NGO activists at odds in Copenhagen
Pirates, anticapitalists, farmers, students … – Climate activists come from all parts of society and play an important role in Copenhagen these days. They are the conscience of the negotiating delegates, the critical mass from the streets, powerful lobbyists with many innovative ideas – and they are mostly young. Last weekend tens of thousands of demonstrators marched on the streets of Copenhagen to urge negotiators at COP15 to agree a strong treaty against global warming. The action was part of a worldwide “Day of Action“ and the world’s largest ever climate-change demonstration. The presence of activists relates to an increasing influence of climate-NGOs from all over the world. Obviously activism is as global as the problem of climate change itself.
Similar to the negotiators NGOs from the western world are often at odds with their colleagues from the developing countries about the implementation of climate protection. For instance some networks from developing countries harshly critizise the emission trading scheme itself as well as western environmentalists who rather demand stricter rules within the existing framework. Also NGOs do not always agree on wether they should protest on the street by launching campaigns or rather try to participate in the negotiation process.
Since the beginning of the 1990s civil society actors have had quite an influence on climate negotiations. In Copenhagen representatives from hundreds of NGOs have a limited observer status and are sometimes even entitled to speak in meetings. Many NGOs use a kind of market of ideas to present themselves and set up networks with other climate activists. One of the biggest NGO network is Climate Action Network, an umbrella organisation which comprises almost 500 organisations from all over the world – Oxfam and Greenpeace among them. Representatives of some Climate Action Network institutions participate in negotiation rounds.
Their knowledge helps them to make reasonable suggestions, and using the information they get in the meetings they award states for their inflexible positions with the ‘fossil of the day’ award. Last Saturday for instance the winner was Japan „for strongly opposing setting a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol, and for blocking progress by refusing the chair’s text as a basis for negotiation,“ the network writes on its blog. Second place: Papua New Guinea. However critics fear that some NGOs could neglect their role as agents of the ‘opposition’ being too close to the delegates.
This is certainly not true for the activists of Climate Justice Action (CJA) who take a more radical approach. They tried to storm the Bella Conference Center on Wednesday, take over the conference for one day and transform it into a Peoples Assembly. CJA Organisers of so called ‘Reclaim Power!‘ stated that they are committed to ‘a confrontational mass action of non-violent civil disobedience’. Organisers also wanted to mobilize delegates inside the Bella Center to join them.
“This action has the potential to send a clear and much-needed message to the world: only a deal that is dictated by both science and justice will do”, the author Naomi Klein wrote on her Guardian blog. Whatever the campaigns of the thousands of climate activists are these days in Copenhagen, they must openly express their concerns, work together and show the world that there is substantial activist opposition fighting climate change at a grassroot level. Andreas Bock
Article originally posted on my Think About It – Climate change blog.
