Choice Words from Chaitanya

Kartikeya Singh & Avipsa Mahapatra, youth representatives as part of the Government Delegation

After all one has heard, learned and virtually seen of the UN and the UNFCCC talks every year at the COP, it was huge if not historic to have India’s first ever youth delegation making its presence felt at the COP. The talks began in Poznan on the 1^st of December and the next two weeks are expected to set the ball rolling and facilitate a smooth decision making process in Copenhagen for the COP15.

The youth delegation has felt the need to make its presence felt at the COP while trying to fruitfully engage itself with the official Indian Government delegation. The Government is well represented at the COP with a mix of politicians, policy makers, environmentalists and academia. Surya Sethi from the Planning Commission, Anand Patwardhan from IIT Mumbai, Prudipto Ghosh from ‘The Energy & Resources Institute’ are some of the delegates representing India.  Kartikeya Singh and Avipsa Mahapatra are two of the Youth Delegates who were taken into the official delegation and this has helped us bridge the gap between the government and the youth delegation.

India came to the talks with a strong case of climate justice in the world and any breakthrough in the negotiations seemed possible only after resolving this grave issue. Though the Youth Delegation supports the point of climate equity, it realizes that the future of youth is at stake.  Therefore it will do whatever it can to ensure that the Indian government hold true to its promises of sustainable development and climate justice back at home.  The youth too, are tired of the blame game that’s being played since the past few years. The Government though, has made its stance clear on technology transfer and adaptation by calling for aid from developed countries and a UN framework for easy implementation of the two in the SBSTA meeting.

The youth delegation on the other hand is working in unison with delegates from other countries in coming out with a common global vision that can be used to drive the governments into action. In a side event at the COP organized by the third world network, Surya Sethi spoke to the gathering of how historical emissions should be taken into account, lack of action from developed nations and a clear charge against them and at the same time failing to address the issue of internal inequity and also what seemed like a nonchalant attitude towards the work done on environment in India and the ministry’s mediocrity in function and importance, lead the whole discussion in the predictable direction that goes nowhere.

The talks are on and another ten days are left to reach a so called ‘shared vision’ that is going through a series of endless changes without any concrete outcome in near sight. More soon …

Peace!