Part of our Team in Copenhagen

Project Survival Media launched forward in August 2009 after a successful launch party that raised nearly $1000.00 and celebrated the birth of a global youth journalism network.

Our first Team Leader conference call represented India, Singapore, Lebanon, Egypt, Togo, Argentina, Brazil, England, the Netherlands, Australia, the US, and Canada. We soon released our application for the general teams and within 16 days we received 200 applications, testament to the need our program was beginning to fill.

By November we had raised $46,000.00 and at the end of our program we had engaged nearly a hundred youth journalists, brought a team of 18 young people to Copenhagen, and produced blogs, photo essays, and 6 mini-documentaries.

Even though Copenhagen was an extreme disappointment, failing to secure a fair and binding international climate deal, the negotiations were an important step in building an international civil movement. PSM was an important player in this effort, using new-media tactics and tools to urge passage of policies that “safeguard the survival of all countries and peoples.” Our bottom line: To make sure that the survival message of peoples around the world penetrated the political dialogue.

Project Survival Media was created for young people to report on these very issues and strengthen the dialogue on what is possible in order to ensure our survival. We are launching a new part of the program focused on solutions, which we hope will draw some big attention on the cutting edge technologies, ways of thinking, and opportunities out there for our local communities and national governments to replicate. We hope to answer the all too important question of the year, “Do we have to invest in dirty energies because we just don’t have enough clean energy available.”

Project Survival Media’s success on a tight time line and shoe string budget in mobilizing youth journalists, shows that our new program Solutions for Survival is also set up for success. The youth we worked with are hungry for a program like this to continue.

We will take their enthusiasm for reporting on climate change and combine it with new direction and a new program to focus on solutions, especially, solutions of women. With the talent of our story tellers, we will create transformative media that could not come at a more important time.

Join us. Support us.

All Images ©Robert vanWaarden

Images ©Robert vanWaarden

At the Bella Center metro station (Sara Engström)

Since I live just an hour’s train journey away from Copenhagen, I decided to commute between Lund (my hometown) and the COP15 conference. The morning trains were full of people with UNFCCC badges of all colours hanging around their necks – there were delegates, press people, IGOs and NGOs.

One day last week I was sitting next to two delegates from the Swedish delegation, and the next day in the seat next to me was a delegate from Congo (I don’t know which Congo he meant though). As fellow passengers, all three of them were genuinely nice people. I could sit there and have a small chat and even ask them to keep an eye on my things while I went to the toilet. No problem. When sitting next to somebody in the train, you are playing the role of yourself – usually a quite polite and friendly figure.

However, as soon as the four of us – the two members of the Swedish party, the delegate from Congo and myself – got inside the Bella Center, we were immediately divided into separate blocs. We isolated ourselves in the contexts that we belonged to and focused on what we wanted. Sitting down and having a chat with somebody in another position like that is just out of question.

I went to Bonn in August. This was the first UNFCCC negotiation that I participated in. I was then at a quite early stage in my involvement in the youth movement, and travelled down to get some useful experience. I really did learn a lot. It was in Bonn that I realised what a limited perspective I had had (and probably still have) on climate issues: strongly influenced by attitudes of the Western society. At that conference, I had the ability to speak to basically all the delegates and it suddenly became so clear to me how developed and developing countries were lining up on opposite sides – constantly blaming each other for inhibiting progress. They both think that the other side is not showing enough will and commitment. Developing countries think that developed countries are not taking the lead as they should, developed countries that this is impossible to do due to the attitudes of developing countries. Having understood this vicious circle, the problem suddenly became a much more complex one to me as well.

When speaking to delegates, I always get the impression that they are doing the best that they can in their positions. When they put forward their arguments and explain how they reason, everything seems to make perfect sense to me. In Bonn, I found myself having full understanding for both the delegate from Lichtenstein, who said that basically all of his country’s emission cuts will be made through offsets, and for all the delegates from developing countries who emphasised that developed countries should really start by cutting their own emissions (and increase funding, of course).

This was absurd. When I think about it, I realize that I find Lichtenstein’s position absolutely wrong. I don’t think offsetting is the way to combat climate change, and I fully agree with poorer countries that rich countries must take some responsibility and focus on their own emissions.

However, I find it difficult to win that argument. When speaking to the delegate from Lichtenstein, or listening to what the politicians in Sweden are saying, I don’t know what I could say or do to prove them wrong. The reason being that they are using arguments based on values that are the core in our society, values that I have been brought up with and am not used to questioning.

Everyone has started saying that the situation is getting increasingly more dangerous. Everyone is talking in terms of saving humanity and saving our planet. Everyone says that they are committed to taking action.

Still, developed countries again and again show out to be more anxious about saving the economy and – what comes with it, our way of life. And naturally with this attitude, a lot of measures that need to be taken become impossible. Hence, to question what politicians in Sweden, the EU, the USA and so on are saying is difficult. Not because there are no counter-arguments, but because these question basic values – the core principles of society.

When politicians in the EU discuss whether emission reductions should be 20% or 30% by 2020, even though at least 40% would be required, I find myself in some way accepting that. Even though I know that this is not close to being sufficient, and will probably have catastrophic consequences. However, I’ve learned that everything except these proposed targets is economically impossible. Which equals absolutely impossible in every aspect.

So this is one of my big dilemmas. How can I express my opinions on how I think that developed countries should act, without sounding unrealistic or naïve? I don’t want to be seen as a radical when I’m arguing that we must set up targets that, according to science and not to the economical frames, will avoid disastrous climate change. I know that such goals are realistic, but they require a change of attitudes. What is then the best way of changing attitudes?

I asked the delegate from Congo about how he thought that the negotiations were going. He said that the whole thing was arranged by rich countries beforehand already. That was his immediate answer, like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The delegates from Sweden were like most people in general. I actually thought they seemed really friendly. Still, right now it is people like them – who could just as easily have been my neighbours – who are not being ambitious and daring enough, and are thereby denying people in other parts of the world their right to live.

After some in-depth contemplation of this complex dilemma, I’ve found out that there is still just one solution. It is obvious that the developed world must change its values – some of the core principles in our society. After all, it is a question of either putting money or lives at a risk. Surely, no civilised human being should hesitate with that decision.

There is no chance that dangerous climate change can be stopped if developed countries are not willing to change their way of life and their values. Therefore the most effective thing that one can do as a citizen in one of these countries is, simply, to dare to be critical.

It’s the final day of negotiations, and I don’t think any of us knew what to expect exactly. I know that we certainly didn’t expect that our leaders would magically & suddenly grow a conscience and throw traditional political deal-making protocol to the wind in favor of saving humanity. But maybe we dared to dream a bit . . . maybe we thought that our vigils, our protests, our actions, our pleas, the mountains of emails that have been pouring into our electeds’ inboxes that poor little interns have to sift through . . . maybe we thought some of that would help them aim a little higher, at least pretend to respect human life, no, ALL life, enough to make a real deal and save life on this planet. Maybe we thought the science would convince them.

While the final text has yet to emerge from COP15, all signs (including world leaders’ orations this morning) point to a treaty that will facilitate the impending apocalypse. Most notably, POTUS Barack Obama, once hoped to swoop in as a last-minute game-changer, stood in front of a microphone today to deliver a flat, uninspired speech confirming the US’s laughable carbon emissions targets: 17% by 2020, and 80% by 2050. Perhaps out of embarrassment, he didn’t even bother providing the baseline year for those targets, but we’ll assume that it’s consistent with earlier reports – 2005.

For those of you whose eyelids are drooping at the numbers, I’ll sum it up quickly by saying that that we need to commit to reductions of 40% below 1990 levels by 2020 to stabilize the climate and not threaten the lives of millions of people around the world.

So, when an hour later I received an email from Organizing for America, the group of dedicated organizers who brought you the Presidency of Barack Obama, I was a bit puzzled. Were they apologizing to me already?

They were not. They were sending me a holiday card. From the President. Who just told me through a live stream from the heavily guarded Bella Center that he’s like, totally okay with displacement, hunger, lack of water, resource wars, and death for millions of people on the planet.

“Happy Holidays, Persian Girl!” was shouted to me by groups of friendly Americans from around the country in a montage, before I was treated to a special appearance by the Big O himself, wishing me Happy Holidays & signing a card made out to me.

Possibly they’re wishing us happy holidays now because they know they may only have a few more years to do so before we’re dead of some climate change related affliction? Happy Holidays indeed.

[ Click here for a more positive take on COP15. ]

Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed speaking to a crowd in Copenhagen this week

I’ve been sitting all day in an amazing media hub (and bar) that tcktcktck has set up here called the Fresh Air Centre, watching journalists and bloggers and UN spokespeople come in and out. I’ve been editing stories for Project Survival Media and youthclimate.org, trying to get the word out about the events we’ve been locked out of inside the Bella Center. And I was sitting here when someone announced a report had leaked from the UN that says the current commitments are going to put us on track for 3 degrees global temperature rise, and 550 ppm of CO2.

It’s hard to explain how much of a disaster it could be if this is the agreement the leaders sign tomorrow. An NGO delegate from Peru (I think, although it might have been somewhere else in the Andes) sat in here today telling us about the flooding the mountainous regions are receiving from the melting glaciers. And how people’s entire livelihoods are threatened by the rapid disappearing of their water source. This morning I read an interview with two kids from Nunavut, where Arctic temperatures are rising twice as fast as the global average, and they talked about how permafrost melt in their town has been so bad it’s destroyed the only bridge connecting its two sides. And of course there’s President Nasheed.

Mohamed Nasheed, the president of Maldives, has emerged as one of the true heroes of this conference. The countries arguing for targets based on science and justice here have, not surprisingly, been all from the global south. Not surprising, because while they’re responsible for a fraction of the mess we’re in, they’re suffering, and are going to suffer, the overwhelming majority of the effects. Nasheed has been part of the 350 movement to bring back atmospheric CO2 levels to 350 parts per million, to keep nations like his from literally disappearing. If there are two things you do today, you need to 1) watch the video above and 2) call your MP, and tell them how angry and embarrassed you are that Canada is not doing its part to meet this goal. You can find the text of his talk here.

He talks about being in prison four years ago, fighting for his country’s independence. He talks about how there were times when he felt like the doubters were right, that they would never be free. And how while the dictatorship “had the guns, bombs and tanks… we had no weapons other than the power of our words.” That’s what they have now. (And the moral authority of committing to becoming the first carbon-neutral nation in a decade). It is so important that they win. If sea level rise doesn’t completely drown out the Maldives, ocean flooding might still ruin their freshwater sources. Someone from Bangladesh asked him today what he thought about his people needing to migrate. He said,“In terms of migration… I can move. But you can’t take all the butterflies. You can’t take the language, you can’t take the culture, you can’t take the songs, you can’t take the colour and you can’t take everything that is you.”

Now you know why it matters that the draft agreement commits to completely insufficient goals. It’s great that the US is going to contribute to a $100 billion climate mitigation and adaptation fund by 2020, even if the standoff with China over transparent spending of this money is a distraction here. I was so happy when I heard Hillary say that this morning. But it’s nowhere near enough. According to the Guardian, the UK-commissioned Stern review says these kind of targets mean up to 170 million more people become vulnerable to severe coastal flooding, and over half a billion more at risk of hunger. It’s important that tomorrow our leaders agree not to sign onto a bad deal. I’m convinced now. A bad deal tomorrow, locking us into these kinds of targets, is worse than a good deal in six months or a year.

It’s important to seal the deal. But not this one. We need to talk about what comes after Copenhagen. We need to keep the momentum going.

A slideshow from tonight’s vigil in Copenhagen, urging world leaders to rise to the historic occasion and sign a real deal for climate justice.

(Photo credit: Kris Krug)

Canada’s federal target is 3 per cent below 1990′s level by 2020, equivalent to 20 per cent less than 2006′s level, a target wholly inadequate to address the demands of science and justice that the climate crisis now presents. I am sad to say that Canada has also failed to take a leading role at the talks, instead actually presenting one of the major roadblocks to a fair and legally binding deal. (And all of this is not to mention the public shaming the Canadian delegation received at the hands of the Yes Men).

Why is my government’s performance so troublesome to me? Having spent two weeks in the Arctic this summer, I experienced the land, so far distanced from the stereotypical images of the Arctic I had imagined pre-expedition. The image of snow, ice and polar bears is one of rapid decline. With frightening predictions that polar ice will be non-existent within 30 years, this is no longer an issue we can ignore.

On my expedition this summer, the drastic changes occurring in the North became particularly evident during our hike to the Arctic Circle through Auyuittuq National Park – which means “the land that never melts” – (near Pangnirtung). I had mentally prepared myself for snow, ice and freezing temperatures. Although we crossed frozen rivers that were run-off from the glaciers we could barely see at the tops of mountains, this was as close to snow as we could get.

Seeing this beautiful but so unexpected land was a huge wake-up call. Getting sunburned swimming at the Arctic Circle was my breaking point. How can we continue to watch our world melt away? Having talked to the Elders and the children in Pangnirtung, we saw the unbearable effects of climate change, and could see how climate change is no longer just an environmental issue but also an issue of a way of life, of traditions and of culture.

Canada is known as a promoter of cultures, a peaceful and welcoming country, but with our government’s unwillingness to protect its own citizens, can we still live up to this reputation? The people of the North play such a vital role in our country and we should be taking what’s happening in the poles as a warning beacon as to what will happen in the rest of the world.

“I think it might be illegal to have a climate change presentation without a drowning polar bear.” It was day two of the Development and Climate Change side event and behind the young academic from the University of Hawaii, a giant image of a polar bear floating on a tiny chunk of ice materialized on the screen. A “charismatic megafauna,” she called it with irony in her voice. Beside her on the panel, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, former president of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference, calmly made a note.

It was August of 2007 when I first had the privilege of hearing Sheila Watt-Cloutier speak. I was on Baffin Island in the Eastern Canadian Arctic working with youth concerned about climate change and she gave us a keynote address. Set to the backdrop of the Sylvia Grinnell River, where a fisherman pulled Arctic char from the water, the beauty of the landscape was only surpassed by the grandeur of Watt-Cloutier’s words. Though the basement studio at the Copenhagen Koncerthuse was somewhat less majestic than the park in Iqaluit, the words were no less inspiring.

“In the Arctic,” she said, “we don’t talk about the polar bears.” It was a phrase I’d heard her say before and one that moved me then as it does now. “In the Arctic, we talk about the people.”

It’s a message that haunts those who hear it. You see it resounding in each video clip of melting glaciers and each powerpoint presentation with a polar bear image. You hear it in radio programs and podcast and read it in books on climate change and headlines about endangered species. It is the message that the Arctic is not a wild, uninhabited place, with threatened animals, but a lived environment with threatened communities and people. In Kimmirut and Pangnirtung, hunters are facing unpredictable weather and dangerous conditions on the water. Across the Northwest Territories, ice roads, the arteries of Arctic transportation are melting, further isolating remote settlements. In Tuktoyaktuk, the community is being washed away by rising sea levels and an eroding coastline.

This is the face of climate change. This is the species that is affected by a warming planet. We are the charismatic megafauna.

Civil society groups have played a crucial role in advocating for a fair, ambitious and binding deal from these talks. As observers, they can be invaluable in making sure our representatives are responding seriously to the gravity of the climate crisis. And now they’re getting shut out almost entirely from the final stages of these negotiations.

Yesterday, youth in the Bella Center staged a sit-in to demand negotiators listen to the more than 11 million voices that have signed the tcktcktck petition to get a real deal. Today, they’re responding the silencing of civil society groups inside. This is what it looks like when our voices are silenced.

Without us from Sébastien Duyck on Vimeo.