Swarthmore at COP29

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

Over the week there have been several protests in and around the COP to bring attention to certain issues that should be addressed in the Negotiations.  Yesterday, Friday, Shana and I actually got to participate in a protest chanting “Climate equals Health, Our Health is up to you” to ensure that more public health issues are directly addressed in countries’ nationally determined contributions (NDC). While Shana is a tried and tested protester, this was my first time actually participating in a protest (rather than just observing one) and I was pretty proud of myself for pushing the boundaries of my comfort zone and try to make a difference.

But that got me thinking. How effective are protests at the COP actually? This year’s protests in Poland are more restricted than they have been in the past and one needs to have the protest approved and no microphones are allowed. Regardless of the extra restrictions with this year’s protester’s abilities, I think protests in general add a totally different dynamic to the COP. The negotiations I have been to at the COP have more so been about the language used in various agreements rather than debates about what should or should not be directly addressed. Furthermore, even if a specific issue were being added to the agreement, I have the distinct impression that the debates between states would generally agree that the issue should be included but would argue about the language of the agreement to the extent where it would end up being as vague as possible so that countries do not have to necessarily act upon said issue. To what extent does a protest really force countries to change the language of an agreement? Does it matter how many people and the type of people who get involved?

The three protests I attended during my time at the COP were all very different from one another.

A protest on Tuesday organised by SustainUS to Keep Fossils in the Ground! had around 20 people in the protest surrounded by 30 or so people watching the protest, most of whom I thought were young people. There was a lot of chanting, various people speaking about their personal experiences with fossil fuels, and while the audience was pretty big, it did not get much bigger. This protest was quickly followed by an organised Press Conference that concisely defined the movement’s demands. A protest on Friday on Human Rights had a similar atmosphere around it in terms of the people that were there but there was a lot more silence than chanting. Furthermore everyone from that protest was wearing black and had red lanyards for the entire day to continue their protest.

Finally, the protest I actually participated in, also on Friday, about Climate Change and Health did not have that many participants, nor that big of an audience. We played out a skit and then did some chants but there was not a speech of what we were actually demanding which I thought could have really helped others understand the goals of the protest. Although the audience was not very big, I did think that because we were not completely blocking off a hallway, that people walking past could actually see our protest rather than having to walk past a big herd of people who are encircling the protest and thus are also obstructing the ability for passers  by to see the protest. We did get press coverage by a couple of country’s news outlets (and by a couple, I mean exactly 3) but it is difficult to tell the effect of the news coverage on important COP negotiations too.

The primary goals of all these protests at COP are to change the way that the agreements are being negotiated and in order for that to happen, the actual negotiators should be listening. Are they really listening though? There are long negotiations continuously throughout the day so when would a delegate even have time to see the protest? A lot of the issues brought up in these processes are further talked about in side events and press conferences, but again, most state representatives are too busy to go to these meetings (I certainly haven’t seen many of them at the events I went to). Many states have prepared for weeks in advance their specific strategies of negotiating deals and have specific orders of what the outcomes should be at the end of the two weeks. Thus, how would an impromptu protest change a state’s stance on the climate negotiation?

Protests do have an impact, I’m not denying that. But I do wonder whether protests are the right way to make an impact at the COP. The protests I have seen have all been organized by young people and it seems that at the COP, protests are the only way in which non-governmental organizers (especially YOUNGOs) can make their voices heard since they are prohibited from even entering high level negotiations. I believe that the questions posed here are definitely worth looking into and I think that in addressing them, people could make their protests more effective.

Today during a series of high level negotiations on article 6 of the Paris Agreement, I found the behavior of several of the delegations very interesting.

Firstly the behavior of the US delegation. The US delegation could not really be called the Trump delegation. The points they were making we’re well informed, reasonable, and in favor of the international climate regime in general. Further, the entire negotiating block that includes the US were perfectly aligned during the negotiations, and they coordinated a series of “interventions” where each member if the grouo reiterated their collective stance. I found this really interesting. Further it obviously frustrated some of the other groups, and this was brought up by the delegate from Tuvalu, who, without calling out the US by name, strongly rebuked the official stance of the US: “the United States will pull out of the Paris Agreement until such time that we can get a better deal for the American people.” This is directly at odds with the US and its allies dominating the negotiations on how to implement the paris agreement.

 

Today I attended a side event called Building a Spirt of Solidarity to Overcome the Climate Crisis where voices from various different sects shared ideas on how to build solidarity, overcome fears, and take responsible decisions to protect humans form climate change. Overall, it was excellent. The panel included someone from the IPCC, a previous negotiator, a UNFCCC official, an archbishop, a nun, and my favorite Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim, and Indigenous leader.

Overall, it was an excellent event! There was good spirt in the room and some interesting points were made. Many of the panel members talked about reconnecting with your fellow humans and discovering a sense of service. There was also a lot of discussion about trying to find common ground and in listening to people who don’t have the same view point as you. This resonated with me a lot, especially when the negotiator was talking about approaching the negotiations with countries with very different priorities. She stressed that negotiator that you disagree with the most is the one you need to connect with the most and try to understand the most so you can think about the issues from their point of view, and that only then is real progress made. Hindou also discussed bringing a human element to the negotiations, and how she views it as her responsibility to talk about the struggles of her people.

There were a lot of powerful messages throughout the 1.5 h and I left feeling positive. I also introduced myself to Hindou after the panel and shock her hand, which was a highlight of the day for me!

Being at the COP has made me so much more aware of just how many countries there are in the world. Sure, 197 is a number that is not to hard to think about but do you actually know what you’re imagining when you think of 197 countries? It’s surprising that any negotiations get worked out at all given the sheer amount of languages spoken, though it is certainly heart warming!

I have had several experiences this week that have made me think of the extraordinary ways in which the COP delicately (and maybe sometimes indelicately) handles culture clashes.

 

What is it with every single speaker thanking the previous speaker for their “kind words”, congratulating the previous speaker on being appointed to a certain position, and addressing each other as “your Excellency”?

At first, I thought the formal ways in which people spoke to one another here was quite over the top and in some cases, frankly, a waste of time. Just get to the point already! But I think that these ways in which people speak to one another is a form of showing deep respect and to avoid certain confrontations. It also shows the appreciation that people have for one another during these talks and exhibits ways in which climate negotiations are supposed to unite us and not divide us.

To me, the COP is not a tourist attraction and is not even supposed to be, but that’s not what other people seem to think. 

I can get behind the fact that people want to document that they were at the COP and that they were with their delegation presenting at a certain side event or something but sometimes, it seems like some delegates are putting on too much of a show. For example, I literally saw a panelist leave the panel, give his phone to a random stranger, go back to the panel and pose thoughtfully as the stranger took a photo of him, all while the actual panel discussions were ongoing. No one batted an eyelash. I think something like this just goes to show the extent to which people want to document their time at the COP, and hey, in the 21st century when social media is king, there is no better way to get the word out than a snazzy picture on instagram. This is also surely the first time that a lot of people get to visit Poland and be so far away from home so if they have to spend most of their time at the COP, then that’s what they are going to take pictures of. The privilege I have of being able to travel as much as I have has been checked. 

 

Please please please will anyone address the fact that most of the events are held in English!!!

I could not be more grateful of the fact that I can understand most of the events that I go to. Only one event I have been to has completely been in a different language and in the negotiations, only those delegates who absolutely cannot speak English will not. However, what does it mean that the COP is in English? I know that the UN has six official languages, but these languages do not seem to be exposing themselves that much throughout the COP. What sort of messages of power are relayed when everything is in English? I had to leave an event just because I could not understand the broken English that people were using and I felt really bad because I was so sure that the topic they were speaking about was just as important for me to learn about as a topic that was presented on by fluent English speakers. I think it’s beyond the scope of this blog to go more into detail about this but it is definitely worth thinking about some more.

Today was intergenerational youth day at the conference! While themed days don’t affect the actual negotiation discussions too much, they do make it so that more of the side events at the conference center on this topic.

One event I went to for intergenerational youth day was a celebration for a new Guinness World Record of 100,000 climate change postcards put on a Swiss glacier. The celebration took the form of a panel in which NGO youth leaders from Uganda, India, and Switzerland discussed how they encouraged schools and youth organizations to write postcards against climate change, which were eventually put on a receding Swiss glacier to advocate that youth deserve a future too.

Personally, I felt a little skeptical about the initiative. While I absolutely think it’s inspirational that youth are speaking out against climate change, I questioned if there were too many negative impacts of putting postcards on the glacier. I wonder if school children would have felt as engaged if the postcards were sent to policymakers instead. I also found it a little sad when Switzerland said they had a hard time getting schools and youth organizations to join onto the initiative, as this is the reason they reached out to Uganda, India, and other countries to get more postcards in the first place. I wonder if the engagement of young children in the climate change movement may be lacking. Perhaps we could be doing more in schools to teach children the urgency of climate change. While this may seem a little far from the goal of the actual negotiations in implementing a rule book for the Paris agreement, it has potential to have similar importance in the future.

I think this is the first side event at the conference I attended where I was left feeling a little disheartened, or a little unsure about the impact of a supposed climate action. I was also left feeling like a lot more needs to be done in educating young children about the importance of climate change. I’d actually be really curious to hear others thoughts on this issue, if anyone has any reactions.

 

For those of you not at COP-24 and who want a source of the day to day outside of what we are giving on the blog, you may find the daily newsletters from ECO interesting and useful:

http://www.climatenetwork.org/eco-newsletters

Today the entire group went to visit Auschwitz. We know this isn’t why we came to Poland, but we all felt very passionately about taking the time to visit this important landmark. The site isn’t far away, only about 35-40 km, so we made the trip and spent a long time visiting. To say the least, it was powerful and emotional. By the time we were done at the main site, we didn’t have time to visit Birkenau, which was disappointing. It wasn’t an easy visit, but I think we were all glad we went to pay homage to the terrible atrocities that were committed there. I was proud that we were all able to talk about our emotions on the way home and over dinner as well, and to share some about what the visit meant to us.

Chris, representing the entire COP-24 Week 1 Delegation