GLOB(2)L P(0)WER SH(1)(4)T

In a message to youth today at Global PowerShift, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Executive Secretary Christiana Figueres emphasised that 2014 needs to be the milestone for which the international climate movement plans for.

500 climate activists from 133 different countries are gathering for Global Power Shift in Istanbul, Turkey, a major summit organized by the international climate campaign 350.org, dedicated to building a global youth movement to solve the climate crisis.

After the summit in Istanbul, participants will return to their home countries to help organise national Power Shift summits, mobilisations, and other climate campaigns.

Speaking to ‘Generation C’ (Climate), as Figueres coined the youth activists in the audience, she took the opportunity to remind climate activists that 2014 will see COP20 being hosted in Lima, Peru, and should see the introduction of a draft global climate agreement, to be finalised in 2015 at COP21 in Paris-Le Bourget.

Planning ahead, Figueres expressed the need to “Pour efforts towards a draft agreement in 2014″, and reflecting on lessons learned from Copenhagen she warned, “Do not plan for 2015, if you do then you will be too late”

This puts the recent disruption of progress in the SBI into greater context, and stresses the need for urgency in reaching consensus and agreement between parties. With only 18 months until the Peru COP, key areas - amongst many others- in a legally binding 2015 climate deal that require convergence includes; the review of the long-term global temperature rise limit; closing the emissions gap; climate finance; market mechanisms; a loss and damage mechanism; and technology transfer. It also puts greater pressure on the need for a productive COP19 in Warsaw, and for the UN Secretary General to succeed in his high-level climate meeting of world leaders in September 2014, and get countries to commit to ambitious targets that meet what is required by the science.

Figueres was under no illusions in terms of what lies ahead for young climate activists, “You are the generation that will feel most impacts from climate, but also potentially that will benefit the most if we do our work right”. She compared the transformation required in the energy sector to the telecommunications revolution, saying “None of you will remember the first cell phone, but your life will be revolutionzed in the same way telecommunications has on your life”. Though lamenting the progress and indicating the space to push forwards, “Compared to what needs to be done, the energy sector has had no transformation in last 30 years, and absolutely needs to transform.”

The five-day summit is a showcase for the strategies and tactics behind many of the most successful social movements and campaigns of the last few years. As an ‘Elder’ sharing her point of view in terms of the tactics that need to be employed young climate activists, Figueres touched on three different aspects of work:

1) The work of VOICE

“I still do not understand why we don’t have people on the streets every single day raising their voices for climate”

The work to build movement at the local and national levels is essential. The Copenhagen lesson is that a climate agreement cannot be a top down mandate, and that the impetus needs to come from the national level, with people driving climate legislation at home.

2) Power of CHOICE

“Demand every single product be labelled with its carbon intensity… We all have to consume, but let us consume intentionally and consciously”

Youth as consumers have purchasing power that needs to be leveraged. Consumers need to insist on transparency and labelling with respect to a products carbon footprint.

3) POISE

“The most difficult part of what we do, is to really understand what is behind the powerful triangle of Policy, Technology and Finance”

Youth need to understand the best attuned renewable technological solutions, the most powerful financial instruments that can enable that transformation, as well as their barriers and difficulties. There will certainly be winners and losers, and the losers will naturally put up the most resistance. Youth need to be ready to deal with the politics that is central to the triangle, and the policies that they shape, and naturally deal with all in poise and equanimity.

Countdown Towards a New Phase for the Climate Movement

Looking forwards, Christiana Figueres mused that once youth understand the triangle as well as the winners and losers, “they should throw it in the garbage”.

“The history we have built together is very valuable, but you need to decide what is going to be possible.. and you can’t do it out of ignorance”

In a tearful speech reminiscent of past meetings with the youth climate movement, she shared that which keeps her up at night, “I see the eyes of seven generations of children down the line, those are the generations going to be a affected by climate climate, and they ask me and you ‘What did you do?. If we are not able to stand from the bottom of our hearts and say that we did everything that we could, then we have no moral integrity”.

Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace, also joined Figueres on stage and offered a alternative version to Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech, with an “I have a nightmare speech”. Speaking of the devastating climate impacts already felt by the most vulnerable around the world, he put forwards the question, “How do we speak truth to power?..that we are running out of time..that we are losing 500,000 people every year.. that this issue is bigger than every other issue of the past.”

In answering that question, Naidoo declared that “We need fresh ideas, not contaminated by an experience”

Echoing Figueres, he re-emphasised, “The fight isn’t won at the COPs. It’s won in the streets before the COPs”. As a new phase for the international climate movement kicks off, one of the challenges will be to spark an unprecedented wave of events and mobilizations for climate action, and win that ‘fight’ before government negotiators touch down on Peruvian soil in around 520 days.