Live From Copenhagen: Ecosystems everywhere demand REDDER while COP gets hotter

Sorry, this is a bit late,  I have to catch my flight tomorrow and like the rest of Copenhagen I got caught in the snow tonight.  Anyway I had a very eventful day outside of the COP.

I finally got to the Copenhagen film festival and saw two fantastic films.  I would like to screen both of these films and several others at Georgia Tech in the Spring.  The first, called Hope in a Changing Climate, showed the power of restoring soil structure and natural vegetation.  In China and Ethiopia degraded desert wastelands were converted to green oases in a matter of a mere fifteen years, by replanting trees, changing agriculture and grazing behavior.  Vegetation is 90% water and prevents soil erosion, and organic soil stores 3 time more carbon than vegetation.  If REDD succeeds, the restoration of millions of hectares of land could perhaps be tied in through an extension program Reducing Emissions from Degradation, Deforestation and Ecosystem Restoration (REDDER).  Sounds long, but trust me it is the next big thing! 😉  After the film, director John D. Liu shared some profound conclusions, ‘We have to think beyond our localities, a restored ecosystem anywhere is a benefit to all of humanity.  We need to have a species consciousness and act in the interest of everyone on the planet.  This is the only way to prevent global catastrophe.’   The second, a film called Green by Patrick Rouxel, traced the destruction of forests in Indonesia for palm oil production.  There is no dialogue in the film, only a mourning hymn in the background.  Seeing the destruction of these forests and the species that depend on them puts in perspective what is at stake.  Perhaps what is even sadder is the reminder that most of the industrialized world was once covered with forests.  They are hundreds of years gone and our collective consciousness doesn’t even remember them.

My guest bloggers didn’t make it to the actual blog (this is hard work folks!), but I had dinner with two of them  (Harro Van Assault, Vrije University Amsterdam and Kanako Morita, Tokyo Institute of Technology) and they shared some really good insights and news from the inside.  Connie Hedregaard stepped down from her position as COP President.  This is unusual and unfortunate for a number of reasons.  One, it signals (as though everything else didn’t) that things are not going well and two, she is one of the few (if not the only) woman to ever make it to that position.  A big message of this conference is that we need to involve the work of women, particularly in developing countries.  One of the delegates even commented on Hedregaard’s Presidency, the great work that she was doing and the strong signal it sent to women all over the world.  The official reason for her to step down was that someone more official (Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen) was able and willing to lead the HLS, but this is not how other COPs have operated.  There is also the fact that the Danish ministry lost credibility with the leaked Danish draft text, which particularly upset the G77.  But I can’t help but wonder if she would have been so easily pushed aside if she were not a woman.  I am not sure that Prime Minister Rasmussen is going to do anything different in her place and he doesn’t bring any continuity to the process.  Meanwhile, outside, there was a NGO walk-out where badge members left the conference to protest the fact that numbers have become so restricted.  A Dutch business leader decided to join the demonstration and was subsequently trapped outside without his coat.  The protesters were not allowed back in…

During the plenary there were two speeches that caught everyone’s attention, one by Hugo Chavez, a 10 minute rant about the failure of capitalism (would really like to see this).  The second a speech by Robert Mugabe, which underscored the importance of the environment.  His new-found environmental ethic made most viewers uncomfortable, especially given his record on human rights and rule of law.   May be able to get more details tomorrow.   If not, I will sign off at the end of the conference with some analysis of the final result from Atlanta.   Thank you to everyone for reading!

Cheers,

Janelle Knox-Hayes