Most of today was spent waiting in high anticipation for the chair's draft of the negotiating document. The day started with the youth cacus meeting where several of us volunteered to follow the other major groups by dropping in on their meetings. Joann, a delegate from belgium, and I volunteered to follow the business and industries group, as we are both going to business schools, and have an interest in industrial development. Through seeing what the other groups are doing, we hope to find common grounds with other groups as the more voices the better. After that, we split into each of our respective sustainability areas (I was in Industrial Development) and set lobbying priorities that we would later use after the negotiating doc is released. 

We had an especially large lunch today which included several delegates from other organizations, especially with THIMUN, an international youth Model UN organization with delegates from China and all over Europe. The SustainUS delegates immediately became friends with these other delegates as we all shared common grounds as part of the Youth Caucus. I think by the end of the day, everyone saw each other as part of the Youth Caucus as a whole, and less so as to focus on being part of their individual organizations. I was very impressed by this cohesiveness. 

 After lunch, the majority of the SustainUS folks, as well as several of our new friends, attended the Citizen Science presentation where the winners of the competition shared their essays. After the presentation, people just kinda wondered around for a short while since the chair's doc was delayed for more than an hour. Actually during this time I had a chance to talk with a delegate from Business and Industries, who is an Adviser on Climate Change from the World Nuclear Association. This was interesting because the NGO group (with support of other groups, including youth, i believe) released a written statement against nuclear energy that morning. In our conversation, I was surprised that the WNA rep told me that business and industries are strong proponents of sustainable development, and not opponents who are solely in the interest of profit. His main point was that you can't do business is the world is dead. But he obviously also refuted most of the points from the Anti-nuclear energy statement. From him, I learned that the B&I group isn't really as cohesive as the other interest groups, and you can't categorize this group because there are such diverse interests. Although profit is a goal (for most of the organizations, the WNA is a non-profit), you can't profit if the planet isn't working. I believe the B&I is the only major group that doesn't hold regular caucus meetings --> they just meet in the cafeteria. Hopefully this representative will help me get in touch with more B&I'ers.

After the chairman's doc was released, the real work began, and the youth experience became even better. Pretty much the entire youth caucus met at the cafeteria, and further bolstered our lunch-time group. There were literally double the number of sustainus folks (and us being the largest single org), with new friends from all over the world. We then sat down together to review and suggest changes to the document.

 Whew that was long..