In the light of the IS attacks on Paris that has terrorised the city, thoughts inevitably turn to the climate talks in December, COP21, and how France will respond.
Will this change the venue or format of COP21?
The message is that the conference remains on course. This is the right decision. This conference is much too important to be blown off course by the actions of murderous ideologues.
The event already had in place security that is inevitably needed for an event like this, with badged access to the conference area itself. I suspect they had already factored in what many Parisians expected might be coming (even if the reality was much more shocking than anyone had imagined).
Will security be beefed up? Yes, inevitably, but it would be a mistake to create an image of a besieged COP21 with popular protest groups shut out of the conference behind even higher ‘walls’ (an impression that many protest groups already feel).
Total security for the large numbers of the ‘unbadged’ outside the conference would be impossible. What to do? Not to be heard in Paris, to stay away?
I don’t believe so, but I do believe we need to re-think the organization of the protests, and I had this feeling even before the terrorist attacks.
We, the citizens of planet Earth all qualify for a ticket to this event: ‘how to save the Earth’, and clearly we cannot all be there.
Whereas UK citizens, like me, can find low carbon ways to travel to Paris, what about a citizen of Indonesia or Canada? Flying in large numbers to Paris would not exactly send a consistent message. A couple of tonnes of carbon dioxide for each far flung protestor: is that the right price?
There needs to be protesters there for sure, and the French people are protesters par excellence. We need people there to create that energy, to help remind the delegates why we are here.
The people – and many of these student groups – understand the challenge better than the politicians, and understand the severe limitations of our politicians to speak for them, and show vision and leadership. They need their voice heard. Often, these events are accused of being ‘corporatist’ and the voices of the status quo still get undue access to the high table.
The organisers need to recognise this imbalance and not to allow the terrorist attacks on Paris to widen this imbalance further.
The COP21 organisers should create a protest space within the conference zone itself: a space where delegates must pass through and is a wall of images, tweets and statements from protest groups who are physically unable to be there. Every hour of every day, delegates must be reminded of why they are there.
We need the words of all nations represented … Bangladeshi, Egyptian, Kenyan, … not just the middle-class Europeans and North Americans who can afford to fly to be there.
If we want a global protest, inside the COP21 tent, then let’s find a way to do this that does not compromise the inevitable demands of security for delegates and observers.
Let’s bring protest to the heart of COP21.
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