Thinking back to before COP….
Five days after arriving in Doha and it feels like a month. Last Thursday night I arrived late in Doha airport and had my first drive to the hotel. As tired as I was I was woken up by the fast and abrupt driving of the shuttle driver. Once in the hotel it was great to see fellow Sierra Student Coalition Delegates and have some nutella midnight snacking. The past weekend start with a group of us participating in the 8th Conference of the Youth. This is the International Youth meet up before the Conference of the Parties where we not only strategize but create meaningful relations with each other. The agenda of the weekend consisted of big group anti oppression session, workshops, regional meeting and introduction to the Youth NGO (YOUNGO) group. See below the reactions of some SSCers who attended this inspiring event:
SSC at COY8 from Adriana Gonzalez on Vimeo.
From the outside to the inside....
As I arrived in Doha I could see this city was different from home. From my hotel to the shuttle stop is a sandy walk surrounded by furniture store and carpet stores. We also had the opportunity to visit a big mall with an ice skating rink inside. Then we go into the Qatar Conference Center for the COP18. As we are inside you can see a giant spider sculpture, in door decorative pool and giant television. Between all this, young people from around the world are telling their own stories of growing up vulnerable to a disrupted climate system. In Qatar we can see a big modern building and more traditional setting that don’t quite fit together, in parallel we see a very clear message of urgency from youth in the COP and negotiators not quite fitting into it.
As the Sierra Student Coalition we come here to strengthen the youth movement and push, negotiators to be more ambitious and make them understand the urgency of this issue. For those of us that have been to a few of these negotiations it’s no big news that.. There is no big news. But still we are here; it might be that we love to have new UNFCCC badges every year, but its definitely more than that. As organizers we know that our organizations and campaigns need to grow and this space provides that. Even more, as we are moving our communities beyond fossil fuels, we know that there is a need for political structures to globally move to a more sustainable and just world. Lets see some of the reactions of the first days of COP from the SSC delegates:
Some thoughts form Doha from Adriana Gonzalez on Vimeo.
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