Category Archives: Civil Society
June 23, 2012 Ecological Debt and Climate Justice After Durban: Time for Some Practical Politics
By Timmons Roberts*
Photo Cred: Orin Langelle/GJEP
Written December 21, 2011, posted March 21, 2012
In the utilitarian lecture-hall of the University of KwaZulu Natal in Durban, South Africa, some of the world’s top scholars and activists on the “ecological debt” spoke to a half-full hall. Impassioned speeches outlined the big idea: that rather than owing a huge economic debt to private and World Bank lenders and governments of the wealthier nations, the world’s poorer nations are actually owed an “ecological debt” due to the plundering of their natural resources by colonists and neo-colonizing corporations alike.
Who owes by this reckoning? The global North. The bill? By one scholarly estimate: US$1.8 trillion. Others argue that it is impossible to calculate the value of complex ecological systems, but the first level estimation is that the financial debt of poor nations is tiny in comparison and should be forgiven.
The microphone is passed around the audience in the risers, and finally finds its way to the hands of a Durban labor union leader.
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- Posted under Civil Society, Durban: COP 17
January 24, 2012 Latin American governments and civil society combine forces at COP17
By Guy Edwards
The COP17 was a watershed moment for Latin American civil society participation in the UNFCCC negotiations. Civil society organizations (CSOs) actively engaged with governments at the talks and, in turn, governments made efforts to reach out to civil society. This increased level of exchange can be observed on two levels.
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- Posted under Civil Society, Durban: COP 17, Latin America
December 9, 2011 Occupy COP17
By Adam Kotin and Cecilia Pineda
As negotiators determine the fate of the Kyoto Protocol on the last day of COP17, youth from all over the world, NGO members, and a few distinguished negotiators stormed the hallways of the International Convention Centre demanding climate justice.
Protesters began the march toward the opening plenary for the 7th meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) singing a mix of the South African miner’s song “Shosholoza” and chants for climate justice. Borrowing the human microphone from the U.S. Occupy Wall Street movement, they voiced their demands for the negotiators to come up with an ambitious, legally-binding treaty to reduce emissions.
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- Posted under Civil Society, Durban: COP 17
November 23, 2011 Youth Activism: Hope of a Better Climate?
By Linlang He
“This world demands the qualities of youth- not a time of life but a state of mind: a temper of the will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the life of ease”
– Robert F. Kennedy, “Day of Affirmation”
Cape Town, South Africa, 6 June 1966
The International Youth Climate Movement (IYCM) was first developed during COP11 at Montreal in 2005, referring to “an international network of youth organizations that collectively aims to inspire, empower and mobilize a generational movement of young people to take positive action on climate change”. Over the years, IYCM has offered its membership to coalitions and networks in over 100 countries. Each coalition or network within IYCM has had the opportunity to send a delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Indeed, China Youth Climate Action Network (CYCAN) became known to the world by attending the COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009 as a member of IYCM.
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- Posted under China, Civil Society
