10 things that are wrong with this approach to “equity”

Ever since our own Anjali Appadurai stood before world leaders at the 2011 Durban climate talks to demand “equity now,” echoing a longstanding demand of climate justice movements across the world, there has been an increasing use of the word in discussions on international climate change policy. The idea of equity is contested, as everyone from social movement leaders to former Heads of State...

Against all odds: first social preCOP in Venezuela

by Maria Alejandra Escalante  (Spanish version here) Venezuela's government, controversial and criticized by many in the international arena, made the effort to do something that not many other governments would do today: invite more than 130 groups both of Venezuelan and international social organizations and representatives of social movements to Margarita Island for a week (full list of...

Changing the System, Not the Climate: July Social PreCOP begins

by nathan thanki Greetings from Las Islas Margaritas, the site of the first ever social preCOP on climate change. Over the past few years on this website you may have read many dispatches, reports, polemics, and laments from the prefabricated halls of various UN climate change negotiations. We have watched and written as the process to negotiate a new global climate treaty (or whatever) was...

The way here and the way forward: negotiating a new climate agreement

by nathan thanki At the end of an unseasonably warm week in Bonn, the sun set on yet another round of UNFCCC (climate change) negotiations. The session, quieter than the end of year COP (Conference of the Parties) jamboree, has only dealt with one negotiating track—the "ADP." The ADP, or Ad-hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (there's a reason we use acronyms), is a...

US submits views on future climate agreement

by nathan thanki Since the Durban round of UN climate talks in 2011, governments have been struggling towards an eventual global agreement to address climate change (ideally, some say they're just negotiating the establishment of more markets). The negotiation process, named the "ADP" (the D stands for Durban) is mandated to conclude in Paris in December 2015 with some kind of outcome. The exact...