On 9 December 2011 we came, we saw, and although we didn’t conquer the United Nations, for two hours it felt as if we had.
Towards the end of last year I travelled to the United Nations climate talks in South Africa. I had received funding from people in my local community and went to push the negotiations forward, not to obstruct them. I am 18, and I joined hundreds of young people of a similar age at these negotiations, all of us looking for a political solution to climate change to match the technical and social ones that already exist.
Young people attending the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP17) climate talks ran an open, inclusive, consensus-based process, meeting every morning and working to actively facilitate new participation. Teams of experienced activists spent hours one-on-one with those entering, unprepared into the perplexing world of international climate politics, building in them the confidence and skills needed to enable full participation.
This could not have been in greater contrast to our governments’ behaviour at these negotiations. The final hours of negotiation saw an intense huddle in the plenary hall, which very visibly represented international circles of power. At the centre negotiators from the USA, the EU, the UK and other grand old economic powers debated with India, China and Brazil. Around them were a second tier of large, middle-income countries. On the outside, peering in but with no hope of having their voices heard, were delegates from Africa, from small island nations and from civil society. At no point in this critical stage of negotiation, taking place at 3am, was anyone outside the central elite consulted.
Let us return to the 9th of December. From apparently benign crowds in the lobby a single call of ‘mic check’ spawned a protest of power and numbers, as hundreds filled a tight conference centre corridor designed for only dozens. When, minutes later, we were penned in (still blocking the corridor) by security, it was not an activist or academic that spoke first – it was a politician. We echoed Mohamed Aslam, the Environment Minister for the Maldives, when he called for action to protect his country’s ‘right to live’. To get his voice heard in these negotiations, he turned to civil society, and we turned to the human microphone.
In the negotiations’ final hours, delegates from Africa and island nations were nearly as locked out as we were. The familiar dynamic of the 1% excluding the 99% clearly exists in international diplomacy. Although the conference went on openly for twelve days, attempts at facilitating progress were reserved for closed meetings after the conference was supposed to have finished.
We brought the fight to the 1% in those halls. The Occupy movement has sought to reclaim public space. Here, we did the same, but we reclaimed a debate. Usually, TV screens throughout the conference centre repeated images of politicians and professional negotiators delivering messages that, more often than not, they had no mandate to make. For two hours, the voices echoing through the conference centre were those of citizens of every nation, amplified by fellow citizens. We did not conquer the UN, but we did occupy it.
Our actions, however, did not prevent the Durban conference from delivering a largely empty agreement.
For me, the problem of climate change is bound integrally to the political and economic injustices at the core of our society. Carbon emissions have always been funded by the 1%, by over-consumption, governmental and corporate greed, even when produced by those subject to them in less wealthy nations. While political power is still distributed by that same unjust global economy, I doubt a lasting, equitable solution to climate change will be implemented. While a lasting, equitable solution to climate change is left unimplemented, the vulnerable will suffer and the existing imbalance of power will be reinforced. A solution to climate change requires Occupy – and Occupy requires a solution to climate change.
But that balance of power is changing. Be it noisily, with occupations, or more quietly, with Transition groups and community projects, people everywhere are opening space for discussion and action on the fundamental iniquities in society. At COP17 the occupation, for a time, made the voice of the 99% the loudest in the room. Even if we couldn’t salvage a global deal on climate change, we reclaimed the debate. We will be what politicians, diplomats and the media remember from the conference. All over the world, the 99% are reclaiming the debate.
International politics is shaped by the paradigm in which it operates, and as local movements subvert and transform structures of power, so international politics will shift. Each year bright young people will travel to the United Nations seeking to find a political solution to climate change; and one year soon they will succeed.
By Thomas Youngman
