COP17 opening ceremony

Just to give everyone a bit of background to set the scene of what happens at a COP. After being body searched and sent through a scanner upon arrival I walked around for a while trying to get my bearings. The amount of people is overwhelming, everyone is there for buisness and has a definate goal they are trying to acheive. Is amazing how insignificant you can feel walking amongst all the international delegates and representatives. Nick and myself watched the opening ceremony from the room next to the offical delegation room (which no NGOs were allowed into)- in our 'non-offical room' there must have been around 3000 people- the scale of this conference and volume of people is mind-blowing. App, 40 000 people have flown into durbs for this.

Every person gets a set of air phones so they can hear any translations so mis-understandings are not a factor. We heard Jacob Zuma, President of Chad and Vice-president of Zambia speak which was fascinating. Jacob Zuma spoke exceptionally well I thought and kept reitterating how SA should be aiming for a Green Economy. He also spoke about projects which are in the works for SA such as hydrological schemes and wind energy capture. The most interesting thing he said which I didnt know is that one small island state, Grapati, has already started being evaculated due to sea-level rise. So we have already began losing countries of the world due to human action :(

The hardest thing for myself and Nick to get used to was the formalities and protocol which goes into the whole process. Each speaker takes 5 min to welcome everyone correctly before he/she can even begin speaking...it seems crazy that time is wasted on formalities when there are so many issues that have to be tackled the next two weeks. The conference could probably be one week if there were not so many protocols. Also the countries which oppose a point which arises on the agenda also do so in such a polite, correct way. It is amazing to see such benign interaction among states with such different interests. Maybe the next few days will heat up with developing countries trying to make their voices heard.

Who speaks and who listens? Experiences from the first day of COY7 in Durban

COY7 stands for “Conference of Youth”, which happens as a gathering of youth organisations before the start of COP in order to give different youth organisations a chance to network and learn from each other, as well as about the COP process.

So, appropriately, our COP17 experience begins here: with the youth. And youth there were – 300 or so, packed into a lecture theatre at UKZN’s Howard College, bustling and waiting for the day to begin. Our team – about 6 of us – were feeling equally inspired after helping with registration and meeting a ridiculous number of delegates from around the world.

Diversity seems key – we learn from each other, share experiences and difference. But at the same time, unity forms an important underlying theme of the “global international youth climate movement”. It’s necessary for lobbying governments, for advocating change and forming a coherent force. But whose unity?

Conference of Youth plenery session, UKZN Durban

Treating the conference as an anthropological exercise raises many interesting questions about what I’d like to call (albeit rather snobbishly) the “politics of articulation”, or, the way in which stuff gets said, who says it, and who listens to it.

Impressingly there are lots of COY delegates from Africa – about half the delegation – with representatives from South Africa, Kenya, Malawi and many other countries. I was proud at this fact and felt a sort of entitled solidarity with the “African movement”, if it can be reified as such. Even though the people running COY sessions were mostly Austrailian or international, at least a lot of the delegates were local, I thought to myself.

But what does locality mean in the face of a global movement? Who speaks, and who gets listened to? In a lot of senses, “Africa” (the continent is sadly still not being diversified, even by myself) is being represented in global talks and movements around the world, just as it is at COY. But does this mean that “African” voice gets listened to in the same way in which other organisations from the global north get listened to?

I think that in a lot of ways, our ways of knowing and expression are listened to but not fully acknowledged or comprehended at these kind of gatherings. There are lots of African voices speaking out, but there is something very uncomfortable about the way in which we are ‘facilitated’ to speak by others, and the way in which they in turn listen to what we have to say.

Of course, the “global north”, in their experience and monetary advantage, do have a lot to teach us and “build capacity”, especially at the kind of political gatherings such as COP which require a specific kind of articulation to be taken even remotely seriously. And that’s what we need.

So perhaps, the “politics of articulation” debate is one to engage with at a deeper level, and not just the immediate proceedings over the next few days. In the long run, we need to be aiming to get African voice actually listened to, and not just heard, and we may need to put that on pause for the upcoming COP. But I’ll certainly be looking at how these ideas play out in the official delegation and civil society meetings next week.