The side event was heavily anticipated by COP24 attendees who had to line up to enter the event. The room was packed way before the event was supposed to start. There was a heavy security presence because an Action (a demand\/protest) was organized for the side event. While waiting outside the room, I could hear \u201cshame on you\u201d and \u201ckeep them in the ground\u201d being chanted inside. Those of us outside joined in. After the protestors were escorted out by security, the doors opened again, and I was able to enter the room to hear the panelists.<\/p>\n
Winberg was clearly facing difficulty defending his position supporting coal industries. When someone from the audience asked him why the Department thinks it is necessary to reduce emissions from coal plants when Trump has been calling climate change a hoax, he went on to talk about how we are privileged because we don\u2019t use wood and fire to cook like people do in many other countries, and that we are not appreciative of our privilege. It was completely unrelated. Since he\u2019d been on the job for a year, he had worked to make the coal industry more efficient, and since nobody had told him to do otherwise, he would continue.<\/p>\n There\u2019s nothing more to say.<\/p>\n Saudi Arabia was being difficult in the meeting to draft the guidelines for GCF. He went on to say that the committee does not understand what they are doing by trying to include a mention of the 1.5 C Special Report in paragraph 7, so the Saudis have to enlighten them. They made the effort to block the mention of the IPCC report wherever they could.<\/p>\n The Pavilion erupted with giggles when the president said this sentence. I wasn\u2019t sure if he said it as a joke or whether he really did not know what SDGs (Sustainable Development Goals) are. He then went on the reference the \u201cIPPC\u201d report twice and also said \u201cI\u2019ve been told to read from a statement, but I really don\u2019t want to do that. Anyway, I guess I have to return to it\u201d in the middle of his speech. The next day, however, the President of Maldives called on all parties to support the IPCC 1.5 C Special Report on behalf of all small island states, so I suppose his statements the previous day were for giggles\u2026<\/p>\n In the Q&A, one participant raised the point that there were five men on a panel about local adaptation projects, when, in fact, women tend to be actively involved in the household, farming, or other work as breadwinners. This point is especially true in rural areas in developing countries since men often migrate to urban areas in search for better economic opportunities. One of the panelists explained that their adaptation projects address gender imbalances in rural areas and include women in implementing adaptation projects. It was unfortunate that there were no women in the panel, but it wasn\u2019t the panelists who organized the event.<\/p>\n It was a grim moment for the LDCs knowing that there\u2019s no finance being discussed for L&D in the Katowice text currently being renegotiated at the time of writing. The developed countries are completely trying to scrap away L&D according to Adau, they kept pushing discussion on this issue until finance came up under Articles 9.5 and 9.7 last night, and they\u2019re attempting to merge the issue under adaptation. But the reality is that L&D requires at least double the amount of money that has been allocated for adaptation so far. Adau left the room early to return to negotiating with other countries. A gentleman from Bangladesh mentioned that his country is attempting to pilot a 2-year loss and damage national mechanism, which was a ray of hope.<\/p>\n COP24 has been a crazy experience. Diplomacy at work is sometimes undiplomatic. Below are some quotes that I heard\/read at some events. \u201cNow that we are done with the skit\u201d, we can move on to our speakers for today. – Moderator Wells Griffith in a side event titled \u201cUS innovative technologies spur economic dynamism\u201d on … Continue reading Guess Who Said It<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":963,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions\/963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"8e42cfbb-3a48-4a56-aa4b-d79e234c4c83](\"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/12\/8e42cfbb-3a48-4a56-aa4b-d79e234c4c83-1.jpg\")
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