Bonn Climate Change Conference Pt 2

The youth within the Bonn climate change talks going on this week, are from a mixture of nations, UK, Nepal, Australia, German, French, Zimbabwe, Sweden, Denmark and others.
Many of them have also gone there out of choice and not getting paid for their efforts. (Including moi)

Thus if you were going to split this motley crew of climate campaigners into certain categories, you could go for the groups of -

Unaccredited: These youth turned up for the excitement, because they knew it was important and to check out the stuff going on in Bonn (talks, climate camp) which they could gain entry for.

Accredited: many of those from the UK were accredited via www.350.org, meaning they could enter certain UN talks and gain experience on what it was all about. Here’s a blog all about it – UK youth at UNFCCC

Young Friends of the Earth: Two people gained accreditation via the organisation that had 25 placements in all. Two out of 25, does not sound like much, but be assured that they were loud and passionate enough to kick up a good UN fuss.

UNFairplay:A group of youth were there to support smaller nations, who could not afford or have several negotiators at Bonn, giving them a bigger voice amongst those who actually are causing the most carbon emissions.

Adopt a negotiator: this scheme started of in Copenhagen, but gathered speed and lead to being part of YOUNGO– a youth movement that gained constituency status within these UNFCCC meetings. That we all then fell into.

But no matter if their gained entry to the conference or got paid for their efforts. What brought them all together was the aspect of action and making the negotiators discuss and act in making the low-carbon future we all would want and are aiming for.

All of these young people (or shall I say YOUNGO) met up daily to discuss what is going on and what actions can we take. We talked to negotiators from around the world and mingled with those from Non-Government Organisations. We even had an international youth meeting to discuss goings-on globally, COP16 in Mexico and what we could do together as a collective.
But did we actually make any sodden difference whilst at Bonn? did the actions we take lead to anything?

Blog 3 coming up.