'Turn the lights out when you leave'

I had a whole working day to spend in Copenhagen after my weekend workshop (earlier flights were prohibitively expensive). And I ‘did’ Copenhagen (spent two months there attending a summer school) many years ago. Moreover I needed to work- there were some tight deadlines looming. So I dropped by the Hub to see if I could call a favour, based on my lapsed membership from Brussels (well Brussels Hub lapsed not my membership). It seemed a better option than trying to work out of a Starbucks or an internet café. I tried calling and got no answer, so tried turning up to see what would happened. Hub Copenhagen is located in one of the gorgeous multi-court yarded buildings that can be found everywhere in Copenhagen, painted in three different shades of ochre

I rang the bell. Nils answered: ‘We closed down on Friday. We’re emptying it out now and transferring the lease’. I explained my situation / predicament – and he immediately and generously offered me a room to work from where they wouldn’t be drilling or hammering– ‘but we don’t have an internet connection anymore’. Hub Copenhagen had sadly met the same issues that closed down Hub Brussels. Too high office rents!
So I found a quiet room, took a chair and desk and sat down in strange, but familiar, environment and pushed out four hours work for clients in Switzerland and Italy. And I marvelled at how international my life has become: a Brit living in Belgium with a Dutch-based business working today in Denmark for clients in other countries! Wow, nobody told me this was a career option!

So, sadly, I can claim to be the last person to have worked in Hub Copenhagen. And you know what? Nils and his colleague had to go out twenty minutes before I had finished and - never having met me before – just said ‘will you turn out the lights when you go’. I miss Hub Brussels so much!

The Road to Copenhagen continued

Here's a link to the conference in the Hague about adaptation to global warming that I went to last month (the plenary session report is written by yours truly). At this moment I am hoping and praying that world leaders will come to realise that the common cause is greater than narrow sectarian interests (see Sarah's comment on my last blog entry for what could so easily be achieved).

Much of my work in the past year has been focused on climate change and, to a lesser extent policy and scientific input into Copenhagen, and so I feel a strong emotional attachment to the outcome of these negotiations. I don't think that a global conference has ever attracted so much attention and I also have an intuitive feeling that if these talks break down (and there is no commitment to producing a plan b) that the legitimacy of the whole system of global governance will lose its legitimacy. This could have major knock-on repercussions.

Today I read readers' comments on the Guardian about the negotiations and realised how few readers of this, one of the UK's most progressive mainstream newspaper, have any sense of optimism in the possibilities of global governance. So many readers believe that the world system can't be changed. I agree with them that there are huge inequalities in the world - but unless we are prepared to start addressing them through responding to this common threat, then we have no future on this planet. A society that does not believe that it has a future rapidly falls apart and, as the best placard I saw from Copenhagen says, there is no planet b.

Chance took me took another conference in the Hague this week, this time in the press rooms of the Dutch Government. This one was to celebrate 25 years of LEISA an organisation I have had the pleasure to work with, on and off, for more than seven years. LEISA has been documenting practices in Low External Input Sustainable Agriculture for twenty five years and advocating the use of approaches that are locally relevant (culturally, ecologically and economically). Such approaches are often more productive, and acceptable to small scale farmers, than high-tech intensive farming methods, which are often unaffordable to small farmers, harm ecosystem functioning and often fail under sub-optimal productive conditions. After the ballyhoo at Copenhagen about emission targets and adaptation funding dies down, the real work of adapting the world's food systems to the effects of climate change will begin. Hopefully there will be some money to help this process. Agriculture is responsible for something like 30% of global CO2 emissions (when one takes upstream and downstream effects, such as fertiliser production and distribution into account) and is the economic sector that will have to make the biggest changes to adapt to climate change. In Uganda the 'coffee line' (the altitude at which it is economically feasible / possible to grow coffee) is moving upwards in response to increased temperatures). In Nepal the same true is true for apple trees. Such changes will bring about local resource conflicts and endanger world food supplies (similar stories could be told about staples such as rice, maize and wheat- though these are more related to the lack of agricultural biodiversity bought about by reliance on just a few hybrid varieties). Our civilisation, and its values, rely on agriculture - to feed all the fashion and web designers, counsellors and even firemen and doctors who make up our societies today. LEISA and its followers are a good starting point for establishing a people and planet friendly agriculture.

Possibly more on this topic to follow but I have a pressing deadline ahead.

The Road to Copenhagen

Researching the background to the COP15 next month has led me to do an inordinate ammount of Googling (which I accept is not entirely carbon neutral) checking facts and figures, the various groupings involved and the gap between rhetoric and reality. One of the key sites is the COP15 home page . It has a good number of new articles from different sources, though perhaps not suprisingly little or nothing about Climategate .

One of the best articles I read there is by UN Climate chief Yvo de Boer who summarises the main challenges at Copenhagen as being
1. How much are the industrialized countries willing to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases?
2. How much are major developing countries such as China and India willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions?
3. How is the help needed by developing countries to engage in reducing their emissions and adapting to the impacts of climate change going to be financed?
4. How is that money going to be managed?

These last two questiosn were the ones driving the conference that I attended last week. The more you delve into these waters the murkier they become. More to follow on this topic when my article gets approved (factually rather than politically) and published.

Backroom negotiations?

Much of the news about the forthcoming Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change is a sort of "will they won't they" discussion about setting clear and binding targets for reducing carbon emissions in the foreseeable future. By now the science is pretty indisputable - so the discussions will come down to political and distributive effects. Who is going to bear the brunt of the cuts? And can the political leaders sell these targets to their electorates (and industrial lobby groups)? But there are other issues apart from emission reductions that also need addressing.

Countless communities in the world are already suffering the effects of climate change. These vary considerably. In the Southern Andes glaciers are massively retreating, leading communities to abandon age old settlements as they have an inadequate supply of fresh water. In sub-Saharan African extreme weather conditions threaten the livelihoods of pastoralists and farmers alike. In Bangladesh millions face increased incidence and severity of flooding. Some countries may disappear completely - as dramatically highlighted in this unusual location for a government cabinet meeting.

Much of the work that I have done in the past year has focused on documenting these issues, the responses at ground level and the need for the policy community to support such iniatives. In Africa farmers face the challenge of adapting their cropping or grazing systems to more intense weather conditions and prolonged periods of drought. In South East Asia the draining of peatlands (often for commercial plantations) has the potential to release millions of tons of CO2 (although re-wetting abandoned peatland has the potential to absorb large amounts). Elsewhere in the world grassroots and participatory initiatives are developing new techniques for coping with the increasing risk of hazards becoming disasters and for adapting to climate change. While the scale of the problems is enormous the inventiveness of local communities and social entrepreneurs is inspiring. Over the last year I have been honoured to work with Christian Aid, Drynet , Wetlands International and Cordaid in documenting these experiences and initiatives.

Helping countries and communities to meet these challenges has to be a priority at Copenhagen too. This can take the form of technical assistance in becoming more prepared for disasters and need to include compensatory mechanisms for things like carbon sequestration. This will be the subject of a conference to be held in The Hague on Thursday (26th November) which will be organised by Hier a Dutch 'platform' organisation (we call them umbrella organisations in the UK - so it shows I am starting to go a little bit native). Its part of the build up for Copenhagen - to get climate change adapation in developing countries firmly on the agenda. Speakers will include the Dutch Development Cooperation Minister and the lead negotiator from the G77 (who is the Director General of the Maldivian Ministry of the Environment, Energy and Water).

One of the reports that I edited this summer was commissioned for this conference. I received a hard copy in the post today (it is always nice if a client remembers you that way). I mailed her back to say thanks and asked how the conference went and was told it was this week. "Would I like to come?" Well why not I'm not overworked at the moment, have never seen the Peace Palace and have promised myself that I should get out and spend more time networking with my clients. While I am replanning my Wednesday and Friday, so as to absorb a lost working day, I get a phone call from the organisers of the conference (fifteen minutes after having subscribed) asking if I would be a rapporteur for their morning session - as they need someone to write up the events for their publicity and lobbying activities. So I get a 'front row seat' for the build up to the Copenhagen Conference! Doubtless I will have more to say on this topic over the next few days. For the rest of the evening I think I will just marvel at how my networks link up.