Swarthmore at COP29

This afternoon, I attended two extremely interesting side events that focused on incorporating Indigenous rights in the language and implementation of the Katowice Rulebook (the goal of this COP is to establish this Rulebook to actually implement the commitments set forth in the Paris Agreement). The first event, titled “Realizing the Vision of Paris: Incorporating Rights in the Implementation Guidelines,” consisted of panel members from the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL), Earthjustice, Women’s Empowerment and Development Organization (WEDO), Amnesty International, and Asia Indigenous Peoples Pact (AIPP).

The most impactful speaker in my opinion was a man representing AIPP, who emphasized how Indigenous Peoples face impacts from not only climate change, but also the mitigation and adaptation measures designed to address it. One example is the expansion of protected areas — a measure designed to protect forests and their crucial role as carbon sinks. While seemingly wonderful, in acquiring additional land to expand the reach of protected areas, this approach displaces Indigenous Peoples and strips them of their access to ancestral lands and culturally significant resources.

One of my greatest passions with respect to environmental protection and social justice is the exact issue of how conservation initiatives affect Indigenous Peoples. While I have previously focused a great deal on this in terms of existing national parks and protected areas, I had not thought about these issues in terms of the climate-related expansion of these initiatives  It was eye-opening to learn about the flaws and inequity of seemingly good solutions to the climate crisis, and this event really expanded my understanding and altered my perspective of currently proposed mitigation and adaptation initiatives, including REDD+ and other carbon offset schemes.

After this panel, I went to another side event, titled “Megadrivers, Climate Funds, and Indigenous Peoples.” This event was organized by representatives from several Indigenous Peoples organizations in Peru. Each of the speakers emphasized the urgency of the challenges that they are facing in the Amazon and how integral it is to maintain and ensure Indigenous control of their territories. This event detailed several climate funds that exist in the Amazon, including the DGM, FCPF, FIP, ONU REDD, and DCI. The panelists discussed the current problems that exist with respect to these funds, including the prioritization of state mediation, the lack of inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in these conversations, and the state’s continued support for extractive industries and anti-climate investments (i.e., agribusiness, hydrocarbons, mining, wood felling). The panelists then discussed some experiences and achievements of Indigenous Peoples with respect to land titling, reduced deforestation due to resistance to extractivism, investment in Indigenous economies with standings forests, and Indigenous REDD+. The event concluded by proposing Indigenous alternatives on climate finance, which highlighted the importance of territorial organizations and learning from previous Indigenous-centered successes.

Another interesting thing to note about this event is that it was entirely in Spanish, which I found very exciting and powerful because most other side events are held in English; it was clear that this event was focused on the people who it was trying to reach, and in asserting the rights (and language) of the panelists, rather than submitting to the sense of Western, English, and American superiority that is so pervasive at these negotiations.

Coming out of today, I am extremely interested in learning more about just and viable alternative approaches to mitigating and adapting to climate change without perpetuating colonialism and human rights violations with respect to Indigenous Peoples, as well as how such mechanisms and financing can be used to uplift and support Indigenous Peoples in implementing their own self-driven initiatives. Stay tuned as I continue to investigate these crucial questions this week!

— Shana

As you may or may not know, an umbrella group of Non-Governmental Organisations, Climate Action Network (CAN), has been organizing awards called “Fossil of the Day” at the COPs since 1999 which is an award given to the country that has done their ‘best’ to block progress in the negotiations on each day of the COP. Members of CAN vote each day on which country can claim this prestigious prize and today….

the award went to…. Poland!! CAN cited the Polish President who said that there was “no contradiction between climate protection and coal” during his Plenary speech yesterday. Today he further stated that “Poland has enough coal to last for another 200 years”… and that the “Polish mining industry and mining constituencies were the foundations of the Polish economy determining the country’s energy security and are a greater extent towards energy sovereignty.”

As it is only the first day of negotiations, I do not know how much we can really look into the significance of this award and there are plenty more days ahead for other countries to take a lead in blocking negotiations. I do think that as the hosts of a COP, there is a lot of pressure for Poland to “put on a good front” and there are a lot of people very willing to critique the COP itself (just how much carbon was emitted to get 197 countries to convene?) and looking for any sort of juxtaposition between what states say compared to what they do. I did not attend any high level negotiations today so I am not able to say whether I think Poland is more deserving of this award than any other country but somehow I can’t help feeling that Poland only got this award because it’s been under the microscope more so than other countries today and yesterday.

There’s a lot to unpack in this award, that’s for sure but here are just a few questions I am thinking about:

• Do you think Poland’s stance on supporting the coal industry is worse than a country’s support for fracking or nuclear power? (Can’t we critique every country for a bad climate policy decision?) Or did Poland win the award because it was selling the ‘wrong’ sorts of ideas to the wrong audience?
• As a host of COP, is it really Poland’s job to be at the forefront of climate policy? Afterall, isn’t the point of having different countries host the COP so that different voices can be heard and different cultures experienced?

Also, I think it’s really interesting to think about how the Fossil of the Day award can be used as a climate negotiating tool.

• Do you think that the award would make more people engaged with the COP and would a daily spotlight on a specific country help the public follow the COP events that much more?
• What do the countries who win this award think? It’s not a great award to get, that’s for sure, but will it change the way in which, for example, Poland will think about it’s message?

As CAN stated, it has definitely been “a hot welcome from the hosts of COP24!” Seriously, it’s cold in Poland but not as cold as I thought it would be…

— Marianne

P.S.I You can follow more of the Fossil of the Day COP24 awards here on their facebook page! Or, to learn more about CAN, click here.

Despite warnings that the side events at COP24 tend to be more interesting than most of the actual negotiations, my decision this morning was to attend both an informal and a formal negotiation meeting. The first negotiations meeting I attended was an informal conversation with the SBSTA (Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice) about the timeline countries should have to implement the rule book for carrying out the Paris Agreement. They were discussing whether countries should have 5 years, 10 years, or the ability to decide their own timeline.

I definitely see why people say the meetings can be difficult to sit through. There was a lot of jargon and sometimes tedious arguments that seemed a little trivial if you weren’t part of the United Nations (EX: one delegate from a country spoke about a small phrase in paragraph 5 of Article 4 that needed to be deleted.)

Still, I am so happy I spent time this morning orienting myself with a negotiations meeting. It was SO interesting to watch how a United Nations meeting works in practice. Basically, countries take turns raising placards with their country’s name on it when they want to speak.

Most countries seemed to support implementing a 5 year timeline for the Paris Rule book. The Marshall Islands and South Africa advocated strongly for this. But, the timeline decision is more complicated than it sounds because no one is sure when the 5 year deadline should be implemented, especially since there is no rule book yet. The informal meeting was more of a discussion with countries raising their arguments and voting to see what is agreed upon, but no official policies were adopted.

Afterward, I contrasted the informal meeting with a formal negotiations meeting about climate finance. As Chris mentioned in his post, it was interesting to watch South Africa get pretty heated. The formal negotiations meeting was a lot more structured, had more strictly imposed time limits, and seemed a lot more tense than the informal negotiations session. I wonder how the atmosphere in both informal and formal negotiations will change on certain issues, especially as sessions progress and the stakes become higher throughout the next two weeks.

Today at the COP there was a joint SBSTA IPCC special event to discuss the findings in the most recent IPCC report. The event was held in the largest plenary room at the conference, and it was filled with both conference delegates and observers. I found the event on the whole very informative, and it was clear the effort the scientists were going to to present their results in a way that would assuage the apocalyptic descriptions of the report in the popular media after its release. I really enjoyed the data although I was left with some methodological questions, which I will research after recover from sleep deprivation. I also had the opportunity to ask a question to the panel, and I have never shaken so much in my life!

Today was another great day and filled with lots of different experiences, including an interesting session related to climate finance that the South African delegate tried to blow-up and an informational meeting on the content of the recent IPCC report. Regarding the report, I found it very positive that a lot of delegates were affirming their commitments to meeting a new, 1.5 C target and that the take away wasn’t doom and gloom, but a reorientation of the challenge. I thought it was a very positive meeting.

The thing that was most exciting for me today is that I took place in my first protest! Ben Goloff ’15 help organize an action with the People’s Demands for Climate Justice and I went to support him. I ended up holding a sign and chanting. The Polish government is pretty strict about demonstrations, so this was inside the conference site and not out on the streets. But it still drew a crowd. I think the message of the cause is pretty important as well, so I was happy to take part. You can learn more about the movement here: https://www.peoplesdemands.org/ but the six demands are:

• Keep fossil fuels in the ground.
• Reject false solutions that are displacing real, people-first solutions to the climate crisis.
• Advance real solutions that are just, feasible, and essential.
• Honor climate finance obligations to developing countries.
• End corporate interference in and capture of the climate talks.
• Ensure developed countries honor their “Fair Shares” for largely fueling this crisis.

 

 

I did quite a few fun things today, but the one I was most excited for was the Inauguration of the Climate Action Hub, mainly because the person who impacted me most at COP-23, Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, was speaking along with Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Ibrahim is an Indigenous Leader and was instrumental in the establishment of the Indigenous Peoples platform at the last COP, and I really enjoyed listening to her viewpoints. Unfortunately, this event was a lot of fan fair for Arnold and was packed, so it was hard to hear any wisdom Ibrahim had to share. The differences in view points betweenSchwarzenegger’s privileged CA life (he talked about converting his 4 hummers to electric) and Ibrahim’s work with women in Indigenous communities was stark and it seemed like the event was a bit more focused on the former.  I was a bit disappointed because I think that Ibrahim has a lot to share, but I am hopeful I’ll get to hear more from her as the COP goes on.

What an incredibly busy, bustling, and exciting first day! While most of the day was spent getting our bearings, we had the privilege of having lunch with one of the U.S.’ newest delegation members — and one of our very own — Liz Nichols. It was such a unique opportunity to hear about the conference from an insider’s perspective! Liz also shared some extremely heartening information with us regarding the U.S.’ presence at the negotiations; despite the fact that Trump has communicated his intention to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement in 2020, Liz explained how the delegates present at this COP are the same delegates who helped to craft the Paris Agreement at COP 21, and who have worked to solidify and implement this Agreement at subsequent COPs. Despite the position of the president, the U.S. delegates present at these meetings are deeply committed to taking meaningful action to combat climate change, helping to both preserve the U.S.’ reputation on the international stage and to address this urgent global crisis. Here’s to a bit of a bright spot for a more hopeful future!

— Shana

All of us students started out our day attending the COP24 opening ceremony, in which the Polish president, the mayor of Katowice, the leader of the World Bank, the prime minister of Fiji, and other high level officials spoke to the importance of COP24 and what it needs to accomplish.  The opening plenaries made clear the main goals of COP24: to create a rule book for implementing the Paris Agreement and to ramp up climate action efforts. Many leaders cited the IPCC report as evidence that climate action efforts need to be taken seriously.

The President of the World Bank made some bold commitments in their opening speech, such as including climate change as a factor in all of their decision making, implementing a shadow price on carbon, and doubling their budget toward mitigating climate change. I was surprised that there didn’t seem to be a huge initial reaction to these commitments, so I’m hoping to hear more about them throughout the conference.

(Executive Officer of the World Bank, Kristalina Georgieva.)

The president of Poland also used the opening plenaries as an opportunity to share what Poland has been doing to combat climate change and why Katowice is a great city to host COP24. He explained how the conference center where COP24 is being held is in the same site as a shut down coal mine. Amos, Shauna, Marianne, and I debated whether or not the Polish President’s argument was convincing, as he did make a good case for how Poland has been reducing emissions. Still, many of these reductions have still come from a supposedly ‘cleaner’ coal, and many climate activists would agree that clean coal is not really possible.

The opening plenaries raised many issues I can’t wait to follow throughout the conference!

(President of Poland, Andrzej Duda.)

 

Wow! What a really interesting first day at COP! I feel like everything has just been an absolute blur and that I’ve been at the COP for way longer than I actually have been.

Like I saw David Attenborough today… How crazy is that?!?!

 

Anyway while seeing David Attenborough (a.k.a my second Grandfather) was definitely the highlight of my day, I also went to some very interesting meetings that gave me a lot of food for thought. In one of the side events entitled
“Climate Friendly Technologies” one of the speakers off handedly mentioned that he would prefer to see a COP structured where all the important negotiating stuff happened as side events (observers can’t attend these events anyway so what does it really matter to us?) and that people’s presentations on current work that they are doing to actively reduce carbon emissions or adapt to climate change should have more of a focus at these conferences. I thought that this one comment was actually quite profound and it got me to thinking about what a COP would be like if we focused on stuff we ARE doing instead of stuff that we SHOULD be doing. How would that change people’s perception and attitudes towards climate change? What sort of message would that send in terms of placing the importance of climate change policy on people instead of powerful governments?

At the end of the day these are rhetorical questions and I do not think that I have been able to process a comprehensive answer. But, from my first impressions of COP, it does seem like there is a definite hierarchy of events that people prioritize to attend. For example: Why were there more people at a talk from Arnold Schwarzenegger than there were at a talk about indigenous voices?

Just some food for thought for my first day at the climate negotiations. How effective is COP anyway? I guess all of us at Swat will get back to you on that sooner or later.

—Marianne

So the only side event I went to today was called ” Experience gained from the CDM” and in this talk I had my “market based solution” bone tickled for the first time at the conference. The biggest surprise from the talk was that the subject of the clean development mechanism, and the emissions credit market that existed in tandem with it, acted as a way of hedging currency related risks faced by green industry in developing countries. This is because many of these industries hold foreign loans, but their income is in domestic currency, so if there is a high risk premium associated with their domestic currency, paying a foreign loan may be much more difficult. The CDM, which facilitates the transfer of capital from developed to developing countries, gives these industries foreign currency, which they can use to insure they are able to pay off debts which are held in foreign currency. Hearing this discussed I found really really exciting, because I had never even thought this was a potential advantage of capital transfers between developed and developing countries.