A view from Copenhagen
Sunniva Taylor describes her time in Copenhagen at the protest in the lead up to the climate change summit
A cacophony of colour, music and chanting flooded the streets of Copenhagen on Saturday 12 December as 100,000 activists marched to the city’s Bella Centre, where the UN Climate Change Summit is taking place. I travelled to Copenhagen with over a hundred other Christian Aid supporters from the UK. We marched as part of the ‘Countdown to Copenhagen’ campaign: a worldwide movement of development agencies calling for climate justice.
The Global Day of Action in Copenhagen was overwhelmingly peaceful, positive and uplifting. Activists from across the world, including the global south, took part together, all calling for the same thing: a Fair, Ambitious and (legally) Binding (FAB) agreement. All were adamant that we must act now, as summed up so well in a popular placard reading ‘Bla, bla, bla. Act now!’ – a message as directed at the global public as at our leaders. Lucy, one Christian Aid supporter I spoke to after the event, reflected on the relief and joy she felt in being able to ‘bask in the unity’ of the occasion. While the negotiators may be unable to agree on a way forward, the feeling on the street was of togetherness. As Desmond Tutu announced in typical charismatic style to an international gathering the next day: ‘We are one family’ and we must act together to confront this crisis, for ‘we will either all be winners, or all be losers’.
People have gone to great lengths to get to Copenhagen to take part in the march and other civil society events taking place before and after it. The group I was part of took twenty hours by train, coach and boat to reach the city. Lin Patterson, a UK Friend, brought with her a large yellow Quaker banner, covered with messages from UK and Danish Friends, which she held up high throughout the march. Twenty-eight Christian Aid supporters, including Gerald and Laura Conyngham (below) of Exeter Meeting, actually cycled to the summit, taking three days and covering 140 miles by pedal power. Doing so, Gerald told me, was a demonstration of just how strongly they felt about the issue of climate change, as well as being a visual and green way of raising money to support Christian Aid’s partners who are already affected by climate change today.
On Sunday we heard from representatives of some of these communities, from Ethiopia, Bolivia, Bangladesh and India, at another packed and celebratory event organised by Countdown to Copenhagen. At this, 512,894 pledges were presented by archbishop Desmond Tutu to the executive secretary of the negotiations, Yvo de Boer. The pledges ask for world leaders to make sure that the agreement made in Copenhagen is effective and fair to the global poor. In telling us of the impact that climate change is already having in their countries – whether this be the melting of glaciers, cyclones, floods or droughts, and the destruction and poverty these bring – the speakers’ overarching message was that action is necessary now, and there is no question as to whether it is possible or not. Tutu, as he literally danced around the stage, announced that we have ‘morality on our side’, ‘right on our side’ and ‘justice on our side’, and therefore we must be the winners. In response, the event ended with a spontaneous chanting of ‘yes we can’ from all those gathered.
This was also the underlying theme of archbishop Rowan Williams’ sermon, which he gave as part of the Ecumenical Celebration for Creation that took place in Copenhagen’s Lutheran Cathedral on Sunday. ‘Perfect love casts out fear’, he reiterated, again and again. He called on all of us, including global leaders, not to be afraid of the decisions and changes that must be made in the face of climate change; but to act for the sake of love. The temptation is to emphasise just how massive a problem climate change is, but the danger of this approach is that it leads to paralysis, to a blame game, or to deference of responsibility, he said. As people of faith we are not called to plead or to spread panic, but to ask ourselves and one another how our policies and lifestyles reflect the commandment to love and to live in joy and respect for the earth.
As I write the negotiations in Copenhagen have been ‘suspended’. Developing nations have withdrawn their cooperation because rich countries will not commit to keeping negotiations under the Kyoto Protocol framework, or to the level of ambitions needed in emissions cuts. The ministerial part of the negotiations has not even begun. We do not know how and if this will be resolved.
Whatever happens in the negotiations, however (and it is highly unlikely that this will, or even could be, an agreement to ‘save the world’), we must heed the words of both archbishops Tutu and Williams and not succumb to fear or despair. The political agreement at Copenhagen is hugely important, but equally, if not more important, is the will of the people, and the display of global solidarity that is taking place there and must continue. Those I travelled with spoke of their plans to go back to their churches ‘to inspire others with the inspiration that they have received’ through being part of the global climate justice movement in Copenhagen. It is community led action that will hold national leaders to account, and that is needed to make the necessary emissions cuts. And it is people power and global solidarity that I believe will in the end make the difference.
Sunniva is a former research assistant for Quaker Peace & Social Witness.
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