Just how social is the Social PreCOP?

Yesterday, I said that I did not believe that Venezuela was hijacking the Social PreCOP process for its own political ends. But I do have questions, and they’re growing by the hour.

As today’s plenary session staggers along, mired in arguments at cross purposes about whether to name and shame capitalism in the Social PreCOP Declaration, my thoughts are crystallising. This is a great process, but it could be so much greater - and maybe, just maybe, it can set a precedent for a shift in civil society engagement in the UNFCCC.

But some tough questions need to be answered. Here are three.

1) Who’s here, and who’s not?

The social movements here are bursting with energy and anger. Meeting and interacting with Latin American youth especially has been awesome. But we are by no means representative, for three main reasons.

First, the Social PreCOP is an invitational event. To be here, you must have been invited by the Venezuelan government. I am very grateful that P3 Foundation received an invitation - but I do not believe that any government should decide who gets to represent social movements and civil society. This is not meant as a criticism of Venezuela, but a simple assertion of peoples’ independence: We, as civil society, must stand free and independent from governments. We must not be coopted - by anyone.

There are very good reasons why Venezuela made this an invitational event. First, it would be both impractical and unrepresentative to invite all organisations accredited to the UNFCCC. We don’t need the business lobby present at COP or captive lobby groups here, and we don’t want to exclude popular movements that engage climate catastrophe on the ground but don’t go to the UN. Second, and importantly, Venezuela is generously funding the event - and at our request. When they first proposed this event, they asked civil society organisations at COP what they would need to make a Social PreCOP a success, and many (understandably!) said funding. We cannot expect Venezuela to fund infinite attendance from unspecified organisations.

But it is not okay that there are at most three African people here. And, speaking as a New Zealander, it is absolutely not okay that no one else from the Pacific is in the room. As the Pacific Climate Warriors take to the water to prove our Pacific brothers and sisters are not drowning but fighting, I have wonder why I don’t see any Pacific faces here. Where is Project Survival Pacific? My friends in Generation Zero wrote to the organisers requesting an invitation - and received no reply. Why is the United Kingdom Youth Climate Coalition here, but not New Zealand’s youth climate movement?

If a future Social PreCOP is invitational and funded, I believe that the organising committee must be elected, accountable, independent and transparent. Civil society, not any government, must choose who represents civil society.

Second, logistics have locked the door for too many people. This event represents a huge undertaking for Venezuela, which I can only respect, but - just as visa issues locked Nigerians out of COP19 in Warsaw - visa and flight issues have left too many seats empty here. One friend of mine, from Nepal, isn’t here because the organisers booked his flights via the United States too late for him to get a visa to travel through the US. My own flights came through on Saturday morning, a day before I left. In July, I’m told that some 50 selected representatives just didn’t show - because of logistical barriers.

This is important, because these logistical issues disproportionately favour representatives from the Global North. My New Zealand passport is a huge privilege, because it makes it easier for me to travel overseas than just about any other passport in the world. I didn’t have visa issues, because I have the privilege of almost never needing a visa. That’s not fair, and skews our representation.

2) Who’s doing the drafting?

Yesterday and today are billed as civil society and social movements preparing for a dialogue with ministers tomorrow. We are reviewing and revising a zero draft declaration to present to those ministers. By and large, that declaration represents the views of those in the room.

But it was written by an unelected, appointed drafting committee.

Last night, after heated negotiation, the Venezuelan organisers opened the drafting committee to civil society representatives. Limited edits came overnight, but some of the civil society representatives on the drafting team last night told me this morning about debating key points with the Venezuelan government. It looks like the declaration will omit any reference to leaving 80% of fossil fuels in the ground, and not by our choice.

Again, I do believe the Venezuelan team are genuinely doing their very best here.

Thing is, if a government drafts a text, even with its best intentions, it’s not civil society’s text. If social movements are to have a true dialogue with ministers, civil society needs the independence to draft and redraft its own text. Any drafting committee must be open, inclusive, and participatory.

3) Who’s running the process, and how?

We’ve been stuck in a plenary since yesterday morning. Every session has started very late. Several people have been airing procedural dissatisfaction on Twitter. There’s an undercurrent of frustration bubbling up.

But let’s deconstruct this a bit more. Yesterday morning, the plenary debated procedure for hours - and I celebrated it as a sign of our autonomy here.

Why is it, though, that it is Claudia Salerno, Venezuela’s lead climate negotiator, who is chairing? She’s a powerful negotiator who has spoken truth to power in the UNFCCC for years and deservedly has a lot of respect and personal warmth from civil society, but nevertheless she is a government negotiator, not a civil society facilitator.

I am also struggling to comprehend why a single open-ended plenary session has been chosen - despite yesterday’s heated procedural debate - to revise the text. How can you debate real issues in a room with hundreds of people? And why was today’s session interrupted for a lengthy address from the Venezuelan Minister for Ecosocialism? (And why, at 5:06 pm, has the plenary supposed to resume at 3:30 pm not yet resumed?)

Several people on Twitter have commented on the growing similarity between the Social PreCOP process and COP itself. Just as at COP, the process is increasingly opaque.

A precedent for substantive civil society engagement?

At the end of the day today, once the civil society segment is over, the real test will be whether this provides a precedent for better future civil society and social movement participation in the UNFCCC. For any future social pre-COP to be meaningful, however, it will need to be a true dialogue of equals, not a stage-managed, intermediated process before a formal dialogue. To be legitimate, a social movements’ declaration must be drafted and owned by social movements.

That’s not to say that this week’s process has been coopted by Venezuela for political goals. That’s a simplistic analysis. If anything, it is the Latin American social movements whose energy drives the Social PreCOP’s radicalism, and - surprisingly - the Venezuelan organisers checking it.

But it must not serve as a precedent for future civil society cooption.