Trackers Emeritus
China Tracker - Fontane Lau
Fontane Lau, a 24-year-old, will soon complete her Master of Corporate Environmental and Sustainability Management at Monash University, Australia. During her previous internship with the WWF Hong Kong office in 2006, she realized that sustainability is the lubricant to facilitate business in change management too. Such inspiration motivated her to pursue further study to bridge sustainability with business practices.
Her objectives of getting involved in this project are bridging her global perspectives to the national decision made by the Chinese delegates, introducing climate change issues to general public from different dimensions, including national, local government, organizational and individual levels.
Canadian Tracker - Rosa Kouri
Rosa Kouri is a well known advocate on environmental issues, and was recognized by the World Conservation Union in 2007 as one of 25 women across the globe leading the fight against climate change. Rosa’s experience in youth leadership in climate change ranges from national campaigns to tracking policy on parliament hill to local projects with youth of all ages. Specific activities including being a founding member of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition, serving as the National Director from 2005-2007 of Canada’s largest national youth environmental organization, the Sierra Youth Coalition; founding the Sustainable McGill Project at McGill University in 2004; and attending and coordinating youth delegations at the UN climate conferences in Montreal (2005), Bali (2007), and Poznan (2008). Her work will be profiled in the upcoming book Green Warriors by Lobster Press.
Rosa recently completed an MSc in Environmental Policy at the Oxford University Centre for the Environment. Rosa is originally from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, and has a Joint Honours BA in Economics and Political Science from McGill University. Her research at Oxford focused on unpacking Green Jobs and understanding the multiple perspectives on job creation in the transition to a low-carbon economy.
Australian Tracker - Cara Bevington
I grew up in the spectacular Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, but now fulfil the great Australian stereotype of calling Bondi beach home.
For the past two years I’ve worked as a campaigner for Oxfam Australia, and I absolutely love it! I’ve worked on an international Make Trade Fair campaign, a domestic campaign, Close The Gap, lobbying for health equality between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, and now most of my time is dedicated to campaigning for climate justice.
Coming from the land down under I think I can safely say that I am travelling the furthest out of the adopt-a-negotiator team to make my way to Bonn, Germany. It’s also going to be a significant journey in another sense. I’ve never been to one of these international meetings before. I’m neither a scientist nor a policy maker. But I know, without a doubt, that climate change is the defining challenge of our time and as global citizens we have both the power and responsibility to do something about it. Climate change is already having devastating impacts on our physical environment as well as the communities who inhabit it.
What do I hope to achieve being a part of the adopt-a-negotiator team in Bonn? A crisis as deep and threatening as climate change presents us all with choices and opportunities. We can cross our fingers, leave it to others, and hope it will all work out for the best. Or we can be active agents in our social, economic and environmental world, prepared to act, together, for the common good.
French Tracker - Benoit Kubiak
I’m a young frenchman who has decided to join the growing number of people dedicating their lives to save the climate because, access to petrol will be harder and harder, biodiversity is getting worse, ice is melting and the inequality between North and South is growing.
I am part of the international youth movement who are organising themselves to pressure governments, corporations and international institutions to make the right choices for our future.
After studying geography and working for 6 years in France, I decided in 2008 to <a href=”http://avenirclimat.info”>travel across Europe, Middle-East and Asia</a> to meet people who are fighting climate change. By travelling in 25 countries, I was able to meet NGO’s, activists and scientists involved in the global fight to save our climate.
After more 30, 000 km, I’m actually in Bonn to track the French Government delegation and report back on the French and European Union’s progress COP15 in Copenhagen in Decemeber - the most important international meeting to save our climate and humanity.
Personal, local or national actions are import, but more importantly we need an international protocol to reduce our CO2 emissions and finance development and adaptation for southern countries.
Canadian Tracker/ Project Media Coordinator - Adam MacIsaac
Adam has worked in various positions in many places around the globe but still is strongly connected to his place of birth in the small province of Prince Edward Island, Canada. With his passion for youth engagement and community involvement, Adam was the Prince Edward Island Youth Engagement Coordinator on the Creating Local Connections Canada initiative from TakingItGlobal.org.
Throughout Adam’s experience – ranging from organic farms in rural Prince Edward Island, to Fair Trade Coffee and Cacao collectives in the Dominican Republic – he has developed a strong understanding of food security and environmental impacts from climate change domestically and internationally.
He is in his third year of sitting on the Executive Committee with the Sierra Youth Coalition, Canada’s largest youth environmental organization. During a short International Development Internship with CIDA project, Adam worked at addressing environmental issues impacting youth internationally and has built upon that experience while working on a United Nations Development Programme project which created a youth summary of the 2007/2008 United Nations Human Development Report.
Adam has attended the past two United Nations Climate Change Conferences with the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition’s Canadian Youth Delegation project. In April 2008 Adam received training from the Climate Project Canada and Al Gore to present the Academy Award winning documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” and was a panelist during a round table discussion at The Royal Commonwealth Society along with Canadian environmentalist Dr. David Suzuki. In early 2009 Adam undertook a United Nations University course while traveling to Japan, Vanuatu, Tonga and New Zealand and concurrently conducting a research paper on youth engagement for COP 15.
Canadian Tracker - Zoë Caron
“It’s my continual goal to publicly communicate climate change and the importance of Canadian government action.”
Zoë is the co-author of ”Global Warming for Dummies” and Editor on ItsGettingHotInHere. She is a research associate with the Eco-Efficiency Centre at Dalhousie University and sits on the Board of Directors of Sierra Club Canada.
She has worked with non-profit companies and organizations within sustainability, education and social mobilization and was a founding member of the Canadian Youth Climate Coalition.
Zoë has been named in the Top-30-Under-30 to watch in Halifax, Top 50 Canadian Green List, and profiled with colleagues in Vanity Fair’s Green Issue. With an academic background in international development and environmental science, Zoë attends United Nations Climate Change Conferences and was aboard the Students On Ice International Polar Year 2007 Expedition to Antarctica.
United States Tracker - Reed Schuler
Originally from the Pacific Northwest in the US, I now work on climate change and renewable energy research with a conservation organization in Massachusetts. I’ve supported renewable energy programs for the largest municipal utility in the country, had the opportunity to help a sustainable development NGO in coastal Kenya, and researched transit choices and environmental impacts in Shanghai.
People all over the world, from my hometown in the US, from megacities in Asia, and from small villages in Africa, all depend on the action that we and our governments take to stop climate change now. I want to help people access, understand, and influence the negotiations, and the behavior of the government teams in them. I’m part of this project to show the negotiators that the world is watching.