Personal Perspectives

Copenhagen December 09 climate change talks: social movements' response

This is a personal account of the first international organising meeting to discuss how the worlds social movements are to respond to the UN climate change negotiations, which will take place from the 30 November to 11 December 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. This is known as the UNFCC COP-15, in the jargon, the fifteenth UN Framework on Climate Change Conference Of Parties. This will be the world's biggest climate change meeting and talks ever. The plan is to sign a global agreement to limit human-induced climate change, the so-called Kyoto II or post-Kyoto agreement. Commentators are split as to whether such a deal will be signed. Almost all agree it is very unlikely to be a strong enough deal to limit emissions to that which many of the world's scientists are calling for. Worse some of the proposed policies may make things worse, such as the widespread switch from using oil to agrofuels for transport. How should radical social movements respond to these talks and the proposed policies?

The social movements' meeting was from 13-14 September 2008, in a free school in Norrberg, hosted by the Danish movement ClimaX (klimax2009.org). There were about 100 people present from 21 countries around the world, including some from the Global South, for example, SE Asian movements who have published the Peoples' Protocl on Climate Change (peoplesclimateprotocol.aprnet.org), the Brazilian Environmental Justice Network which includes Brazil's MST, the landless peasants movement and indigenous people (www.justicaambiental.org.br ), and the European branch of Via Campesina (viacampesina.org ), the global small farmers network. In addition, those involved in the German and UK climate camps and many other groups were present from Finland to Spain, from the EuroMayDay collectives to ClimaX Sweden. There were some people from NGO's who are part of the Durban Climate group and the newer 'Climate Justice Now' (formed at the UN talks in Bali, December 2007), such as the Global Forest Coalition (US-based) and the Campaign against Climate Change (UK-based), Focus on the Global South (Thailand-based). Ideologically several currents were obvious: liberal, eco-Keynesian, autonomist and anarchist perspectives were all there, often expressed from within the same individuals over the course of the weekend. There were clear biases in representation towards white men. Ages ranged from teens to 60's, but the majority were young (under 25). The top represented countries were probably from Denmark, then UK then Germany. Outside Europe, African movements were conspicuously absent, while inside Europe, French movements were absent. Despite these shortcomings, the group, as you will have gathered, was diverse in many respects.

A bit about the local situation - this is rough and ready as I spent only a weekend there! Copenhagen has a long radical tradition, with an entire part of the city, Christiania, having been squatted continuously for 37 years, and functions semi-independently from the state. Also, the youth are an important social force following last year's riots over re-opening evicted social centres. In terms of the youth, they are on an up trajectory where confidence is high - they believe they can do anything. And it appears true: they treated us to a street party on Saturday night as stylish as those from the days of London Reclaim The Streets, and perfectly executed. There is what feels like an ingrained alternative culture in the city, and lots of infrastructure and resources. Furthermore, there are only 10,000 police in the whole of Denmark, so the police appear weary of the population not the other way around.

The gathering started with a go-around to let everyone know who was there, followed by a long discussion on the legitimacy of the UN and global agreements to limit climate change. There was little agreement, with some assessments being (1) that the institution was illegitimate and we should not add to its perceived legitimacy, (2) its illegitimate, but it is the best forum to do this - failure at the UN will mean the G8+5 will handle climate change - leading to a worse deal for most people, (3) it is illegitimate and irrelevant, its what peoples movements do that counts, (4) it is the wrong question to ask, the important one is 'what is a good response to the UN talks for social movements', not are the UN talks themselves legitimate. This discussion was difficult, as some (maybe many?) equated 'illegitimate' with planning actions to disrupt the talks, while 'legitimate' was equated by some with welcoming our glorious leaders to solve the worlds problems. Both were, of course, caricatures of peoples' real positions on all sides of these difficult debates.

There were some really important points made:

*Remember there are two enemies: climate change and green capitalism.

*Some compared the UN with the WTO, as they are both global 'one country one vote' institutions that are, of course, not very democratic, as the US delegations run to hundreds of people, while most African countries have a single person there. However, there is one important difference regarding climate change talks compared to trade deals. Developing countries in trade deals can walk away and the world stays the same: they keep the same trade tariffs. No deal is often better than a bad deal. Yet at climate talks, if developing countries walk away, then the rich will carry on polluting as usual, with catastrophic impacts, mostly hitting the poor. No deal may be even worse than a bad deal. The politics of climate change are different from the politics of trade in some respects.

*We need to act in concert with social movements particularly in the global south. Many of these movements are pushing their governments for an international agreement in COP-15, a very different one from carbon-trading and agrofuels, but still a deal. There were some calls to get more input from movements in the Global South so our positions reflect collective consensus from both North and South together.

*This must be a truly global mobilisation.

*Whatever we do we must avoid being part of the 'background noise'. What we do should be at the centre of the radical response to COP-15, and change the terms of the debate on dealing with climate change.

This meeting was then followed by small groups to discuss the aims of the mobilisation ... here is a highly incomplete list from the feedback (not everyone agreed with these).

-create legitimacy for movement solutions to climate change.
-make demands for now, not for 2050.
-react to demands from Poznan.
-emphasise hope/positive solutions.
-broaden/ diversify our movements.
-join forces with governments such as Tuvalu to push for a deal that includes deep cuts in emissions.
-Make sure COP-15 is known to be a response to a climate, political and economic crisis, not just a climate crisis.
-smash 'green capitalism'.
-"expand the movements not the economy".
-have the world's biggest coordinated protests ever.
-COP-15 as a springboard to actions around the world with common messaging.

There were lots more, I just didn't write them down.

At the end of day one we went to a brilliant street rave, got very drunk and woke up feeling grotty... to be informed that...

The team organising the agenda thought that we had potentially enough agreement to make a common callout to take action around COP-15 in Nov/Dec 2009. We then went through a long process of creating a collective call to action that all 100 people from a variety of groups and movements and many traditions could agree to and be a useful mobilising tool.

The process was as follows:

*We were given two pieces of text, the callout to come the meeting we were attending, and a text in response to the Bali UN talks, from 'Climate Justice Now!', a group of movements and NGO's. Small groups went through each text striking out anything they fundamentally did not agree with. All 13 small groups then removed the text they didn't agree with to obtain some common minimum level of agreement.

*Small groups then decided what we thought should be in a callout, and delegated one person to be in a writing group to help write the proposal to add important things we thought were missing.

*The entire group came up with the aims as to why we want a callout, what are the jobs it should do, and what it generically should cover, e.g. who we are, some analysis of the situation, a call to action and a way of getting involved.

*The writing group was sent away with 3 hours with which to construct a draft proposal that people could then try and get consensus on. Or maybe it was an impossible task...

Simultaneous to this there were discussions by the large group on the form of the action(s) that we might take around COP-15, both in Copenhagen and around the world. The discussion on what was needed to carry on organising the mobilisation. But I was in the writing group, so missed all of this.

*The writing group then heard feedback from each of the 13 groups' delegated writers, which were grouped into 'analysis' (e.g. 'should include that people should have equal access to the global commons'), 'feelings' (e.g. should be exciting, inspiring, avoid apocalyptic language etc.), and 'details' (e.g. include frightening facts about climate change). We then split into two small groups to merge the remaining parts of the two original texts and include some of the key analysis points. The group then critically appraised these two efforts. We then took the best of both texts, and addressed group concerns, to produce a definitive draft. This was then critiqued again by the 13-strong group, amended and then given to the main 100-strong group who made a number of important changes in the run-up to consensus. Sunday night at 7.30 pm, and success! This consensus-version was then proof-read and emailed around the world that evening.

It should be said, that despite important progress being made, and a great deal of give-and-take on the part of everyone present, there was a lot of frustration with the process of how the meeting was organised. The main problem, as I heard it, was that only a few people seemed comfortable speaking in such a large diverse group (and many speaking in a second language), and therefore some voices were over-represented, and that the consensus process meant that we seemed to be always being pushed towards a decision, or resolution of an issue.

Overall I thought it was inspiring, and interesting with good outcomes, but very hard work - although certainly worth it. Hopefully the foundations for the coming together of social movements from around the world who come together for the start of COP-15, on November 30th 2009 will be as explosive as the events of Seattle and 100 other cities across the world, which coincidentally happened on November 30th 1999....

Next steps for the mobilisation:

The call and ideas for action will be discussed in three places internationally:

*October 2008, Via Campesina Global Meeting, Mozambique
*December 2008, parallel to the UNFCC COP-14 meeting in Poznan, Poland.
*January 2009, World Social Forum, Belem, Brazil.

There are different email lists for organising the various aspects of the mobilisation, and there will be a second big international organising meeting in either Copenhagen or Hamburg in early March.

Next steps for the UK:

*For the UK climate camp movement, we should form an international working group.
*Make sure there is climate camp 'representation' at each of the three international events.
*Discussion on signing the Copenhagen callout.
*Discussion of how we might mobilise for COP-15.
*Hold a specific COP-15 meeting sometime not too far in the future in the UK.