Observing Climate Change in Nairobi through Anthropologist ... · The plenary is gaveled to order. Caroline Nderitu, a respected Kenyan poet, welcomes delegates with a cautionary

Garry Thomas and Sean Vormwald at UNFCCC conference, Nairobi

UN Framework Convention for Climate Change 2006 conference logo

Observing Climate Change in Nairobi through Anthropologist-Colored Glasses

Garry Thomas

Ithaca College Observer UNFCCC, Nairobi, Kenya

November 6-17, 2006

“The NGOs will be here to make contacts and contracts, the delegates will be here to move commas around, and no one will

be here to save the world.” A Kenyan veteran of too many UN conferences, November 2006

Ithaca College sent a delegation of two observers to the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC), held in Nairobi, November 6-17, 2006, Garry Thomas, recently retired from the Anthropology Department and Sean Vormwald, an Assistant Director in the Office of Alumni Relations. The college has had official status as a non-governmental organization (NGO) to the UNFCCC since 2005. Garry is a development anthropologist who has worked and carried out research in Tanzania for more than six years, spread over the past 45 years. This was his fifteenth trip to East Africa. Sean is a 2001 graduate of Ithaca College, majoring in Environmental Studies, and is presently a part-time graduate student in the Park School of Communications. He had previously attended the UNFCCC meetings in Montreal (2005) as a member of the college’s delegation, and the Hague (2000) while volunteering for Greenpeace International when he was still an undergraduate. He and Garry have known each other since Fall 1999 when he took Garry’s Environmental Anthropology course. The UNFCCC meets annually to track global progress toward implementing the Kyoto Protocol, the international climate change treaty formulated in these meetings in 1997, and to consider the next steps toward future agreements. (http://unfccc.int/2860.php; much of the 2006 conference is webcast-archived at http://www.un.org/webcast/unfccc/archive.asp) The Kyoto Protocol is in effect until 2012. It has been signed by 166 nations thus far, each pledging to reduce their greenhouse gases collectively by 5% as compared to the baseline year of 1990. This year’s conference in Nairobi was attended by nearly six thousand participants from more than one hundred eighty countries, and included a sizeable official delegation from the United States, which has not signed the Kyoto Protocol. Garry’s blog and photo essay about his experience in Nairobi and participation in the UNFCCC meetings follows.

* * * Getting There

The truth is, I didn’t know that Ithaca College had NGO observer status at the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change (UNFCCC) until late September 2006, when I was asked if I would be interested in attending the meetings in Nairobi, November 6-17. I am sure that all the likely suspects, say, Jason Hamilton (Biology), Susan Allen-Gil (Biology), and Tom Shevory (Politics), had been canvassed first, but I was still flattered that I was remembered a year into my retirement, probably thought of as a committed

internationalist and old Africa hand, someone who would not embarrass the college or himself in a place so far away as Nairobi. What the college did not know is I’m not

Sign at entrance to the United Nations Office in Nairobi

Inside the UN complex in Nairobi

Delegates waiting to enter the plenary session at the UNFCCC conference

Flora at the UN complex in Nairobi

Flora (“bird of paradise”) at the UN complex in Nairobi

Delegates at the opening plenary session of the UNFCCC in Nairobi, 6 November 2006

great on “UN-speak “ (COP12/MOP2, FCCC/SBSTA/2006/L.25, CDM, GEF, adaptation, etc.) – or conferences, for that matter – and I might have said no, had it not been for the fact that I had friends in Nairobi, including a colleague and former officemate I’d first met in the 1990s, while working as a conflict management consultant for the Community Forestry Unit of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Rome, and later in East Africa. Getting Settled After several phone calls to one of these Nairobi friends, Sean Vormwald and I managed to find bookings in the Gracia Guesthouse in the Kilimani section of Nairobi, about 12 kilometers from the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) headquarters, where the conference was held. Our room was pretty basic and came with frequent power outages and two resident mosquitoes of an undetermined sub-species, but it was reasonable and $40 a night included a family-style breakfast, an internet cafe, and kind, attentive people at the reception desk, who quickly became my Swahili tutors and surrogate family. I would later meet registrants who were paying $225 a night for a single, and thought of themselves as anonymous prisoners in their hotels in the heart of the city. We had a mall and an outdoor market right next door, and a friendly night watchman who would have been happy to walk us to any place we wanted. First Day’s Impressions: Rituals, Commonalty and Genuflection The United Nations has a very large presence in Nairobi, which includes the international headquarters of UNEP and regional offices for 19 other organizations and agencies, including UNICEF, UNESCO, WHO and UNAIDS. It was this complex that provided the conference center for the UNFCCC meetings. It is as beautiful and lush a setting as one can imagine for such a conference. Immediately across the street is the US Embassy, a very large, fortified building, this to replace the downtown embassy that was blown up with a car bomb in more innocent times in August 1998. Compared to the UNEP grounds, it is stark and imposing, with none of the tropical vegetation to soften its presentation. But there was very tight security at the UN conference center as well, with regulations and conveyor belts very similar to the security arrangements we found at airports on our way to Nairobi except we didn’t have to walk around in our stocking feet!

After getting photographed and having a badge made on the first morning of the conference, I was given a six-inch high stack of documents, and made my way to the first Plenary Session, where I was pointed towards the Civil Society section, the back two rows in a room that must have sat 3,000 people. I wrote in my contemporaneous journal that morning:

The front of the room is a buzz with delegates and members of intergovernmental organizations, most of them in dark suits. I’m seated right behind the Indigenous Peoples Organization, including a Maasai fellow, whose dress is a mix of western and indigenous. The technicians

are playing with the microphones. I try my headset and listen in randomly on six other languages. There is live drumming and singing in the background. An economics professor from Korea University, who like me had NGO observer status, sits down next to me. The normal greeting on this first day always includes whether this was one’s first visit to a UNFCCC, to Africa, to Nairobi . . . . Once it is established that I have local knowledge, he asks, “Is Nairobi safe?” (Mmmm. Actually, one of my Kenyan friends was held up at gunpoint and robbed of his cell phone two days earlier while driving his car, but I don’t tell him that.) We exchange business cards. It turns out that he has a Ph.D. student studying at Cornell this year. “Perhaps you two could meet?” I already know that if I am to survive two weeks of conferencing, I must find such commonalties, even if of the most coincidental variety, and create around me a “village” of face-to-face relationships. We anthropologists do this well, I think. The plenary is gaveled to order. Caroline Nderitu, a respected Kenyan poet, welcomes delegates with a cautionary tale of a poem – “the very nature of nature [today] seems unnatural . . . normal is normal no more . . . ” – and asks that the delegates summon the political will to take climate change seriously. There’s polite applause. Everyone is so polite.

UNFCCC plenaries are very formal affairs, highly ritualized, the opening session more so than most of those that followed. Kenya being the host country, its Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, H.E. Kivutha Kibwana, was elected Conference President for these meetings and the coming year by acclimation. He came to the podium with a speech in hand, thanked the delegates, and spoke of the need for new thinking, new measures, new momentum, new incentives, etc. Each delegate recognized to speak thereafter, warmly congratulated Mr. Kibwana at every opportunity. The US delegation, which did not shrink from its elephant-in-the-room role during the conference, learned to genuflect a bit to the podium as well, and Mr. Kibwana rewarded them in a later plenary by saying that it is important that the US not be vilified for its position on climate change but rather that nations seek common ground and cooperate with one another. Plenary Sessions: Consensus, Conflict and Moving “Commas” Interestingly, all conference decisions are decided by consensus. In the large plenary sessions, called Meeting of the Parties (MOP 2) and the Conference of the Parties (COP 12) to the Kyoto Protocols, drafts of documents were introduced and commented upon by delegations as they were recognized by the chair. On the first morning, the US objected to Tuvalo’s attempt to add agenda items on behalf of the Small Island Nations. Tuvalo, a small island nation in the Pacific, pointed out that countries like theirs are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, despite contributing the fewest greenhouse gas emissions. Jamaica, however, asserted that Tuvalo was not speaking for all Small Island Nations, and sided with the US. “Given no consensus,” said Conference President Kibwana, he accepted the US objections. At a large meeting the next morning of the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA 25), discussing a draft document on reducing emissions from deforestation in developing countries (Agenda item 5), there seemed to be a consensus that a workshop be convened, probably at the UN Food and Agriculture (FAO) offices in Rome, similar to one held in August 2006, but there was difficulty on agreeing to the exact terms of reference. Again from my journal:

Japan and others say they are committed to equity, transparency, capacity building, the engagement of the private sector, blah blah blah. Australia similarly looks forward to a constructive discussion. Norway says the next workshop needs to be more concrete. There’s too much UN-speak. Clearly something’s going on here. Then US and the developing nations begin to square off against each other. The US says that before it can approve any document on reducing emissions, “we must have more technical data, we must have a shared methodology, there must be data-based submissions based on more robust science.” Brazil speaking on behalf of a bloc known as “the Group of 77 [developing nations] plus China” urges that a workshop be convened in 2007 to discuss policy first – where we are going, how we should proceed – before addressing the science. [A few days later, I was told by an observer from Conservation International, who attended the August workshop at FAO, that “there was a lot of science presented at the workshop.” The implication is that the American stance is a stalling action.] Tanzania says we cannot rely on the market mechanism to work in Africa. “There are impediments. The African continent already very vulnerable will be in even more jeopardy.” Two from Civil Society are recognized, including an Englishman sitting next to me

US delegate asking that “ways to move” be removed from paragraph 8 of the final draft of FCCC/SBSTA/2006/L.25, “Reducing Emissions from Deforestation in Developing Countries”

from the Global Environmental Centre, who speaks on the need to include the emissions from the world’s warming peat lands.

With no consensus, a smaller team of delegates or “contact group” was sent off to meet behind closed doors with members of the UNFCCC Secretariat, and told to report out two days later on an agreement on the terms of reference for a second workshop if there was to be one. It wasn’t until a week later that the contact group on emissions from deforestation could achieve a consensus. In the meantime, there had been two more public meetings, each time to review the Secretariat’s drafts of agreed-upon language. During a 15 minute break during the first meeting, Brazil and the Group of 77 plus China caucused outside under a tree to read the draft document together and discuss strategy. The US gathered delegates from Japan, Canada and Australia in the front of the room to do the same. When the meeting was reconvened, everyone agreed that the document was good start, but . . . . Japan gives the US line about the need for agreement on methodological and technical requirements

before discussing “principles”. UK speaking for the EU says they can agree with the Group of 77 plus China on the need to discuss policy, but “we cannot lose sight of the technical and data requirements.” The US says before it can agree to a second workshop there must be more clarity about the TOR. It asks that the Secretariat not be placed in a negotiator role, and that the Secretariat remain neutral. Canada agrees with the US that a workshop is no place to carry out negotiations . . . .

After five more closed door sessions, including meetings over the weekend, there was a second public forum at which time the US called progress towards completion of a draft “fantastic,” but asked that the word “relevant” be placed in front of the word “experts.” And when India pointed out that there would then be two “relevants” in the same sentence, it was agreed to remove the second: the Secretariat was to “ensure that relevant accredited observers and experts” be invited to the workshop. Finally, on the second Tuesday of the conference, a final draft of FCCC/SBSTA/2006/L.25, Agenda item 5, came before the body, which recommended that the workshop terms of reference include both “ongoing and potential policy approaches” and “technical and methodological requirements.”

How did this huge body ever come up with such a wise terms of reference? It helps that the EU will pay for the workshop, I’m told with “supplementary funding”. Canada approves of the document, but wants to make certain the science discussed at the workshop will be robust. That’s a US term. And then the US steps in: “In paragraph 8, perhaps in the interest of grammar, the Secretariat has inserted words that were never agreed to in the contact sessions,” says the young US delegate. He reads the offending sentence: “The SBSTA also agreed to consider, at its twenty-sixth session [next year], ways to move the process forward, including the possible need for . . . a third workshop . . . .” He says, “We object to the words, ‘ways to move’ and would like them removed.” SBSTA 25 is asked if it agrees with the US deletion. Silence equals assent. Exhaustion has settled in. The three words are removed, and the rest of the sentence is left as is: non-grammatical and nonsensical. This is not heavy lifting.

A Kenyan friend of mine, who works for Environment Liaison Centre International in Nairobi and is a veteran of many UN conferences similar to this, told me the day before the Climate Change conference opened, “The NGOs [whether environmental organizations, law firms, or businesses] will be here to make contacts and contracts, the delegates will be here to move commas around, and no one will be here to save the world.” Spending as many as ten meetings to decide to have a workshop in Rome, include both the Brazil and US positions in the terms of reference, move “relevant” from one point in a sentence to another, and drop three innocuous words from the final draft of a document was “moving commas.”

UN General Secretary at a press conference at the UNFCCC, Nairobi, 15 November 2006

Sharon Loorenetta, Practical Action, addressing a press briefing at the UNFCCC meetings with representatives from World Wildlife Fund, Greenpeace, and Friends of the Earth, 17 November 2006

Plenary Sessions: Kofi Annan, Heads of Delegations, and other Heavy Hitters The President of Kenya, Hon. Mwai Kibaki, joined us three days before the end of the UNFCCC meetings, along with nearly 100 delegates with ministerial rank and one other head of state, these the “heavy hitters” who flew in to approve the resolutions that came out of the various sessions. It was President Kibaki’s 75th birthday, and everyone in the meeting room sang Happy Birthday, which he received graciously, but his main task that Wednesday was to introduce UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. Annan spoke in a very controlled manner, giving his prognosis for the planet, but was very direct and hard hitting:

“. . . Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen. The message is clear. Global climate change is an all-encompassing threat . . . . This not science fiction. These are plausible scenarios, based on clear and rigorous scientific modeling. [Global warming] must take its place alongside those threats – conflict, poverty, the proliferation of deadly weapons – that have traditionally monopolized first-order political attention. The UN offers the tools the world needs to respond . . . . Let us start being more politically courageous.”

The only give-and-take was at a press conference, immediately following his talk, which I watched on a large, flat screen monitor. Shortly thereafter, he was whisked away from the conference and off to Somalia and then Sudan, where he was most likely received with less ceremony and less acclaim. Two of the last three days of meetings were set aside for each delegation to give a five minute presentation on its country’s position on climate change, including what it was doing to mitigate the effects. Most spoke to a more than half empty room, and written statements were available within minutes of each presentation. I

happened to be present for the presentation by the head of Cuba’s delegation, its Ambassador to Kenya, arguably the most interesting and least diplomatic:

“Cuba has entirely filled its commitments. Although our emissions are not significant, compared to the ones of the main emitters of the planet, and in spite of the fact that my country faces the tightening of the more genocidal and criminal economic, financial and commercial blockade in the history of mankind, imposed by the main imperialist power on earth, which we denounce once again, Cuba is making a great effort to develop important national programs, particularly in the area of energy production, in a self-financed manner.”

Even during the last days of the conference, however, there were more interesting things to do than go to COP12 and MOP2 plenary sessions, especially since there were always hand-outs on what was accomplished and press releases on delegations’ position statements. Press Briefings: Environmental NGO Time Most days, after picking up the Daily Schedule at the information desk, I would head off to the press area to hear a 9:00 or 9:30 press briefing, where very bright, very knowledgeable spokespeople from such NGOs as World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace International presented their take on what had happened the day before, what to look for on that particular day, and what expectations they had for the conference. Usually there were low expectations, and invariably they were met, it seemed, certainly from an environmental NGO perspective. These organizations had a sense of urgency that many delegates did not, and were not in the least constrained by the norms of diplomacy and politeness in their analyses.

Dr. Paula Dobriansky, US Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs and Democracy, with other delegates, UNFCCC in Nairobi, 15 November 2006

Practical Action International, chastised the delegates at a press briefing on the last morning:

“I will leave you tomorrow, you in your suits, and go back to my [Maasai] people. They will ask me what was accomplished at these meetings. I will tell them, almost nothing . . . . We don't drive 4x4 cars, we don't go on vacation by airplane, but we do suffer from climate change.”

And then, correctly surmising that many delegates had found time to go to game parks during the past two weeks, she said: “This was supposed to be the first African summit [on climate change]. It has become a safari summit." Press Conferences: Contrasting Styles and Messages In contrast to the press briefings, there were also daily press conferences, which were open only to delegates and members of the press corps. I found, however, that I could normally stand in a door way or in the nearby press room to follow the proceedings or watch on closed circuit television. It struck me that the delegates’ opening statements often dominated most of the half hour long press conferences, leaving time for only four or five questions by reporters. Probably the most interesting to me was the press conference held by H.E. Paula Dobriansky, the US Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs and Democracy, the senior most member of the US

delegation. Dr. Dobriansky has had a number of high level, high visibility positions, prior to her appointment in the State Department in 2001, but is probably best known for her earlier work with the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), the neo-conservative think tank which included the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, Khalilzad, Abrams, and Bolton. None of this crowd have been very supportive of the UN and all, as early as 1998, were publicly in favor of removing Saddam Hussein from power by force, with or without a resolution from the UN Security Council. At her press conference on November 15 in Nairobi, Under Secretary of State Dobriansky spoke at length on the United States’ contributions to mitigating climate change, noting numerous multilateral climate change and technological initiatives, various task forces, private-public partnerships, targets for cutting greenhouse gases, and support for

worldwide renewable energy. Indeed, a State Department booklet available at the conference, entitled “USA: Energy Needs, Clean Development and Climate Change,” reports that the Bush Administration has “committed more than US$29 billion for climate change-related activities since 2001,” making it seem that the US is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocols in all but name. http://www.state.gov/g/oes/rls/fs/46741.htm Charles Hanley of the Associated Press then asked Dobriansky about the US government’s reaction to the British Government report entitled “The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change,” published just a week before the conference. This report, authored by the former Chief Economist at the World Bank, states in its opening sentence, “The scientific evidence is now overwhelming: climate change presents very serious global risks, and it demands an urgent global response,” and reaches the conclusion that “the less mitigation we do now, the greater the difficulty of continuing to adapt in the future.” Quoting from my journal:

Dobriansky is ready for the question. In rapid fire order she says: “We welcome the Stern Review, and look forward to studying it further. We embrace five major themes advocated by Sir Nicholas Stern: 1. We must act now. 2. We must pursue a range of options and multiple approaches. 3. We agree that we must think long term as well as mid-term and short term. 4. We support public-private partnerships and have put forth several initiatives in this area, which address the importance of economic growth, energy security, reducing air pollution, and mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. 5. We appreciate his points about adaptation and technologies, and have allocated resources for programs in these areas.” She cherry picks. There is much in the Stern Review that the US will not embrace, at least during the remaining years of the Bush Administration. A State Department representative staffing the US booth told

Wangari Maathai, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2004 and Kenya’s Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources, at a book signing at the UNFCCC in Nairobi.

Wangari Maathai, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize 2004 and Kenya’s Deputy Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources, launching the One Billion Tree campaign at the UNFCCC in Nairobi, 8 November 2006

US State Department employee staffing an information booth at the UNFCCC in Nairobi.

me just yesterday that the official government position, since 2001, has been “the Kyoto Protocol is a bad treaty based on bad science.”

Jeffrey Gettleman of the NY Times notes Secretary General Annan’s assertion that there is “a frightening lack of leadership” on global warming, the implication being that the US is one of those countries offering little leadership. Dobriansky says, “The US is leading in taking ground-breaking initiatives, including a mix of mandatory, incentive-based, and voluntary initiatives, relevant to our domestic policies. These are initiatives that will make a difference. This is an effort that all countries must be engaged in.” An Agence France-Press reporter than asked if the November 7 elections will have an impact on the US position on climate change. “There will be continued debate in the US on the most effective action regarding climate change. Democrats embrace a range of views on global climate change as do Republicans. You can expect to see continued debate about what are the most important strategies.”

So nothing is changed, nor should it. She is tough. Dobriansky has been mentioned as a possible

replacement for John Bolton if he is not approved as US Ambassador to the UN. She would be a very direct, abrasive negotiator, a Bolton without the mustache.

Wangari Maathai, founder of the Green Belt Movement in Kenya, for which she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2004, was also featured at a press conference, quite different in tone. She is now Kenya’s Deputy Minister for Natural Resources and the Environment and had recently published a memoir, Unbowed. She had been in the US the week before on a book tour, but she was present at least four days at the meetings, including once to sign books and once to meet with Kofi Annan, the Peace Prize

laureate for 2001. Her press conference on November 8, however, was used to launch the major worldwide 2007 tree planting effort, organized by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), called the “Plant for the Planet: One Billion Tree” campaign, which she will co-chair. Basically, she said, “anyone can plant a

tree.” (http://www.unep.org/billiontreecampaign) Her own Green Belt Movement is credited with planting 30 million trees in Kenya, although over several decades. She is a down-to-earth person, with a warm smile, and was the only delegate of any prominence to note that the carbon footprint of the conference was anything to be concerned about. Interestingly, if she rather than Kivutha Kibwana had been appointed Kenya’s Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, she would have been elected President of the UNFCCC conference for the year. Kiosk Conversations Far more intimate were the conversations with tens of people at the conference staffing their information booths or kiosks, whether from book publishers, environmental NGOs, consulting firms, or from official government and intergovernmental organizations, all very willing to engage. The Americans staffing the US Department of State booth were kept busy handing out literature and answering the same questions all day every day: Why doesn’t the US sign on the Kyoto Protocols? Will the mid-term elections change anything? Whether these were true-believers or not, they were all very firm but pleasant, explaining the US position. One kindly passed my card on to the a US Department of Agriculture employee, who was the lead American delegate in the emissions from deforestation discussions, which led to an informative 15

minute conversation.

Sean Vormwald discussing his carbon footprint with UNEP intern at the Step-by-Step information booth.

I was often drawn to discussions with young people. Sean’s being an “under 30,” facilitated these conversations, I’m sure. He and I would spend time together, talking with youths we met about career paths, internship opportunities, and graduate school programs. We talked with a French intern working for UNEP, who was staffing the Step-by-Step booth. Her task was to approach conference participants,

help them calculate their carbon footprints for traveling to the meetings (http://www.atmosfair.de/index.php?id=0&L=3), and suggest that they pay a voluntary carbon tax contribution to Step-by Step. (When I bought my ticket through expedia.com, Ithaca College paid a small voluntary carbon tax through Expedia’s partnership with TerraPass.com, calculated on the basis of nearly 16,000 air miles traveled and over 6,000 pounds of CO2 emissions; Step-by-Step’s calculation was nearly two hundred dollars more.)

Panels and “Side Events” Three times a day at the conference, there were as many as five panel discussions running concurrently during three time slots, most of them organized by NGOs, such as Conservation International or Greenpeace, intergovernmental government organizations, such as the World Bank or UNEP, or national governments, including the US. Some of these “side events,” as they were officially called, were very similar to academic conference panels with as many as five papers, many read to us, many in power point, with a question or two between each presentation, followed in the end by half and hour or more of discussion. Others were more free-flowing with lots of interaction. While some panels were deadly dull, this was often where I found the substance of the meetings, and where it was easiest to make contacts. With very few exceptions, this was also almost the only time that Civil Society could participate in the discussions – and without ceremony or, necessarily, politeness. In fact, people with delegate status seemed rarely to attend these sessions. My main interests lay in the general area of how climate mitigation efforts, sometimes called “adaptation,” would be implemented in the Global South, and the extent to which the peoples and communities most affected would be involved in or affected by their implementation. There were many side events dealing with these themes from which to choose, few of them very compatible with the world view or perspective of a development anthropologist. a. Carbon Finance: The Concept One of the major vehicles for combating climate change, adopted by the Kyoto Protocols, is a market solution called carbon finance. The Protocols calls variously for capping, “sequestering,” and reducing carbon emissions and greenhouse gasses. One of the means for entities – whether nations that buy into these Protocols or universities that sign onto being “carbon neutral” – to reduce their carbon emissions is to purchase “carbon reduction units” or “carbon credits,” in order to invest in projects elsewhere that reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). There are tens of business corporations, financial services providers, and law firms which are heavily involved in carbon trading. The World Bank has a Carbon Finance Unit. And many NGOs, including environmental NGOs, are moving into the carbon market. Carbon finance has been called “the next Gold Rush” and “green gold,” involving tens of billions of dollars of carbon credits. The figure of $50 billion being available by 2010 was frequently mentioned. I’ll give a hypothetical Ithaca College example and then a real Garry Thomas example. Let’s say that the college decides to sign the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, which commits the campus to becoming “carbon neutral” by such-and-such a date. In this hypothetical example, the college could do this by reducing vehicle emissions and electricity consumption, changing its fleet of vehicles to hybrids and changing light bulbs for two million dollars. Or, using a “creative market solution,” it could meet its target by purchasing carbon reduction units for, say, tree planting or wind energy projects in the Global South, for one million dollars. Similarly, Garry Thomas could have reduced

World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) poster on display at the UNFCCC in Nairobi.

his carbon footprint by staying home and not flying 16,000 miles to Nairobi and back – or he can make the trip and pay a carbon tax to support a small family-owned “cow power” methane digester run by the Haubenschild Dairy Farm in Princeton, Minnesota, through a mechanism managed by TerraPass. In each case, using the lower cost option, I can attend the UNFCCC conference, Ithaca College can keep its vehicle fleet and light bulbs intact, there is less professional and economic “disruption” on our parts, and our small planet is better off because we have both off-set our GHG emissions with our transactions on the carbon market. That’s the thinking behind carbon finance, legitimated by the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the Joint Implementation (JI) mechanism of the Kyoto Protocols. b. Carbon Finance and Carbon Colonization There are two basic problems with carbon finance and carbon trading that are especially germane to development anthropologists, beyond the obvious one: we could all pollute less and still contribute to GHG reduction projects, both domestic and international. A “both/and solution” can reduce rather than merely stabilize emissions. But once in Nairobi (and having plundered the planet getting there), my interests turned to problems with the management of carbon funds and the types of development projects that would be implemented in the Global South, helping countries or peoples “adapt” to climate change. The first implementation problem is “carbon colonization.” Simply put, there are tens of billions of dollars to be invested in climate change mitigation – afforestation, reforestation, “avoided deforestation,” clean energy (including solar, wind and hydro-electric, alternative fuels, even nuclear energy), conservation, etc. – but someone needs to manage project implementation. And the management issues are complex. Checks are not going merely to mailed to the Treasury or the Minister of the Environment in a country like Tanzania. If a country in the Global South has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions to a level of 5% below 1990 levels, it needs to know the baseline. It needs to monitor its projects to verify that the work is being done and the reductions are being achieved. It needs trained managers. It needs an accounting system. And this is how the NGOs from the Global North (environmental companies, banks, law firms, as well as environmental NGOs) and intergovernmental bodies, including the World Bank, become players. They have the models and the expertise that much of the Global South does not have, and most likely, they are the ones who will get the implementation contracts. I am not alone in anticipating that most of the Global South’s carbon dollars will get hijacked and stay in the Global North in the form of management fees and payments for services. How much of adaptation expenditure, I wonder, will be spent on capacity building at the national or local levels? c. Carbon Finance v Community Forestry A second implementation problem with carbon finance has to do with a closely related “locus of control” issue. It is the development anthropologist’s bias to think local, participatory, decentralized and small scale, to apply an almost Paulo Freirian dialogical model to implementation, and ultimately to ask “in whose interest.” The development literature is littered with examples of where local knowledge was ignored or the “development set” was ignorant of indigenous people’s culture and social organization. From my years of experience in the Community Forestry Unit of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, both in the field and at the headquarters in Rome, I learned that in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the future of fuelwood, the future of multi-purpose trees, the future of indigenous tree species, the future of timber, the future of reforestation, is “on the farm.” (The World Agroforestry Centre [ICRAF], part of the UNEP complex which hosted the UNFCCC, was advocating this concept at the meetings as well.) Successful tree planting efforts occur on land close to people’s homes, where people have interests and are invested, where gender issues, land and tree tenure constructs, and the

seasonality of work are considered, where trees are seen to have multiple purposes (whether for non-timber products, erosion control, or their nitrogen-fixing qualities), and where species selection is viewed as critical. (I once visited a tree nursery in the capital of Malawi with nearly one million eucalyptus seedlings in their polyurethane tubes, beautifully lined up in rows, shaded with just the right amount of thatch, watered and moved regularly. The Forestry Officer said that only five percent would survive once they were delivered to villages to be planted – and wondered why.)

Sir Nicholas Stern, author of The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, meeting the press after a panel on his report at the UNFCCC in Nairobi.

The climate change mitigation models approach the issue of carbon offsets from a much different perspective. Inter-cropping trees and crops on farmers’ land is considered agriculture rather than forestry, so an agroforestry model is unacceptable. The preferred model will be tree plantations (typically monocultures) and forestry reserves, putting trees first rather than putting people first. Species is not important. A tree is a tree is a tree. The more trees planted the more greenhouse gases are reduced. But just as carbon finance puts management of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) funds into the hands of the experts, tree plantations and forestry reserves are managed from the center, and the locus of control is moved that much farther from rural communities. In fairness, it does need to said that there are examples where carbon finance is linked to sustainable development at the local level. I attended a side event early in the conference, for example, organized by Ecologica Institute, which featured the launching of the CARE Brazil Social Carbon Fund, a collaborative agreement between CARE International and CO2e, a global broker of carbon credits. By allying with CO2e, which works in association Cantor Fitzgerald and Price Waterhouse Coopers, CARE will be in a position to invest as much as $55 million in social carbon fund credits in projects which

“both mitigate climate change, contribute to poverty alleviation, and strengthen social development. CO2e will act as technical adviser to the fund, will manage the CDM process for the fund’s projects, and help to identify suitable projects in the most important Brazilian ecosystems. Unlike other funds, the CARE Brazil Social Carbon Fund will focus on the environment and the social component simultaneously, promoting preservation of the environment by generating carbon credits and investing in small scale projects focusing on the local development of the communities involved.” (http://www.care.org.br/release/release_social_carbon.doc)

However, when I asked the Brazilians on the Ecologica Institute panel whether the emphasis would be on establishing forest reserves, a much resented “privatizing the commons” model employed in the past by environmental NGOs such as the Nature Conservancy, I was told that “the CARE Social Carbon Fund would not be buying land [but would] help local land owners establish private nature preserves as part of the land conservation system of Brazil.” This is still neither community forestry nor sustainable development. (http://www.un.org/webcast/unfccc/archive.asp?go=106#061107) It remains to be seen whether CARE Brazil can “bring the human touch to the CDM project” in Brazil, as its Executive Director asserts, rather than a more distant, expert-driven management model that I fear will be the norm. Or whether the poorest populations, so dependent upon forest resources, will be included in the process. I know that local NGOs in the some countries in the Global South, in Asia and Africa as well as Latin America, have developed strong positions on carbon credits and carbon colonization, and an intergovernmental organization such as the Coalition of Rainforest Nations, formed in 2005, could prove to be more adept at countering externally dominated approaches than I imagine. For the time being, I remain carbon finance skeptic. d. Sir Nicholas Stern and the Stern Review

There were tens of other side events dealing with topics other than carbon finance. Sir Nicholas Stern chaired a panel of several of his co-authors, discussing “The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.” Stern was Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank until recently, a position once held by Larry Summers, before he left to become Harvard’s president. He is very sharp and dominated a very intelligent session. He is a true believer in the need to take immediate action against climate change, but is also very balanced. (With the publishing of his report just days before the meetings, he could be considered the conference’s “other celeb,” after Nobel laureates Annan and Maathai.) I found it reassuring that he was knighted for his preeminence as an economist and his contributions to public service rather than at birth.

e. Climate Change in the Media A panel on “Communicating Climate Change” was probably the side event that elicited the most passion, largely because it dealt with the theme that “balance is bias,” the idea that American journalism gives undue attention to the small minority of “climate change skeptics,” when the “overwhelming consensus” of climate change scientists is that global warming is real and is caused especially by human activity. This panel also had prominent presenters, including Rajendra K. Pachauri, Chairman of the UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Pal Prestrud, Vice Chair of Arctic Climate Impacts Assessment (ACIA), and was moderated by Alister Doyle, a Reuters’ environmental journalist. But the person who generated the most heat was Marc Morano, the Communications Director for Senator James Inhoff (R-OK), Chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. It was Senator Imhoff who famously said in 2003 that the threat of catastrophic global warming is the "greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people." Morano aggressively challenged the other panelists, saying that skeptics are demonized as “climate change deniers” (lumped with “holocaust deniers”) and argued that in the 1970s, the scientific community was more concerned with global cooling than global warming. He quoted Andrew Revkin, the leading New York Times environmental journalist, who said on April 23, 2006: “It is hard to find a scientist working in this [area of climate change] right now who will say everything we’re seeing, that some people have tried to ascribe to humans – Katrina or even some of the new findings out of the Arctic about increased melting rates – is our fault.” Morano’s counterpart, the Communications Director for Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), was active in the discussion, speaking from the audience. (Senator Boxer, who will chair the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works beginning in 2007, was one of three Senators to sign a letter sent to President Bush on November 17, saying that global climate change needs to be addressed in the next Congress.) f. Nuclear Energy as “Clean Energy” A side event on “Nuclear Energy, Green House Gases, and Sustainable Development,” which included a program officer in the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, was fascinating for its championing atomic energy as “clean energy” for developing countries with almost no mention, in the presentations, of the disposal of nuclear waste. During the discussion period, it (and nuclear proliferation) was almost all the audience wanted to discuss. Once again, it was a Greenpeace representative who carried the debate to the panelists, challenging them on nuclear waste storage, melt downs, safety, and whether atomic energy was cost effective once one factored in the cost of subsidies. g. Wangari Maathai and the Convention on Biological Diversity Wangari Maathai spoke at the “Biodiversity and a Changing Climate” side event, sponsored by Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), and used the occasion to help launch a partnership between her Green Belt Movement and CDB. (The partnership commits the CDB Secretariat to a goal whereby all of its activities will be carbon neutral, off-set by planting trees in Africa.) When Maathai speaks, she speaks with both practical knowledge and moral authority:

“The world’s biodiversity is really close to my heart. What we do in the Green Belt Movement is mostly an effort to save biodiversity. From our perspective, a tree is an ecosystem unto itself. When you see an indigenous forest being clear cut to make way for a monoculture plantation of pines or eucalyptus, you have an ecosystem cut down multiplied several million times, and you will never be able to replicate the original biodiversity. Those who want monocultures can grow them on farms, not in our forests. Our river banks and streams are also in danger, and need our protection. The more people interfere with the ecological systems of our watersheds – our mountains, our river banks, our stream beds – the more they undermine their own livelihoods.”

She also has a nice sense of humor and a very kind manner. At one point in the discussion that followed her presentation, she addressed a South American representative in the room from the World Council of Churches:

“Genesis is the first book of biodiversity. We tend to think that the human species are the most important species. But if we read the Bible, we see it says that God created man on the last day. I think it was an afterthought. If God had not used his infinite wisdom, and had made the mistake of creating us on a Monday, we would have died on Tuesday because there would not have been all the resources we need in order to survive. All of those species created before us, if we disappeared from the surface of this planet,

Young people from India, Switzerland, France, China, Uganda, Togo and Kenya, in action at the UNFCCC in Nairobi.

Togo delegate “pledging” that his country will reduce global temperature increases, while Greenpeace observers from Togo and Switzerland applaud at the UNFCCC in Nairobi.

Garry Thomas with a Greenpeace observer from Beijing at the UNFCCC in Nairobi.

they would not be affected. And some of them would say, ‘Thank God.’ But we on the other hand, cannot live without the other species. That should be a humbling experience for us. We should recognize when we are working for biodiversity, it is not only for these other species but it is also in the interest of our own survival.”

Young People at UNFCCC “Generation Kyoto: Youth-led Climate Action from Local to Global,” one of the few side events to generate as much laughter and hope as Wangari Maathai’s message, was also the only panel with any youths represented at all. There were eight panelists from five different countries, Canada, India, Togo, Costa Rica and the Netherlands, sent to Nairobi by organizations such as Greenpeace, the Sierra Youth Coalition, the Energy Action Coalition, and the Global Youth Climate Movement, and by the Canadian government. Each was so engaged and knowledgeable, speaking about youths’ accomplishments in organizing and spreading awareness in their countries, the response of their governments to youth-led activities, their assessments youths’ presence at previous UNFCCC sessions – and their desire for young people “to have a place at the table.” “Wow,” one of them would say. “That’s a tough act to follow.” And then follow it they would, each as energetic and enthusiastic as the previous speaker. And as I reported in a fluffy little piece for Positive News (Winter 2007), filed on my way home from Nairobi, this was the session where an elderly Kenyan professor, Dr. Joseph Ouma Muga, was so blown away by their passion and youthful charisma that he stood up and said, “This is one of the best days in my life. This is where things are real.” (http://www.positivenews.org.uk/artman/publish/article_1106.shtml) Just prior to this panel, a contingent of young people met with Conference President Kivutha Kibwana; it was announced that he embraced their message as well, and urged all NGOs to be inclusive of young people. That is not necessarily “getting a place at the table,” but they did make an impression. There were said to be approximately 100 youths in attendance at this year’s meetings, as compared with 500 the year before in Montreal (including 18 Ithaca College students), from 19 countries. These young people, however, were very much in evidence. On several days, they held an “action,” holding up signs, asking that delegates Remember the Children or reminding them of how few days remained in the conference for them to accomplish something significant. The

action that was probably most effective was when many of the Kyoto Generation panelists rolled a large planet Earth onto the main plaza, using it as a colorful attention-getting device, and approached delegates, asking them to make a pledge that their countries limit global temperature increases to below two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. When delegates from member countries (for example, Togo) moved

their flags from one side of the chart to the other, they were applauded and photographed in the act. (“Staying below two degrees Celsius” is the slogan of a World Wildlife Fund campaign, and is a

higher standard than is called for in the Kyoto Protocols: http://assets.panda.org/downloads/visionnewfinal.pdf) The Random and Serendipitous The first conference attendee I met was on the BA flight from London to Nairobi, where I sat immediately behind a young man reading a print out of a chapter of the Stern Review. It turned out that he was English, had been to Ithaca very recently – in fact gone to concerts at IC, visited EcoVillage, and talked with people at Sustainable Tompkins. He was working for CarbonSense, a London-based consulting firm

Conference participants at lunch table at the UNFCCC in Nairobi.

which had recently had a contract with British Telecom, “envisioning its future in a carbon-constrained world.” We would meet again and again. The second attendee I met to talk with was two days later, when I chatted with a young Japanese woman, walking from Security to the UNFCCC Information Kiosk. We exchanged business cards within the first 100 meters of conversation, a ritual I performed at least one hundred times over the two weeks of the conference. She then disappeared into a delegation of dark business suits. Lunch at the UNEP cafeteria was the best place to strike up an extended conversation. It was always crowded at lunch time, so people sat where ever they could. I usually joined people already seated, more than once with a delegate, such as the Haitian who wanted to know about the US mid-term elections’

significance, but more often with NGO observers. Again I met people with Ithaca connections. One was a vice president of Ecoenergy International, one of the many environmental consulting firms at the conference, who was an Ithaca High School graduate and the son of a political scientist who had taught at Cornell. Another was a graduate student from the University of Rochester, who was carrying out anthropological research in western Kenya. He, I quickly learned, was struggling with layers of ethical dilemmas and seemed delighted to meet another anthropologist who had done fieldwork in East Africa. He had been instrumental in bringing IC Provost, Peter Bardaglio, to Rochester for a talk on sustainability and higher education, and was envious of Ithaca’s sustainability initiative.

Sometimes, rather than hiring a taxi, I’d take a van back to Gracia Guesthouse to save $15 – or because I had nothing better to do in the evening than take a long ride through the city. On three successive nights, my seatmates were an Italian businessman, a German delegate, and a Saudi delegate. The first was eager to get back to the Hilton, where he had an appointment with the manager over the $600 missing from his room. The other two, also on their ways to major hotels, wanted to talk mostly about the horrendous traffic and how poorly organized everything was in Nairobi – except the conference. The most fortuitous van conversation was with a young Harvard MBA in a management position at Conservation International, who had attended a workshop a few months earlier in Rome on the forestry emissions issue before SBSTA 25, and knew the substance, the politics and the players better than I could ever hope to know. Since this was a topic I was interested in following, she became a key informant, someone to talk with on several occasions. I had many conversations with Kenyans, who were at the conference in great numbers, and these normally became Swahili tutorials. I think the first person I met to talk with was a young man selling newspapers and cell phone cards. Other than selling me The Daily Nation daily, he must have sold me a phone card every other day, each time scratching off the phone code and adding minutes to my borrowed cell phone. I told him he was my “techie,” a new English term he was happy to learn. That first morning, he added kunyongwa to my Swahili vocabulary, “to be hanged,” as in the November 6 headline, “Saddam Hussein sentenced to hang.” Another young Kenyan, who started her own NGO, the Mount Kenya Youth Initiative for Ecosystem Restoration, told me that in the time of her grandfather, an elephant could drown in a river running through Nyeri. “Now a two-year old can walk across it any time of the year.” And in another conversation, Professor Joseph Ouma Muga and I jokingly decided that I was the one who needed to shikamoo him, or use the term of respect, because it turned out that he was three years older than I. I was constantly reminded that it was ascribed status (my age) as well as achieved status (my Swahili and my history) that facilitated access and entrée in Nairobi, even at the UNEP conference center. One afternoon, during the second week of the conference, I met a woman from the Nairobi office of Climate Network Africa (CAN). I think I approached her in part because she was older and looked wise, but mostly because no one seemed to be stopping at her CAN information booth. I wondered if perhaps it was because she was attired in a manner which was obviously Muslim. (While there were many Muslim participants, women and men, and many booths were staffed by women, very few were staffed by

Africans and she was the only woman staffing a kiosk wearing a veil.) I probably expected to talk about the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) in Kenya or maybe community forestry, but quickly our conversation turned to family and Swahili, the language of our conversation. She was born in Mombasa, where Swahili is the first language and beautifully spoken. Her husband had died very suddenly, only a few months earlier. As it turns out, one of my best friends had died on July 5 in Dar-es-Salaam, also unexpectedly, someone I had known since we started working together in 1961. “We were born the same year, and began working in the same government office in the same month, just months before Tanzania received its independence,” I told her. When she learned that I was going to visit his family for five days after the conference, she helped me with the vocabulary of loss and grief, kutoa pole. “Grief,” she said, “is an even more powerful emotion than love.” Finally, there was a young Kenyan whom we sat with at breakfast several mornings, normally a teacher in a local Youth Fighting Aids in Kenya (YOFAK) organization in western Kenya. He was serving this week, he said, as a trainer at a small regional conference at the Gracia Guesthouse during most of the time we were attending the UNFCCC. We talked first about our families. He was 29 years old, recently married, no children. “I want to have children,” he said. I told him about the conference I was attending, and he asked if we could collect some literature about climate change for him to take home with him. At one point, I explained the ecological footprint concept to him, using a mix of Swahili and English, and then roughly calculated his footprint. He was living in a small house with electricity but few appliances and no heat. He farmed four acres of maize and beans in addition to a household garden. He used cow manure on his garden, and commercial fertilizer to grow maize. His food was locally grown. He did not own a car, used public transport to travel to Nairobi, and had never traveled outside of Kenya. And then I told him about my ecological footprint, which I calculated to be more than 10 times his. He said, “I’ve heard of the conference. I know the climate is changing. But I did not understand until now how the way you live has any effect on the way I live.” The next morning, when I sat with him again, he said, “I’ve been thinking about what you told me and the size of my footprint. What can I do to reduce my family’s impact on Earth?” I was almost at a loss for words. This young Kenyan’s apparent acceptance of my lifestyle and his generosity of spirit led me to thinking of a student of mine who spent a semester studying wildlife conservation and community-based natural resource management in Arusha, Tanzania, through a School for International Training (SIT) study abroad program a few years ago. When she came back to campus, she gave a talk to our Anthropology Club about her experience. She talked about living with her host family, showed us slides of her host mother, sisters and brothers, and passed around some things she’d bought in the market as souvenirs – cloth, baskets, some bead work. But mostly she talked about how she spent her time with her host family. “Look at them,” she said. “They have nothing and would give you anything. And look at us.” She sat down to not a dry eye in the room. My feeling then was, she got it. Crossing cultures, sitting on a dirt floor, even for only a few months, can change one’s life. And talking with this young man at a Nairobi guesthouse about climate change, reminded me again of what we can all learn from people in the Global South. Looking back at this account of two weeks at a conference of 6,000 participants in a city of 2.5 million people, I realize that much of what I valued were the conversations and the connections made, whether at the Guesthouse or at a kiosk or over lunch or during a van ride, where the random and serendipitous became the basis for a more personal relationship. As much as I benefited from attending plenary sessions, side events, and press briefings, and however well grounded I became in carbon finance and the geopolitics of emissions from deforestation, I realize that a lot of what I have written is about the people who became part of that “village” of face-to-face relationships that I knew that I needed to find, when I wrote in my journal on the first day of the conference.

Accomplishments As World Wildlife Fund, Friends of the Earth, Practical Action and Greenpeace International anticipated in their press briefings towards the end of the conference, no decision was made by the delegates on a timetable for future cuts in greenhouse gas emissions beyond those previously accepted limits set in the Kyoto Protocols. Decisions on funding for developing countries were similarly postponed until next year. Because of these non-decisions, Gettleman in The New York Times reported that the conference ended “with only modest results.” I would agree. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/17/science/17cnd-climate.html?ex=1321419600&en=d04848d940dd0426&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

The UNFCCC official website, however, lists nine decisions made at the conclusion of the COP 12, eleven decisions made by MOP 2, and five decisions by the Ad Hoc Working Group 2 (AWG 2). The Press Release issued at the conclusion of the meetings, quotes Conference President Kibwana as hailing the Spirit of Nairobi and the Nairobi Framework, giving positive support to the needs of developing countries. Many of these resolutions and documents, however, were the result of hours and hours of “moving commas” and did not seem to be very substantive. (http://unfccc.int/files/press/news_room/press_releases_and_advisories/application/pdf/20061117_cop_12_closing-english.pdf) What did impress me? In my Positive News (Winter 2007) article, I wrote: “It must be said . . . that the fact that representatives from 180 countries could carry out such serious business or that the UN can function at all during such trying times in such a vulnerable part of the world is still a marvel of modern times.” I do believe this. The conference was flawlessly run, and the UNFCCC secretariat was infinitely patient and very efficient. I was also generally impressed with the European Union’s stance on issues, as articulated by the Finnish delegation in Finland’s role as president pro-tem of the EU. (Germany takes over the presidency of the EU on January 1, 2007, and with Chancellor Merkel being such a strong environmentalist, it is likely to push for tough targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions even more than Finland.) I was also very impressed with the work of several NGOs, especially Greenpeace International. Their spokesperson at the conference, an American based in Amsterdam working in their Climate and Energy Division, was extremely articulate and knowledgeable, and Greenpeace’s commitment to young people was impressive with their youth initiative, Solar Generation. Young Canadians impressed me. There might have been more Canadian youths at the conference than from any nation, other than Kenya. Several in the Canadian Youth Delegation were sent by their government, despite Canada’s recent change of administrations and change of heart about meeting the targets set by the Kyoto Protocols. I also wrote in my draft submission to Positive News that “The few new agreements that came out of this conference represent modest progress, much too little to justify the huge carbon footprint generated by the 6,000 [attendees].” This was too negative a conclusion for Positive News to include in the published article, but I also believe this. I would agree with the Greenpeace critique that these meetings in Nairobi fell victim to low expectations. At the press briefings, it was made clear that there will need to be a much greater sense of urgency and much more needs to be accomplished at the 2007 meetings where there will be higher expectations and a shorter timeline. The sentiment was expressed again and again by the NGO environmental community that the world cannot wait for a change of administrations in the US in 2009. Regarding the 2007 meetings, a final decision will be made by February 1, most likely confirming that next year’s COP 13/MOP 3 will be hosted by Indonesia and held in Bali, from December 3-14, 2007. I suspect that many of the same delegates who attended the conference in Nairobi will at Bali next year, where once again the main agenda item will be “After Kyoto What?” – and the main business at hand will be business. Other than the young people, will anyone be at these meetings to save the world?