Every year in late spring, government negotiators from all around the world gather in Bonn for two solid weeks of work toward forging multilateral solutions to climate change issues. While not as prestigious as the annual Conference of Parties (COP), being hosted in Warsaw this November, the Bonn Climate Change Conference is a crucial annual meeting where much of the work that manifests as treaties, protocols and COP outcomes actually gets done.
That meeting started Monday, and we’ve got a four person team on the ground to tracking government negotiators and helping you follow the proceedings as they decide whether and how countries will mitigate and adapt to climate change. Meet the team:
Sébastien Duyck - Europe / @duycks on twitter
Seb is originally from France. He’s a perpetual student (currently studying/teaching environmental law and human rights in Finland and other places) and happily engaged in capacity building and outreach around climate politics across Europe. Seb acted as our negotiator tracker on the ground in Bonn in April when the 2013 climate talks first got underway. He’s offered this ‘curtain-raiser’ to fill you in on what’s happened so far this year and what to expect in the coming weeks.
Tariq Al-Olaimy - Bahrain / @tariqal on twitter
Tariq is a veteran AaN fellow based in Bahrain, who helped us track the negotiations during last year’s COP in Qatar. He is a social entrepreneur and biomimicry specialist; co-founder of a social impact consultancy called 3BL Associates focused on the MENA region; and he helped found and helps coordinator the Arab Youth Climate Movement in Bahrain. Tariq will work with Seb in Bonn to help us keep tabs on the big picture as this round of climate negotiations unfold.
Munira Abdelkader - Saudi Arabia / @munirasustain on twitter
Munira is another AaN veteran who helped us track the negotiations in Qatar. Munira works for a sustainability consultancy in Jeddah - helping businesses adopt more sustainable practices. She also helps coordinate the Arab Youth Climate Movement in Saudi Arabia. Munira is in Bonn to help us launch an Arabic website to track climate politics in the MENA region.
Michalina Golinczak - Poland / @mgolinczak on twitter
Michalina is new to the AaN team and like most Polish people she’s also relatively new to the UNFCCC (check out her first post). She’s a social activist, co-editor for a Polish non-profit socio-political journal called “Recykling Idei” and a member of the newly established Polish Youth Climate Network. With Poland playing host to this year’s COP, Michalina will use this round of negotiations to help Polish readers get better acquainted with the UN climate talks and Polands role in unlocking climate change solutions. She’ll help us launch a Polish website dedicated to tracking climate politics.
I’ll be supporting our team remotely, discussing each day’s news on daily live-streams at 1800 CET broadcast on the AaN homepage (tweet your comments and questions to @adoptnegotiator) as well as helping send daily email updates on the state of play from our wider GCCA team (sign up here).
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About the author
Joshua Wiese is Adopt a Negotiator’s Project Director. He is based in San Francisco, where he spends most of his time thinking about how to use technology to make the world a better place.
