Project Survival Actions Director Shobaz Kandola shares his first day at COP15!

6am, wake up and realise that Cop15 starts today. Excitement and nervous energy abounds in the group as no one is sure what will happen. But first we have to scramble to get ready, need to get there by 7.30 as we have a fear we won’t be allowed in because the UN has accredited too many observers.

7.30am arrive at Cop15! It’s real, finally here.  Two weeks to change the world.  Have to make the negotiators listen to our message: “Survival is not negotiable”. Expectation in the group is high that we will deliver a fair, ambitious and binding (FAB) agreement.  We’re youth of course FAB is what we aim for.

7.40am proceed to security clearance.  Security guards are grumpy, probably because they had to get up earlier than us.  We find our booth in the conference centre, the Bella Centre. Location is great. It’s one of the first booths as you enter the venue and all the delegates including the negotiators have to walk past in order to get into the Centre.

8am booth has been set up.  Not as spectacular as we would have liked but have all day to spruce it up for tomorrow. More importantly we have donned our aelean shirts (Islander Shirts) that we’re specially made for us by a big mamma in Vanuatu.  Shirts are bright and make us stand out from everyone. Media especially loves us in our shirts. Interview requests flying left right and centre. Camera’s following our every action.

8.30am hitting up negotiators with our 1.5 badges. Positive response. Lots of people taking the badges and pinning it to their lanyard.  Badges are a good way to break the ice and have a good chat to people about what their want.

10am plenary (conference) is about to open. Only 350 NGO delegates can get into the main conference venue.  Aycc and PSP scored big and got 15 tickets to the event.  We have decided that our Pacific youth all attend and have given tickets to them.  The rest of us are piling into several over flow rooms around the conference centre where the opening ceremony will be live telecasted.

10.30am plenary starts. Usual stuff with people speaking. De’vore defends the science behind climate change strongly and delivers a passionate plea for action as does the Danish Minister.

4pm day has flown away. Lots of negotiators, NGO and media popping by our booth or stopping us around the conference centre to have a chat.

4.30pm pile into a LCA track meeting as we have managed to get Christina Ora, a 17 year PSP delegate from the Solomon Islands an opportunity to address the plenary on behalf of all world youth.

6pm Have been waiting for an hour and a half for the parties (the countries) to stop speaking so Christina can talk.  Complete waste of time having the parties address the opening session of the LCA track. Speeches are pre written, contain no new information and regurgitate the same stuff from past meetings and statements.  Only original contribution was from the Solomon Islands delegation who made an impassioned and emotional plea for action as the survival of small islands states are not negotiable.

6.10pm Christian has finally been recognised by the Chair. Delivers a short but excellent speech.  Gets a standing ovation from the youth in the meeting! Chair also reacts positively to Christina. Calls on plenary to act and points out as Christina did, that action on climate change has talked about for at the entire time that Christina has been alive and that perhaps the time to act is now.

7pm Round off day with a meeting of PSP. Awesome day for us. Project Survival brand was dominant and the ‘survival not negotiable message’ well received by all. Tomorrow another day in our brightly coloured shirts – more media, more negotiators and more people to get the message out that FAB action is needed now.

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