Kathleen Coulter (2L)It's been just over a week since I've been back and I still feel like I've left my mind in Poland. I left before the conference was over and, ever since, something has felt incomplete. For two weeks, I had the privilege of attending the nineteenth session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP19) and the preparatory Conference of Youth in Warsaw, Poland. I'd been selected to join the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts (WAGGGS) delegation, on account of my involvement with the Girl Scouts and my passion for the environment. I could not have gone without the generous support of the Faculty of Law.
There were eight of us on the delegation, each from a different country. We represented Canada, the United States, Barbados, Ghana, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Poland and the Maldives. Each of us came in with our own experiences, our own expectations. But we worked together as a unit to further a common goal. We were each committed to sharing our key messages with the public, NGO representatives, and decision-makers. We all felt that a focus on capacity building was essential to any successful deal on climate change. Further, we believed particular attention should be directed towards young women and girls.
These messages hold true to my own personal beliefs. I have been involved with the Girl Scouts and have contributed to non-formal education for the past twenty years. I've taught English as a foreign language. I have seen the benefits of learning through doing. It is one thing to give direction, but quite another to give the tools allowing for success. How can we expect communities, especially in less developed countries, to successfully implement climate change policy, without first ensuring their individual abilities? Capacity building provides communities with the necessary skills and awareness, by delivering training, tools, knowledge, scientific expertise, and political literacy.
Gender sensitivity is an important element of this process. Climate change disproportionately affects young women and girls. Natural disasters and lack of resources exacerbate existing inequalities. Women and girls are more likely to die in a natural disaster. They are often responsible for gathering food and water, and make up the majority of the agricultural workforce in many countries. As the effects of climate change grow, this demographic is hit the hardest. But they are in a unique position to contribute to change. As we develop means of adaptation and mitigation, women and girls can directly apply these response methods to their daily lives.
As a teacher, I spent a year in the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Women and girls were natural leaders within the outer island community. The island would not function without their support. They provided food, water, cooking, cleaning, washing, childcare, healthcare and maintained active roles within the local government and church. This was an island already feeling the consequences of climate change. The coastline had eroded in my host father's lifetime, requiring him to rebuild his home further inland. Our family's well had become salinated due to rising sea levels and there was always the concern this would affect food sources. Developing the leadership skills of young women and girls is practical. We must use every resource we have in fighting climate change, and the population of young women and girls is a considerable force available.
We spent a month prior to departure in online meetings and training. Our delegation had to be fully prepared to deliver these messages. We wanted to convince all NGO representatives of the necessity of capacity building. Whether they were fighting for loss and damage, finance or intergenerational equity, we wanted them to understand that everything requires capacity building. We wanted to lobby lead negotiators and decision-makers, persuading them to support a capacity building work programme. We were insistent that any schedule or programme include a focus on youth and women. And we wanted to inform the public. We felt that the ten millions members of the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and the many people throughout our networks deserved to know what we were doing and why we were doing it.
In many ways, I think we were successful. Several of my colleagues and I led two workshops on capacity building at the Conference of Youth. By the end of conference, most of the youth constituency had heard our key messages and understood the application to their own objectives. I spoke with numerous NGO and industry representatives during the first week of COP, always sharing the importance of capacity building and gender balance. We organized an action, displaying signs advocating for capacity building outside of the plenary.
I'd like to think we were mindful of the public. I was responsible for the communications working group of our delegation, using social media to inform and educate. I participated in several media interviews and provided video to the Met Office film crew documenting our experience. I wrote an article supporting our key messages for an online magazine. I spent days orchestrating a virtual discussion between remote activists and advocates and the UN Secretary-General's Envoy on Youth, Ahmad Alhendawi. I am most proud of seeing that project to fruition. We held an informative Q&A, while reminding the youth envoy that the movement went far beyond those of us present at the conference. There were youth all over the world working against climate change.
Our contribution to the negotiations themselves though was more questionable. We actively lobbied lead negotiators and decision-makers. I had several meetings with negotiators from influential countries, pleading for a commitment to capacity building. Several of my colleagues attended closed negotiations, even giving interventions expressing our messages. By the time negotiations wrapped on Friday, little had been accomplished. It was disheartening to witness inaction at that level. It felt as though our work had come to nothing. I can't stand to leave it at that though. There's too much to be done to waste time feeling powerless. The one thing that I really took away from my time at COP19 is that by the time we've arrived at the negotiating table, we're acting too late. We need to focus our attention on local and national grassroots movements in the effort to rally our own governments to action. It may not feel as though our projects at home have any great effect. But it is at home where we will affect great change. Because if we can alter our government's stance before they've reached the negotiations, we have a chance of a successful deal.
~ Kathleen Coulter, 2L student, UAlberta Faculty of Law