Day 2 — COP17, Durban: Tuesday, November 29, 2011
I was walking around the excellent exhibition center adjacent to the ICC itself, and saw a woman from Grenada on one of the live TV screens that are everywhere. She was making a measured, fiery, strong statement to the COP, calling out the hypocrisy and cruelty of scrapping Kyoto and going to some new voluntary system of pledged targets by the rich nations. She had very radical things to say about emissions targets, funding majority world adaptation programs by the rich countries (the so-called Green Development Fund), and the need for serious negotiations for a firm treaty now.
Little did I know it was none other than Dessima Williams, who was Grenada’s ambassador to the US during the New Jewel Revolution when she was still a teenager! From 2007 to 2011 (she stepped down this year) she was Grenada’s climate negotiator, and head of the Association of Small Island States (AOSIS). For several years this group has been advocating for a treaty that would reduce emissions to the point where scientists believe global warming could be contained at 1.5 degrees Celsius or less, a target that becomes excruciatingly more difficult with each passing year. Their homes and nations are directly at stake as ocean levels rise, and many estimate that some of them – including the Maldives, Tuvalu, and Nauru – could go under water in the next two decades. Hence Dessima’s call to action.
John