Bonn Talks Stirs World Climate Activism

As the final round of Bonn climate negotiations came to an end last week, climate activists around the world, including Africa are seen lifting their banners higher than ever.

Not more than a week ago, Kampala launched Kampala City Climate Action plan, an event that climaxed in signing of a binding promise to address urban environmental challenges. Few days later, an earth shaking rally dubbed “The climate festival of the arts” transpired in Makerere University’s freedom square, another event that brought together diverse background of youth actions ranging from poets to visual artists exhibiting their creativities in the fight against climate change.

Youth energies were conspicuous in their salient messages to Bonn negotiators and to the most anticipated UNFCCC COP21: a display of climate music, stories, poems, artifacts, board games, and films crafted with mournful ingenuity depicting climate wrath generated shocks about the threats of climate change and echoed green-revolutionary propaganda that prompted endless rhythms of feelings from the audiences.

Ghanaian youth rising to demand climate justice from leaders, South-Africans comparing global warming to apartheid, and the candor of rising emotions are arousal. In Ghana particularly, The Ghana Reducing Our Carbon (350 G-ROC), a local partner of 350-an international environmental organization, joined others in the Africa-Arab world with various youth events to fight climate change. The event called #WEFGHTCLIMATECHANGE Campaign was held on 25th September, at the Ghana International Trade Fair Centre, in Accra, with attendance from over 400 students drawn from about four junior high schools in the metropolis who expressed themselves to be the next climate ambassadors.

This is the very verve with which the three rounds of negotiations in Bonn, Germany have transpired this year, and what many believe will largely contribute to Paris’s success. The last week was packed with group negotiations involving teams experience sharing and discussions about countries that haven’t yet submitted their INDCs, that’s the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, among them Uganda. However, the “country is working tirelessly to finalize consultations on the obligating document” says Honorable Ephraim Kamuntu, Uganda’s Water and Environment minister while addressing a conference of climate change activists Kampala.

In the same spirit, movements are being organized around the world to remind this generation that climate change, in the earlier words of US president Barrack Obama, “poses the greatest threat to humanity in the 21^st century”. Moreover the blessing of the contemporary social interconnectivity embedded in the digital world is enabling communities of youths around the world to share experiences, build teams and mobilize rallies. As I write, the most anticipated public rally known as The Kampala Climate People’s March, taps into the youth flooding social media with about 1000 people ‘going’ to attend on the 29^th of November, a day prior to UNFCCC COP21 in Paris.

Caribbean Youth Environmental Network recently hosted an online event “Taking the voices of youth climate activism to Paris”. The outcome of the virtual rendezvous was amazing. Hosted by Billy Dizzanne, the president of the network, close to a thousand attendees worldwide raised their voices and together echoed their aspirations calling on world leaders to speed up the negotiations.

Meanwhile back in Bonn, the negotiators were busy trading views on a streamlined version of an 86-page negotiating text riddled with heavily contested and often incompatible proposals. In the meantime, 46 states, stretching wealthy nations like the US, EU and China, to poor countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia among others have submitted their national contributions — climate targets, actions, policies and measures — in the context of the 2015 agreement.

Other contributions, including India’s, are in the pipeline pronounces. Admittedly, the integrity and effectiveness of the 2015 talks rests on the extent to which states are walking their talks which in turn highly depends on their legal character and the review process designed to consider them, both of which are at issue in the negotiations.

It’s therefore prudent that African countries shun reluctance thus far to countenance legally binding commitments, but it may be worth reconsidering this position. There are several commitments states could undertake. We could commit to submit, update, implement and even achieve our respective national contributions. Some of these commitments, such as those to submit and update national contributions, are procedural. Others, such as commitments to implement and achieve contributions, are substantive.

From the complexities of the COP decision making protocols, to the straightforwardness of street demonstrations and from the concealment of viral social media activism to the pinnacle of Bonn galleries, Bonn climate talks have acted as an engine to channeling global energies towards climate change commitments.

Boaz Opio

KAMPALA UGANDA

([email protected])