The Days Are Shorter in Copenhagen

It's bloody cold if you've just arrived from Taiwan, lemme tell ya!

Today is December 8th, it's a Tuesday morning and the second day of the 15th Conference of Parties (COP15) for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). We've seen a lot and done a lot so far, though it's been less than what I had expected.

Let's start with the Conference of Youth (COY) that happened on the weekend leading up to COP. This was mainly the reason I came, because I needed to network with more people from Asia. For that reason, COY went well for me. However, I don't like to be a negative Gus but I can't just be polite and say it went well, it didn't. COY was a mess! There was very little structure built into the conference, people were often confused as to what we were doing (myself included), and so much time had been wasted due to inefficiencies.

The reasons for this I found out later on: the funding they had been promised didn't arrive until a week or two before the conference began. That alone could put the hurt on any major event. But more to it, the folks who were running it were already so overstretched with other duties that they were unable to give COY the attention it deserved, and it showed.

Mostly it was a lot of little things that either weren't done before hand or could've been rectified on the spot but instead took a day to do.

Things like:

• Not having signs posted with a schedule
• Not having visual aids during talks so that Non-English speakers could know what was being talked about
• Not having whiteboard markers in the seminar rooms
• Not preping presenters well for the Non-English speaking audience they were facing
• Not having proper guidance for open space sessions and trying to make 30 people all agree on a course of action

This is not to jab at the organizers of COY. In my mind, considering the resources they had at their disposal they did the best job that could possibly be done. But if anyone thinks that a conference like that is the best effort of the world's youth, they're sadly mistaken. We youth are intelligent and talented, though not yet organized, that's all that's lacking. We can do better, I'm convinced of it.

Before I close out this blog though, I would like to say Thank You to the organizers for doing anything at all. Without COY I wouldn't have met any of those incredible young people. As far as providing a space for people to meet each other, they did a fantastic job! Sometimes all you need is to sit us down in a big room together and say "go to it, meet each other."

--Tim
KHH Enviros Director
http://khhenviros.110mb.com
khhenviros@gmail.com