SustainUS is happy to announce that we are a 2007 recipient of the Red, White, and Green award, a $500 grant provided by Youth Service America and the Civil Society Institute. This grant helped our CSD delegation accomplish all the great things described below. The delegates will now work in their home communities to raise awareness about climate change and renewable energy. 

A big THANKS to everyone who supported our delegation. We look forward to next year! 

Of all the days of CSD-15, I think yesterday, particularly the final hours, were the most interesting. Negotiations have been in a dead-lock since last week.  The Bureau had hoped to finish negotiations before the ministers arrived on Wednesday, but that clearly did not happen since the delegations have been leaving UNHQ in the wee hours of the morning the past few days. 

Since negotiations have been at a dead-lock, the Chair decided to use the softest language possible in order to create points for agreement. In the areas of air pollution and climate change, most of the text had been agreed upon, with the exception of topics such as aviation and marine emissions. Energy has been the deal breaker for the entire conference, mainly with the inability of G77 to reach consensus and the polarization of G77 and the EU.

The Chair was to distribute this new version of the text during the last session.  The session was scheduled to begin at 4:30PM yesterday, but - in tune with the rest of the conference - the session began around 6:00PM. The text arrived and delegations were given a choice to decide over an hour: accept or reject the Chair's text. In the end, the EU and Switzerland spoke up against the text and rejected it.  They said that the gravity of these issues needed to be addressed with seriousness and the text had no added value to what has already done.  The urgency to address energy for sustainable development, climate change, air pollution/atmosphere, and industrial development was in no way reflected in the text. And so the text was rejected and CSD-15 concludes without any policies, only a Chair's Summary of what happened over the past 2 weeks. 

For me, it has been a great experience, despite the disappointments. I have met a lot of great people, especially many amazing youth. I can only imagine what it will be like if we were to become  the delegates negotiating on such critical issues as these...

Stephanie Kwan 

Hello everyone,

The first and second days of this week are over and, to be honest, the pace is much slower than last week.  Many of the sessions for the 4 thematic topics have been postponed and the negotiations over text are taking a long time (e.g., ~30 minutes on 1 paragraph in the Air Pollution session).

As for the postponements, most of those have been due to G77.  I think this is likely due to the fact that the text is in English, all edits to the text must be made in English, and for most, if not all, G77 developing nations, English is not their first (or even second) language.  From what I have heard, difficulties with editing the text are mostly due to language barriers (not to mention trying to reach consensus among 130 nations!), not necessarily that they are trying to stall negotiations.  

There had been hopes to finalize negotiations before the high level segment starts today, but that is not happening since negotiations have been going very slowly.  I am about to head over to the UN, and today we will be in the General Assembly Hall!

More later,