In 2011 countries met in Durban to further negotiate an international response to Climate Change. Here are some reflections on climate change, the international response to it and the thoughts and feelings of young people present:
1. Urgency
2. Together
3. Change
4. Renew
5. Start
6. Look at this Wall of Post-it Notes…
Look at this wall of Post-it Notes:
Those luminous sticky yellow squares contain everything that needs to happen in the next four years to prevent climate change. It was put together this afternoon in Bonn, Germany by a group representing a worldwide coalition of 700 NGOs.
Two things strike me about this picture:
Firstly, that there are only 4 years to get this right. The way negotiations are being shortened at the moment, that’s only about 100 days of formal negotiations. At the negotiations last year in Durban, countries agreed that they would deliver a global climate deal in 2015. If we are serious about preventing the worst effects of climate change, then that deal has to be very ambitious: rapidly cutting damaging emissions in richer countries and investing in renewable energy.
The post-it notes also explain how it can be a fair deal- reflecting that those who have polluted the most in the past must be the first to rapidly cut their emissions and help poorer countries deal with the effects of climate change. Four years may sound like a very short period of time to deliver a global deal on climate change. But many of the solutions and elements of the final deal are already there- they have been developed over the last 20 years.
The second thing that really strikes me about this wall of post-it notes, is that there are so few post-it notes on the wall. We know exactly what countries need to do, many of the elements are simple enough to be written on post-it notes, and there really are not that many of them. This four years is all about finding the right political motivation to turn this wall into a reality.
Take a look at the picture again.
Let it imprint itself onto your memory.
This is all we need to do- so let’s start pushing.
