Hey all!
Today we had a presentation at the 680 Hotel by Agnes de Rooij, our international coordinator! The youth at the conference were very impressed by the kind of work we’ve been doing (internationally!!) and also by my debrief on solargen India. Also presentations by Jake Torrie (SG Canada) and Laura Canoit (SG France) were well received.
Steve Sawyer, our international campaigner (if you don’t know who he is please check out the Rainbow Warrior Centenary Website at http://www.Greenpeace. Org ) presented on Preventing Dangerous Climate Change, and this is what he had to say: “ The contribution of Africa to global climate change is negligible however the impacts it is likely to suffer are colossal.” According to him for this COP/MOP these will be the most important issues:


Art 3.9 negotiations
Art 9 review – Annex B
Review of ‘developing’ nations for those countries in Annexe 2 which actually qualify to join Annexe 1– e.g. Singapore, South Korea, etc
(sorry about the techno-greek but tha’s how it is… I’ll probably post more English in a later post! Ha ha.)
On the issues that the US continually is bantering Steve says, “China has about four times the pop of the US but the US produces one and a half times the GHG’s that china does. How fair is that?” (* note I’m not actually reporting what was said but kind of modifying it on the fly for better representation. The ideas remain intact; the words do not!)
Dr. Nyamaso, ED, Kenya Initiative for Development, spoke on climate change and youth from an African perspective.

Velma Mwendwa, YEN- Kenya – ah well what do I say, this lady actually says that DDT is a solution to combating malaria… don’t know if I should laugh or cry! After all the work that has been done in the rest of the world we find educated people here unconsciously are doing propaganda work for corporate criminals! However the far more important thing she spoke about is the concept of DIY photovoltaics. It was an interesting idea and maybe we could come up with ideas to develop such a campaign in India (Akshay, Salil?). apart from obvious benefits these kits could provide employment!

Finally!

Arrived at Nairobi today around 7:50 local time. After spending some time at the airport wandering about for sometime in major confusion, accompanied by severe head scratching I finally got into a cab and managed to check into the hotel. This town reminds me of all those American Teen Flicks… almost like some mad time travel thingy is running through my head what with Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book as the only source of solace in a long and boring wait to get here, which however seems like it was worth it! Anyways back to the present scene… I am sitting after a ‘hard’ day of attending the Conference of Youth, accompanied by breaks every so often because my sleep robbed self lapses into the arms of that tempting mistress, trying to type out what will seem like a coherent report of what happened.

After taking a long shower I finally managed to leave for the conference venue, which is quite nearby, in another hotel called the 680 Hotel. And the first thing to greet me even before had completed registering myself for the event was the visage of this great bear like thing rushing towards me at break neck speed, shrieking my name with great affection, almost like some bollywood movie gone awry! Luckily just as I was planning to jump down into the lobby I managed to recognize our very own, Harshini. She is here as a youth delegate from the Sri Lanka.

Anyways I finally made it to the conference hall having been introduced to some other delegates and the like. Finally after one session, we went for lunch, which proved to be quite sumptuous, was accompanied by awesome dessert. Then we went in for the session on the African Resolution, followed by the formation of working groups for the AYICC. So there was lots of brainstorming and we managed to get a basic idea about the things we are planning to do for launching the AYICC. (Note to Solgen India – We should sit down and talk about this session sometime. Very, very important.) Soon after this we broke up and headed off for dinner, most of the people went off to some restaurant with the COY guys while we went back to the Country Lodge hotel.