Season’s greetings from children to world leaders in Copenhagen

This was Pakistani Maria Aslam-Hyder’s message to the leaders at the UN Climate Conference, which took place Dec. 7-18. She was not alone in her wishes. Thousands of messages from the world’s children were displayed on flat screens around the halls of the conference venue, Bella Center, amid several booths of organizations dedicated to children’s issues. In addition, some children carried posters in demonstrations.

The city of Copenhagen also included several activities involving children. In the mobile science center in front of City Hall, primary school children learned about different types of energy as they either worked on solar cells or wind tribunes.

Older children went to the Energy and Water Science Center of Copenhagen for hands-on ways to supply houses with electricity and heat from renewable energy sources. But what could children bring to the negotiating table, while delegates from nearly 190 nations were having a hard time sealing a deal?

“Children often see what adults do not see, and say what adults will not say,” said a statement from Plan, a child-centered community development organization based in London. Their example regarding how children can contribute to the process is striking:

“It was children in Quebrada de Alajuela, Ecuador, who identified that the bridge which connects one side of their village to other was a major safety hazard particularly in the event of a flood. They took action to mobilize their community to press their local government to reinforce the bridge.”

Fifteen-year-old Akash Bharania, who came as a young journalist to Copenhagen from London with Plan, said young people need to know what’s happening in the climate conference.

“We need to know how the treaties which are being discussed here are going to affect us,” he told Today’s Zaman. “Think about somebody from the Pacific Islands. They may not have a country in five years.”

‘NGOs removed from negotiations’

However, most civil society groups were excluded from or had limited access to the conference starting in the middle of last week, for security reasons as high-level delegates started to arrive.

More than 45,000 people requested access to the Bella Center, which has a capacity of 15,000. About 22,000 successfully received accreditation passes.

The UN officials said no more than 1,000 nongovernmental representatives would get access to the Bella Center on Thursday, while only 90 would get in on Friday.

So civil society organizations at the center posted “NGOs removed from negotiations” signs on their vacant stands.

Meanwhile, activist networks Climate Justice Action (CJA) and Climate Justice Now had a plan to storm the Bella Center on Wednesday to protest the “exclusionary tactics” of negotiators.

Their success was limited, as the police were enforcing the strictest of measures. About 260 demonstrators were arrested. The “Reclaim Power” protest, joined by groups from around the world, followed a 40,000-strong demonstration last weekend, when more than 1,000 people were arrested.

As roads surrounding the center and the nearest metro station were closed on Wednesday in response to the protests, the NGOs had their voices heard. But the issue is how much influence they had on the decisions of the delegates, who struggled to produce a mutually agreeable text but had little success.

Tuvalu: Our sinking nation

It was the world’s fourth-smallest country, in the Pacific, which put up a fierce fight for climate change at the biggest-ever UN Climate Conference Dec. 7-18. Signs on a stand at the conference venue Bella Center read “Tuvalu, no place like home” and “Our sinking nation.” The photo displays in the same area depicted scenes from life in Tuvalu, a nation precariously close to sea level. The pictures document houses surrounded by the rising sea and people who face poverty as a result of no longer being able to farm as salty water invades their agricultural land.

Gilliane Le Gallic, president of the Alofa Tuvalu association, told Today’s Zaman that Tuvalu is an archipelago of nine islands east of Australia and north of Fiji. The inhabitants speak Tuvaluan, with an alphabet of just 16 letters. Ian Fry, a delegate from Tuvalu, declared the issue “a matter of survival” at the conference and asked for more aggressive curbs of greenhouse gas emissions than those being considered.

Its position was supported by Grenada, the Solomon Islands and other island states one by one on the floor of the Bella Center but quickly ran into opposition from oil giant Saudi Arabia, China and India. “It’s a question of life and death. It’s happening. We are disappearing,” Le Gallic said. The small state was rebuffed but received a lot of notes of appreciation.

“After we said that, many countries came up and said, ‘Thank you’.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a UN-sponsored scientific network, says seas are rising by about 3 millimeters (0.12 inches) a year. Its worst-case scenario sees the oceans rising by at least 60 centimeters (2 feet) by 2100, from heat expansion and runoff of melted land ice. Such sea-level rises particularly threaten nations on low-lying atolls, like Tuvalu and Kiribati in the Pacific, and Maldives in the Indian Ocean.