11 December 2009

News from the inside

It is not the despair, it is the hope!

Hopenhagen. The name of a UN campaign embodies a certain pathos underlying much of the mood here at the Bella Centre where the COP15 negotiations are underway.  The tool of the NGOs are images of beautiful places undergoing unprecedented destruction – from tropical islands to rainforests and icecaps – sitting side-by-side with photographs of human suffering caused by drought on the one hand and flooding on the other. Climate change and environmental collapse are clearly not something for future generations – it is something happening now and an issue for us, today. 

Against this backdrop the advertising from major corporations - promoting themselves as leaders and heroes is, in all honestly, naïve at best and disingenuous at worst. Such are the contradictions – despair and hope, creating a strange atmosphere and a highly-charged undercurrent as 50 years of the modern environmental movement culminates with the bringing together of the most diverse group of opinions and interests. With stands and speakers, there is all the colour and cacophony of a bazaar in Marrakech. In all this noise, the prize for marketing must go to the Korean group (cult?) promoting veganism to save the planet, camped out at the entrance – offering free vegan snacks (which formed my breakfast this morning) and handing out branded cloth bags filled with information which have become one of the monikers of COP15.

The world's leading scientists like Jim Hansen of NASA are saying that we are in dire straits already. To call this the most important meeting in the history of the earth, as was being touted yesterday, is probably an anthropocentric irrelevance. However, to describe it as the most important meeting in the history of mankind might be justified.  I wonder whether this sort of atmosphere – of intense expectation and self-questioning - pervaded the Soviet Bloc just before the Berlin Wall crumbled. From this side of the Climate Wall it is hard to see how our institutions or cultures can respond to the challenges with the speed and coherence required – any betting person, with full access to the data and our 'form' as humans, would be a fool to back us.

I am reminded of a statement made by one of John Cleese’s characters in one of this films, recognizing the source of his angst, "It is not the despair, it is the hope!". Yet the irresistibility of hope to humankind is one of its most deep-seated traits. The solutions which BioRegional and our partners are building remain perhaps unique in their resolve, holism, idealism and pragmatism – even here on a global stage. I see our work embodying hope in a special, simple way which combines the opportunity being grasped by business with the fundamental sentiments of the environmental movement. There are huge opportunities for us to work with others around the globe to share our approach. The Climate Wall is crumbling.
 

Pooran Desai
One Planet Communities Technical Director
and Co-Founder of BioRegional