate and nonstate actors in the U.S. who are committed to upholding the Paris Agreement on a subnational level, despite Trump’s decision to withdraw nationally) at the U.S. Climate Action Center in the Country Pavilion section of the conference center.

I attended a U.S. Climate Café, which was essentially a facilitated dialogue between students from various universities across the country and other local- and state-level actors. The dialogue focused on what we are bringing to the COP (based on our personal backgrounds, skills, experiences, and the organizations that we are involved with), as well as what we are planning to take back with us. The organizers of this event emphasized how its goal was to provide us with a space to actually interact with each other, since most other COP events (i.e., negotiations and panels) involve sitting, listening, and absorbing without being able to meaningfully engage with the other people who are here and without thinking about how to translate this knowledge into action upon returning home. This event also encouraged us to think about what we are bringing to this conference and the importance and influence of our role in being here, rather than just what we can take away from it.

I really enjoyed this event because of these goals. It was really wonderful to have the opportunity to actually engage with others, rather than to simply listen and absorb. Being pushed to think tangibly about what I am bringing into and taking away from this conference also helped me to better understand my role and purpose in being at the COP, which I found very beneficial. For example, I thought about how I can use these negotiations and international climate action as a pressure point in my national climate organizing with Sunrise Movement upon returning to the states (which I did yesterday at a huge action in Washington, D.C.). I also thought about how the side events that I attended regarding indigenous rights and climate litigation can inform the law and policy work that I plan to pursue after graduating this spring.

I also really enjoyed and appreciated being in a U.S.-centric space for the first time at the COP. It felt very empowering to be in a collaborative space with so many other incredible people who are working to effect meaningful change in the U.S., especially given Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement and how that decision has shaped both the international community’s perception of the U.S. and our presence on the international stage. I felt reaffirmed and supported in the work that I do, and felt that I was not alone in my commitment to effecting climate action in the U.S.

Below is a picture of me with some students who I met from other universities in the States and Tom Steyer, the CEO of NextGen America — an environmental advocacy nonprofit and political action committee that supports candidates and policies that take action against climate change.

I am so incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to attend the COP, and am looking forward to following the posts of our group that is there this week! Thanks for keeping up with me last week — ta ta for now!

— Shana

 

On Thursday, I went to an extremely fascinating, inspiring, and empowering side event about supporting the implementation of the Paris Agreement through climate litigation and legislative reforms. The panel featured speakers involved in several prominent lawsuits and organizations that work to hold both governments and corporations accountable in court.

One of the panelists, involved with the Urgenda Foundation and litigation in the Netherlands, emphasized the broader strategic advantages of using the court system as a tool to combat climate change. Beyond the actual financial compensation that plaintiffs (those who are suing) receive, the panelist discussed how courts help to hold governments accountable because government cannot lie in court or suppress information as they may be able to in other spheres, such as with the media. Bringing a case to court also humanizes and helps to communicate the impacts of the climate crisis by centering the stories and experiences of those who are affected. Furthermore, litigation can serve as a catalyst for other individuals and social movements by legitimizing their demands.

With respect to specific cases, the panel also had representation from several lawsuits pushing governments to ratchet up their emissions reduction targets and expedite their timelines, and corporations to take responsibility for how their actions have fueled the climate crisis and provide compensation to those affected. The main arguments in some of these suits include unlawful interference with property due to flooding from climate change-induced glacial melting (the Huaraz case), and detrimental impacts to the indigenous Sami people in Sweden, whose livelihoods (reindeer herding) and culture are being threatened by declining reindeer populations as a result of climate stressors.

I was really inspired by this event because I am planning to pursue a career in environmental protection, civil rights, and indigenous rights law, and am very interested in how I can incorporate climate change and these claims in the legal work that I will do. While this event was extremely interesting and inspiring, it was also very Eurocentric. I am therefore curious about the implications and effectiveness of this legal approach in countries where the political will necessary to enact this kind of change through the court system may not exist.

— Shana