My time at COP23 has officially ended! It’s been incredible to converse with leaders from across the World. It’s hard to put into words exactly how inspiring and simultaneously exhausting this experience has been, but I’ll try my best.
Arriving at the Conference of Youth was a great introduction to the processes of the UNFCCC and an excellent opportunity to hear the perspectives of other youth passionate about climate action. My colleague Keila and I spent the first day attending the opening ceremony and a couple events, and later touring around Bonn. Over the next 2 days, I continued to listen-in on events, and delivered my own presentation recapping some of the work I did over the summer, titled: “Building Resilient Ecosystems and Communities: Market-Based First Nations’ Environmental Stewardship Programs”. I spent time my remaining time meeting with youth from different countries. I was particularly impressed by a group of youth from “#Decarbonize #Decolonize”, who researched youth perspectives on climate change, were all from different countries, and were between the ages of 13 and 16.
In the first week of COP, I primarily attended interesting side events, including: “Counting what Counts: Better Practices for Accounting for Climate Finance” and “Insurance and Comprehensive Climate Risk Management – Addressing Needs of the Poor & Vulnerable”. I quickly got involved with YOUNGO, the youth constituency of the UNFCCC, and ended up delivering a speech on behalf of the YOUNGO Finance Working Group, where we called for developed countries to: provide additional finance for adaptation and loss and damage, acknowledge that the $100 billion roadmap does not sufficiently address the costs of climate change, and for a larger proportion of climate finance to be comprised of grants, rather than loans (which make up the majority of existing funding). This speech was a follow up to the policy paper YOUNGO submitted to the UNFCCC secretariat earlier in the week, which outlined our official policy stances, documenting youth working group recommendations on every topic of negotiations, including: Oceans, Agriculture, Gender, Health, Adaptation, Human Rights and more. It was really uplifting to see such a strong and consistent youth presence engaged throughout the conference
A few interesting highlights from both weeks were:
- The Trump administration: The U.S. was quiet at the conference, but did hold a side event where it promoted ‘clean coal’ and nuclear energy as solutions to climate change. Many participants attended the event at the start, only to lead a mass demonstration with over two-thirds of the room exiting at once, and peacefully protesting on the main stage outside the room.
- Meetings with government: In the second week, our group had the opportunity to meet with many interesting delegates: Elizabeth May, leader of the Green Party of Canada; George Heyman, British Columbia Minister of Environment and Climate Change Strategy; Jennifer May, Canada’s Deputy Ambassador to Germany; and Ken Alex, Senior Policy Advisor to Jerry Brown, the Governor of California. Our delegation asked them all specific policy questions, and were fairly satisfied with the constructive responses we received. For example, one of our key priorities for Ms. May and Minister Heyman was proposing a fully-funded youth delegation to future COP meetings, which both expressed interest in.
- Coal phase-out: On my last day, I attended the launch event of the Pushing Past Coal Alliance, which is jointly led by the Canadian Minister Catherine McKenna, and the United Kingdom’s Environment Minister, Claire Perry. Numerous national and sub-national governments have already joined, including British Columbia and Ontario. Even better, some of the alliance members have already phased-out coal, and joined in to support countries that are in transition, as well as put pressure on the larger emitters of the world. The event was interesting to attend, and appeared to be a positive sign that the end of coal power is on the horizon. However, it’s important to note that countries like the U.S., China, and Japan are not on board yet, and will need to be for the alliance to have a significant effect on global emissions.
Overall, COP23 was a great learning experience. However, most importantly, I left the conference reminded that international negotiations are only a small piece of the action we need to take to address climate change. In the end, it will be everyday people and communities who will need to change their behaviors and innovate to address the challenges ahead. We need stronger commitments from governments, but we also need to shift society’s collective consciousness to a more sustainable, inclusive mindset if we are to prevent catastrophic change.