Alice’s Adventures in COPland
It is now almost six months since the adoption of the biggest agreement ever on climate change. On the 22nd of April a record 175 countries signed the agreement in New York on the first day it was opened. Sixteen countries have already ratified the agreement, and with the promise of the USA and China ratifying this year, it is possible that the Paris Agreement could come into force by the end of 2016, well before the anticipated year of 2020. With one of the weakest emissions reduction target and elections around the corner, the pressure is now on Australia to live up to its commitment to a 1.5 degree ambition in Paris by ratifying the Agreement, increasing its contribution to a target that is consistent with 1.5 degrees of warming and adopting policy measures that will get us there.
I had the opportunity to attend COP21 and witness first-hand climate change history. Here is my account of what happened in Paris.
“Climate change is the biggest global health threat of the 21st century.” I was in my third week of medical school; young, green and keen to change the world. This statement grabbed me and held on with a tight grip. I became part of a movement. Over the following six years, my passion for action on climate change grew in parallel to my degree and burst into full bloom at the end of 2015. This is the story of my adventure in the 21st Conference of Parties (COP21); the biggest climate change conference the world has ever seen.
We were a team of six medical students at a conference of 40,000. We came from Panama, Canada, Tunisia, Italy, Denmark and Australia. Our aim? To ensure that health would be adequately addressed in the COP21 negotiations and the final outcome. For all of our tiny team, this would be our first time at a UN conference. No prior experiences had really prepared us for what was in store for the next two weeks.
The Paris conference was split into different players. First, there were The Parties: seasoned negotiators, sent by their governments with their countries’ game plan to grind through the development of a universal agreement for action on climate change. Then, there were The Observers: representatives from NGOs (including us) and businesses, there to lobby The Parties on their take on the biggest issues. Thirdly, there were The UN Bodies. They couldn’t lobby directly, but would weigh in heavily on discussions by holding hundreds of high-profile side events. Finally, there were The Media: who would seek sensational stories in the halls and on the street.
As I look back on our journey, I marvel at our ambition to influence this agreement. We were armed with youth, passion and some knowledge of the health impacts of climate change. We entered the game with very little understanding of international negotiations and the naïve belief that we could truly make a difference.
A ‘typical COP21 day’ began with us leaving our Parisian Airbnb at 6:45, dividing into two groups. Skander, our delegation leader, and Kit, our ideas man and strategist, would walk to the Global Climate and Health Alliance meeting near Gard du Nord. The rest of us would travel on the special bus to COP21 to the Youth NGO constituency (YOUNGO) ‘spokes council’, to work together to represent the voice of the youth. Then we would split again to immerse ourselves in the hundreds of daily activities. Betta, who loved the drama and scandals of the negotiations, would attend the Daily Tck, to get an update on the previous day’s progress. Line, the policy nerd of our team, would try and get inside the plenary hall (where negotiations and announcements took place), or if that failed, follow intently on a TV screen outside. Anne-Lou and Sam, who each spent one week at COP21, wanted to share their skills and knowledge to other young people around the world through presentations, radio interviews and webinars. Above all other exciting activities, we would try to meet with The Parties (through emails, phone calls and politely knocking on country office doors) to talk about the importance of health when tackling climate change.
I tried my best to impersonate a sponge; to absorb as much information and as many skills as I could, and then try and squeeze them out for maximum impact. I would go to the Australian civil society and government briefings, attend a range of different side events and arrange meetings with people who I hoped would listen to me (or if not me then the WHO). I would move from one place to another many times and would often not see all of my team again until our meeting at the end of each long day. When we journeyed home at 10, our day was not over. We still had reports to jot down, articles and blogs to write and the occasional attempt to communicate to the outside world.
By the end of the first week, we felt we were getting into a routine. But of course, the moment we let our guard down, our world was thrown into chaos.
On the morning of Friday 4th of December, Skander and I went to a health event in the city, far away from the COP21 action. Whilst Skander presented on medical student climate change action – suddenly I received a message from our World Medical Association Allies: health had been removed from Article Two of the draft agreement.
It couldn’t have happened at a worse time for us. Kit and Anne-Lou were also outside COP21, leaving only Betta and Line to run from country to country in an effort to call on The Parties to keep health in Article Two. I awkwardly escaped Skander’s presentation to trek back to COP21 to raise the issue with Australia. I then joined the rest of our team in a mad dash around the world within the conference. By the end of the day we were exhausted, but excited. This sudden change had forced us to adapt and try out new tactics.
Few countries denied the importance of human health. But when so many other aspects of the text were being debated – Indigenous Peoples, human rights, financing and ‘Loss and Damage’ – not many were willing to risk further prolonging the negotiation process by bringing up another issue. Some countries looked promising, but as we progressed into the second week, the issue of health in the text was not raised by any of The Parties as they battled through the ultramarathon negotiations. Long days that extended well into the nights were taking their toll on all players.
Outside, Paris was ALIVE. The bureaucratic halls of COP21 were wildly contrasted with the impassioned cries of thousands of people from all over the world, who had gathered outside the gates, pushing our talks forward and warning us should we fail. I caught a glimpse of this in a community hall, bursting with people there to see Naomi Klein. She told us that we, civil society, were the ones with the power to make change. There, I also learnt of secret plans to thwart the French Government’s ban on marches. The recent terror attacks were very close to all of our hearts, but nothing was more important for people’s protection than the success of the climate change movement. I tried to make sense of these two parallel worlds: people working towards the same objective, but taking radically different approaches to solve the problem.
Back in COP21, conference President Laurent Fabius called a plenary on Saturday at 5:30pm. We hoped with all our hearts that this was the moment we had been waiting for. My supervisor from my recent intense internship with the WHO climate change team managed to secure me an extra UN ticket into the plenary hall. There I sat, in the hall filled with world leaders, pretending to be part of UN Habitat, hoping that soon the world would cross this all-important finish line.
An hour passed. Still we had heard nothing. All around me people were mingling as if they were at a cocktail party and not awaiting one of the most anticipated announcements in recent history. But I knew something must be happening behind the scenes. Away from my team, I watched as our WhatsApp conversation derailed wildly. The second hour drew to an end. Fabius took to the stage. A few words on the day’s progress and some typos that needed to be corrected. Then, suddenly, he announced that the Paris Agreement had been adopted.
Everyone in the hall took to their feet. We clapped, cheered, hugged and cried. Years of hard work by everyone in that room, and hundreds of thousands of people outside it, closed with Fabius banging a leaf-shaped hammer. I silently slipped out of the hall, ready to join my team and the rest of the conference to celebrate, as country leaders continued to speak well into the night…
The Paris Agreement is not perfect and it alone will not solve climate change. But Paris is a symbol of real momentum and commitment at a level never seen before. Health is in the preamble of the Agreement, but not in Article Two. Regardless of the wording, we worked the inception of the Paris Agreement as a public health agreement into the minds of The Parties and our Observer allies. This process of discussion and the final conclusion is what will shape the minds of leaders in the years to come.
At my medical graduation ceremony, the day after I returned from Paris, I knew that this event would mark the beginning of a long career of action on climate change and health. Because, even with the strongest action, the health impacts of climate change will become more severe over the following decades. This is the start of my quest. The spirit of adventure is upon me and the path is set.
