The Debate Begins

Monday the 28th November brought with it the official opening of COP17. The day began early with a youngo meeting that established the youths approaches to the conference and how they hoped to influence the negotiations at hand. In their meeting the global youth representatives used every opportunity to remind their colleges that what they, the youth, wanted from these talks was not another half measure by governments to prolong the fossil fuel generation. 6 of the members within the youngo meeting were even selected, by vote, to join the official plenary sessions. Although the selection process was open and fair there was a definite lack of African presence in those chosen. The main plenary sessions although late went on without a hitch, and unfortunately as expected the major leaders omitted the call for an extension to the Kyoto protocol or a legally binding agreement. The words of welcome from delegates like those of South African president Jacob Zuma were certainly warm. There was however the consensus that climate change is a devastating process that must be stopped and that the prior 20 years of stunted negotiations have taken far too long to have resulted in a lack of consensus. The official proceedings throughout the day followed suit. As a first time conference go-er the amount of formalities and greetings that preceded every parties statement was hard to adjust to. It is understood why they occupy this place yet the question that must be asked is, how much more negotiations could delegates get through if these endless greetings were removed from the official program.Along with the official proceedings cop17 also consists of many side events. One of these included a presentation by The Energy Research Institute, on India's response to climate change. This presentation consisted of an in depth look into local level mitigation measures that have been put in place by Indian local municipalities. This presentation not only included Indian officials but also academics, representatives of industry and other organisations. What this presentation showed was that even though these initiatives were of a local scale their principles could be put in place at an international level.

The final official session met in order to deal with a number of administrative matters and it also have the opportunity to parties to voice their expectations for the conference which lay ahead. Here again there was the consensus that there was a great opportunity for having up a legal agreement and that the time in Durban should not be wasted. Many parties like those of small developing island nations called for responsibility to am taken a developed nations for the sold they played in climate change and that developing nations should not bear the brunt of climate change alone. Observer organisations were also invited to voice their expectations and this is where the most inspiring calls came from. Pleadings like those of Gambia which noted that "No country is insignificant enough to be lost to the effects of climate change". Finally it was the turn of the African youth to voice their concerns. A member of the climate caravan from Nairobi, Ester, was given the honour of this task. She noted that "We cannot allow to leave durban without a legally binding agreement, it cannot be the death of the Kyoto protocol". It was inspiring messages like these that highlighted a day that was otherwise flooded by protocol.