By Climatico Guest Contributor: Dean Rizzetti

Protests in Durban (Source: BBC World Service)

Protests at Durban have delivered neither the cacophony of Copenhagen nor the resort-inspired civility of Cancun. Instead, they have been a mix of anger and despair, with talk of occupation and the slightest glimmer of hope.  

Rallies through the streets

Activists took to the streets on Saturday, with more than 6000 people marching through Durban in a diverse procession of noise and colour. Reports said the rally was ‘lightly policed”, with NGOs, farmers, unions and even UN Climate Chief Christiana Figueres in attendance. 

Tasneem Essop, head of international climate strategy at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), said: “Today’s march was an amazing moment of solidarity that showed people want real action from their governments on climate change – not just talk. The will of the people is strong. The problem is that the will of our leaders is weak.”

These marches have become a mainstay of climate negotiations, and activists and delegates were reportedly buoyed by the energy of the marches. However, Saturday’s rally was a shadow of the massive rallies witnessed at Copenhagen, where as many as 100,000 took to the streets and cities around the world held rallies in solidarity.

Greenpeace pursues their ‘Dirty Dozen’

Meanwhile, Greenpeace has managed to create international headlines to promote their Dirty Dozen campaign, which aims to name and shame the 12 companies that Greenpeace claims are holding climate talks back through political leverage.

Six activists were arrested and fined for attempting to hang a banner at the Global Business Day Conference, while senior Greenpeace activist Tzeporah Berman managed to gain access to the Global Business Day conference to condemn the ‘dirty dozen for “their role in undermining global talks to tackle climate change, to save lives, economies and habitats”.

Canada’s youth raise their voices

Canada’s aggressive negotiation stance has also drawn the ire of Canadian youth delegates, with six activists to the conference turning their backs on Canadian Environment Minister Peter Kent during his opening statement.

Activists had printed phrases such as “Turn your back on Canada” and “People before polluters” on their t-shirts, but were quickly ejected from the conference and their accreditation revoked for disturbing the conference.

While talk of Occupying Durban spread in the early days of the conference, the shear scope of the task and the negotiators’ manifest failure to respond in a way that is as seen as appropriate is the overriding theme of protest.  While the Global Occupy Movement continues to generate momentum and headlines against bankers and corporate greed, the dashed hopes of past conferences seems to have limited the enthusiasm for wide scale climate protest.  While protesters from around the world plea for a global deal to control rising emissions, the gap between civil society and major governments seems to grow ever wider. 

COP 15 Commentary by Guest Author: Bettina Wittneben

Activists in Copenhagen fight for climate justice (Image by: ronniehall)

Bob Dylan’s 1963 classic about floods and rising oceans is taking on new meaning in Copenhagen. The song has become a bit of a theme song for climate action. For the first time in its seventeen-year history, the United Nations climate summit is being bombarded with massive protests inside and outside the conference centre.

Inside the conference centre, representatives from poor countries and small island states have managed to halt the negotiations to bring attention to their needs. These groups of countries have in the past been treated with much care and given special allowances by the UN, but really, they were merely seen as the moral voice at the negotiations, the victims and the ones who will lose out. Tuvalu has always had the power to make negotiators face the detrimental impact of their decisions, for example, when their delegate pointed out that the two degree target proposed by the EU will mean Tuvalu will disappear. This sort of statement caused a sober response and a solemn pause in the negotiations – for about five minutes. In Copenhagen, these countries are refusing to remain in the victim’s role. They are not willing to be treated as children alongside a much more important adult game. They are standing up and speaking out.

This sense of renewed courage is also vivid in some of the main environmental nongovernmental groups. It is unusual to see so many protests staged inside the summit. Indigenous peoples are being encouraged to speak out, climate change victims put on the megaphone. Protesters have even been able to climb up on centre stage of the negotiations voicing their concern. They have matured from the main group organizing the famous NGO party at half time of the negotiations to taking a stance even if it is uncomfortable.

Outside, the cold temperatures have not been able to freeze activists’ anger and frustrations at the slow pace of international climate action. There are solid calls for payment of the ecological debt, setting ambitious, science-based emissions reduction targets and abolishing false climate solutions such as offsetting, nuclear power or clean coal. The number of arrests must be in the thousands by now but activists still managed to approach the conference centre in great numbers in an attempt to take over the talks.

Civil society has now been effectively barred from observing the climate talks. The Danish police are stepping up the defences of the climate bureaucracy. They have already brought out the pepper spray, police dogs and batons. There are still the water cannon that are rumoured to have been purchased before the summit. A meeting of over one hundred heads of state in the coming days will require high levels of security, at least for the ones on the inside.

Will these two sets of climate protest merge? Today they almost did. The crowds inside and outside the summit wanted to unite but were held back by police. Some of the delegates inside the summit have defected to the alternative summit outside because they are frustrated by the negotiations. Perhaps pushing NGOs outside of the confines of the summit will expose them to the more radical thoughts at Klimaforum.

Which one of the two protest movements will create enough momentum to change our collective path into climate chaos? Will the heads of state come out strong in support of climate change mitigation and adaptation? Will the alternative platform gain so much strength that its solutions will ripple through grassroots movements across the globe?

The good news is that there is momentum – perhaps for the first time since climate action was called for at the UN over twenty years ago. Climate change melancholy is over. It is time to roll up the sleeves and get a-workin’.