How slow can you go?

The first week of the COP Intersessionals is soon over and we will try and summarize our experiences so far. Unfortunately,  Harriet and I couldn't travel to Bonn until Wednesday, but that turned out not to be a problem, since many of the negotations had been put on hold for several days anyway.

SBI

At the moment, Russia is hindering all kinds of progress and the Subsidiary Body of Implementation (SBI) can't move forward.  The Russian Federation want to add a new item to the agenda, but no other country agrees on that suggestion.  The new item would deal with HOW the negatiotions are actually conducted and the issue of transparency. We believe that this item has come up since the last negotiations at COP18 in Doha, when the COP President took a decision on moving forward even though some of the countries didn't feel that they were done with the discussions.

Yesterday, there was an open discussion in the SBI plenary that we attended, but the discussion was still going on between mainly Russia and Fiji (representing the G77+China).   At time of writing, the SBI has still not officially opened as the agenda hasn't been adopted by all countries. Fortunately, there are still some items that can still legally be discussed under the SBI, like our "baby" Article 6 :)

Article 6

We have spend some time during the last days on networking and preparing for 2 events that will happened in the beginning of next week, where WAGGGS will be very much involved. One of them is the Dialogue on Article 6, where Harriet will give a presentation on WAGGGS as a lead practitioner of climate change education.  The other event is the launch of a newly written report on Youth Climate Action, (containing several WAGGGS case studies) where I will be moderating the event.

Action

We have also participated in a YOUNGO Action, highlighting the fact that the measurements of CO2 in the atmosphere recently reached a daily average of 400ppm.  We were asking the negotiators "how low can you go?" by doing the Limbo dance!

Gender

Last but not least, we've been following the gender discussions, both in the meetings with the Women's caucus and attending a UN Women side event on Gender Balance and Empowering Woman in the UNFCCC Process.  Many people agreed on the fact that not only do we need gender balance in participation at UNFCCC meetings, but we also need to work on capacity building, in order to increase women's self confidence and share our knowledge, at the same time as we need gender sensitivity at all meetings and in implementation.

YOUNGO

On a more personal note, we are enjoying the warm and sunny weather here in Bonn and working with the rest of the youth.  Unfortunately, YOUNGO is not very well represented here, since we are not so many and most of us are from Europe. However, today we are very to welcome Magda from Poland who will join the WAGGGS delegation during the next coming days.

Twitter

Don't forget to follow us on Twitter where we upload the latest news and updates from the meetings and discussions here in Bonn. For the moment you can read:

@WAGGGSdelegates: A key player in #SBI just said we're one of the most practical organisations working on #climate and he wishes we could help sort out current mess!

This blogpost will also be published on WAGGGS webpage.