We are students of the University of Utrecht and the University of Wageningen in the Netherlands. Last year, more than five hundred young people, including us, attended the UN Climate talks last year in Poznan. Daily movies about the conference were made and Dutch youths came in contact with the delegation of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). The students were appalled by the fact there are such extremes in representations between delegations. For example, the American delegation consisted of more than fifty delegates, yet the delegation of DRC had only two. Hence, the negotiating position of the DRC was greatly diminished, because the delegation couldn’t possibly attend every meeting.
During the conference some American and Australian youths decided to stand up to this unfair process and assisted several under-represented delegations. It appeared to be a win-win situation: the youths felt connected with the conference and the under-represented delegations had more manpower to cope with the enormous amount of work at the conference. An impression is given here (in English): (from 02:37 on).
We believe that this was a great way to show the political leaders and the rest of the world that this is a situation that needs to be improved. So this year, Dutch students have taken this initiative to the next level. To this end we set up Project Survival NL, a project that funds African youth to help out their own delegations (or a delegation of another African country) at COP15 in Copenhagen. We believe that not only youth from western countries should be a part of the COP15, youth from the under-represented countries should get this opportunity.
The main aim of Project Survival Netherlands is to contribute to more fair and equitable climate negotiations. We aim to achieve this in two ways: 1) contribute to the empowerment of under-represented countries from Africa by funding African youth to support the delegation of this country at the climate conference, and 2) by seeking (media) attention for the structural under-representation of less developed African countries and in particular for the youth and delegations that work together with Project Survival Netherlands.
We have been able to get nine youths from all over Africa to attend the COP15. We have an enthusiastic mixed group representing Malawi, Gambia, Kenya, Zambia, Swaziland, Guinea and Rwanda. They are working hard to let the voice of their nations and the African youth as a whole be heard! A few of them will be blogging about their experiences and their views on this site, so keep your eyes peeled!
Check out the Project Survival NL blog to learn more!