Environmentalism isn’t just about making huge changes

In nine days, delegates from 194 countries will huddle together at the palm lined International Convention Centre in Durban, South Africa. The South African government delegation, headed by a women-trio, is ready to usher in the 19 year old framework for further talks. The annual meeting is receiving mixed albeit very tepid expectation views from policy analysts, negotiators, civil society and youth.

Two years ago, expectations ran high among the media during the Copenhagen talks which saw the world leaders gracing the event, throwing formal negotiations at the back burner. All the hopes went crashing down as the meeting turned out to be one of the biggest failures of international negotiations in decades, with 20 odd strong holds dominating the final outcome as the 150 others ‘hung-out’ at the plenary. Tuvalu, one of the most vulnerable Small Island Developing states (SIDS) went to the extent of saying that signing the accord would mean selling its future for ’30 pieces of silver’. The Copenhagen Accord has since been mentioned quite coyly at the negotiations.

The ‘Cancun talks’, a year later was attended by a thin civil society and nervous official delegates with preordained negativity. As I attended plenary after plenary, Ms Espinoza led Mexican delegation successfully re-instigated the faith in the process called the Kyoto and United Nations and infused life into its multilateralism. The critics of the process were proven wrong, yet again. This brought forth the brevity of the situation to the fore.

This year, I get ready to attend the negotiations with the same hope, affirming myself that three women (Ms Nkoana- Mashabane, Ms Edna Molewa, Ms Mxakato-Diseko) from post-apartheid Rainbow nation will take this talk in the right direction. Cancun, for sure addressed the easy issues. In South Africa, we see some big questions that need to be answered, ‘the future of the Kyoto – Do the parties love Kyoto as much as civil society does? ’ , ‘how do we put a price on forests – REDD+’, ‘ 1.5 degrees or 2’ are only some of the burning questions that the world wants answered. We might be far away from bringing a legally binding treaty, which essentially would mean, that the commitments would not be confined to the plenary but will bring the need for accountability in domestic reduction of their carbon dioxide emissions, internationally. But, we need to bring back the faith in the system and move forward in practice, for it is not just a matter of negotiating a legal text but of negotiating people’s vulnerability and survival.

Keeping with the increasing women participation to the process, the Indian government negotiation will be headed by the Hon Minister of Environment and Finance, Mrs. Jayanthi Natarajan. She is a supporter of “equality is the heart of the climate talks” and “competitive politics be shunned at Durban”. Let us see how much of this change of stand from the previous Minister gets converted to India’s participation at the Durban ground.

For all you people who think this is boring, attendance is going to be stellar both quantitatively and qualitatively with Leonardo Di Caprio, Angelina Jolie and Arnold schwazzernegger making it to the almost as cool as World Cup event. This is just the beginning to a train of fantastic two weeks of negotiations and politics watched and debated closely by environmentalists. Look for more on India’s journey and how the train braves the HEAT!

Environmentalism isn’t just about making huge changes, juggling on legal texts but about making small differences, one step at a time, to one life at a time.

I can be reached on Twitter: @pritiriyer, email: [email protected]