Fellow Sierra Club Maine volunteer leader Joan Saxe and I are packing our bags and preparing for our trip to Paris to join other Sierra Club members at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference(UNFCCC) which is at the end of its first week.
The conference is a critical juncture for the international community’s efforts to combat climate disruption. More than 185 countries will bring their individual pledges to reduce their carbon emissions. They will also pledge financial resources to help developing countries adapt to and combat climate change. We expect that the conference will create an organized system to measure and verify emission reductions, and to account for monetary aid to developing countries.
The Sierra Club has long been actively engaged in the UNFCCC process. In most years, we have focused our work inside the negotiations to achieve specific policy outcomes and to ensure that the US plays a constructive role. This year, with a headline deal on the agenda, the stakes will be much higher, and international climate issues will gain far more attention than at any time since the Copenhagen meeting in 2009.
Heading up the national Sierra Club negotiating team will be John Coequyt, an experienced negotiator, whom many of us had the pleasure of meeting at our Annual Dinner this last October. His team will work with other NGO’s and consult with governmental negotiators.
Joan and I will be participating in the non-governmental organizations meetings and events to learn, share, and become inspired to take action once we get back home. We will also help out at the Sierra Club booth in the Civil Societies area.
This conference will give us and the Club an opportunity to reach out to other NGO’s and the public from across the world, and to share our concerns and tell about actions we have taken here at home. By showing that communities across the US are not only ready to act, but already are doing so, we can demonstrate momentum and a strong commitment for a strong international climate deal.
If you want to follow the action, I have found a couple of links you might enjoy in addition to our reports.
http://www.sierraclub.org/paris
http://www.sierraclub.org/paris/sierrascan
http://eco.climatenetwork.org/
A Bientot,
Claudia