PSP’s logistical goddess Emily Davies shares some exciting news!
Emily Davies relaxes in colourful shirt after back to back press conferences. Photo: Max Bourke.
Fourth day of COP15. Today I woke up bright and early, COP15 was celebrating its formal day of youth and I was ready to take on the world.
Adopting my new Danish persona I hopped on my bike, rode to the Bella Centre, and eagerly made my way to the YOUNGO spokescouncil. The council is a representative group of all youth organisations present at COP15, my role at this meeting for the day, was to present and propose a declaration compiling the voice of this constituency the the council.
Standing up in front of this large group of people I realised that I may have gotten myself into a bigger job than I first expected by trying to convince this group of headstrong climate activists that I represented (along with my research into global youth declarations) the voice of each of them.
After some debate my proposal to pass the document was approved on a vote of faith that the end product would be a credible policy document. Therefore, with YOUNGO’s blessing in hand a policy meeting was held after the spokescouncil and a few hours later the “United Voice of the International Climate Change Movement” was created. Super!
As it was the official day of youth at the conference it was now time to gain as much media around the document so amid actions such as raindances and flash mobs I attended two press conferences and presented the document with a good friend of mine from Cameroon to as many people as possible.
Meanwhile, my gorgeous team who allowed me to disappear for a while were organising the highly successful “Global message stick” where our Pacific delegates approached the media creating stories through presenting inviting and anecdotal stories about themselves, the press loved it and many of our delegates were featured in Indian press.
In policy news, Tuvalu is still holding their ground and some parts of the conference are thus suspended. Apparently, AOSIS is presenting their formal proposal tomorrow so we’ll just have to see what becomes of that!
At COP you always find yourself very busy and sometimes you’re not even sure why. It is only at the end of the night when you look back you realise how much you’ve achieved and why it was all worth it. At the end of the day I decided to drop by a NGO party and ran into a contact i’d been looking for, even when socialising it seems you live and breathe COP.
Kudos to you day four, who knows what the rest of the days will hold in this crazy reality that is COP15?
