International Youth Delegation

Intervention to the SBSTA Plenary Session, Dec. 10, 2008
Marcie Smith (US), Josh Wyndham-Kidd (Australia), Guppi Bola (UK)

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On behalf of the International Youth Delegation, thank you for this opportunity.

It is well known that forests play a critical role in regulating carbon in the atmosphere. But they are also the home and source of the livelihoods of 1.6 billion people. They protect our watersheds, regulate water flow and disease, and recycle nutrients. Their contribution to the world’s biodiversity is unparalleled. We cannot continue to view forests in a utilitarian, compartmentalized, reductionist manner. Forests are more than trees and carbon. Forests are life.

Given the crucial roles played by forests, the International Youth Delegation has been closely monitoring the negotiations surrounding REDD. We are encouraged to see that REDD is a priority here in Poznan, but are gravely concerned about certain proposed features and omissions within the REDD mechanism and the weak recommendations SBSTA has made to the UNFCCC.

Any REDD mechanism must be first and foremost a mechanism for forest protection and climate stabilization, not a mechanism by which Annex-I countries avoid domestic mitigation actions. Offset markets and massive corporate profits are not, and should not be, the aims of this scheme. Buying a plantation in a developing nation cannot replace genuine reductions at the source of the vast majority of global emissions – in nations like mine, the United States.

Going back to first principles, it is vital that the UNFCCC definition of forests be changed to exclude woody-crop plantations. They store less carbon, less securely and less permanently. We are truly astounded that this seemingly obvious point requires comment. The conversion of natural forests to plantations is deforestation, pure and simple. The perverse outcomes of the Kyoto definition have shown us that. Moreover, forest degradation should be holistically defined as any loss of carbon carrying capacity or any harm to biodiversity.

Critically, a REDD mechanism must clarify and strengthen the land tenure rights of local and indigenous peoples, not further degrade them. It was shocking to hear yesterday that some nations here – including my own Australia – wanted to negotiate away the rights of first peoples. Our message on Human Rights Day is that these rights are non-negotiable. Representatives of indigenous peoples have come all the way to Poznan to speak with you here. Why should they wait until February 15 to submit this recommendation to the UNFCCC? How can we expect someone to be a responsible steward of the land if he or she knows that it could be wrested from them at any moment? Land scarcity and insecurity have been at the root of countless conflicts throughout human history, but we remain confident that we can find a way to secure Green Carbon that won’t ultimately require the deployment of the Blue Helmets. I know that the indigenous peoples here, and the International Youth Delegation, will express our views to you throughout this process, for as long as it takes. Just be aware that, for many peoples, and the ancient forests that sustain them, every day that we take to deliberate is another day of irreversible destruction.

Your children are tired of dressing up like polar bears and penguins in and effort to convince you to act in a manner consistent with science and conscience, a manner that respects the natural cycles and systems that govern us. Your children are tired of being called foolish for prioritizing the preservation of our common home over profit margins. Your children are tired of reminding you that we are here to safeguard the survival of all countries and all people. I once heard that the single thing that all humans share is a desire to pass on to their children a secure future. Please – give us a reason to believe this is true. Give us a bold, binding and just climate treaty that features science-based targets, effective LULUCF rules, and an equitable REDD mechanism.

We're tired of dressing up like penguins and polar bears in effort to convince you to act in a manner consistent with science and conscience, in a manner that respects the cycles and systems that govern us.

Dec. 10, 2008. Poznan, Poland.
UNFCCC-COP14

Whence we go

I remember when we used to make
Cookie-cutter virgin mothers
Snow angels and fervent promises
Sealed them with a glitter lip-gloss kiss.

Translucent faces and tidy nails
We wore our hair up in Lolita tails.
We used the lunch box to run the shirt
That made the boys want to touch us.

Where did we go?
Where did we go?
I’ve been waiting for the answer
But the postal service has slowed.
So I’ve been biding my time
Over Scotch whisky and legends
Knowing that with every page
We’re slipping further and further and further away.

I’ve known the city and her allure
Her sin-rouge lips refused to be ignored
She sang rock ‘n roll and played the tambourine
She spoke in the language of artist’s dreams.

I read the black market book of spells
I wondered why my heroes went to hell
I’m sorry if I spoiled your plan
The siren song, it shook my steady hand.

Where did we go?
Where did we go?
I’ve been waiting for the answer
But the postal service has slowed.
So I’ve been biding my time
Over stale coffee and theorems
Knowing that with every page
We’re slipping further and further and further away.

I remember we got in trouble when
We used the scissors to cut our bangs
Now no one even notices
Our bandaged wrists and noses.

Where did we go?
Where did we go?
I’ve been waiting for the answer
But the postal service has closed.

Untitled

Weathered old man, I study his type:
The Automaton.

Creaking and clicking into his seat within the chanting Mass.
But no – his soul decries his context.

Don’t waste your sympathetic smiles;
What need has he for your instruction, Voltaire?
What unfamiliar lesson could you teach him, Diderot?
Gaia is teacher and muse.
What you have detailed in sundry volumes of high and mighty word,
He inauspiciously gives living form, under her discerning eye.

At your invitation to the perfumed salon, a polite declination:
“No, thank you, I ought to get back. Horses ha’int been fed.”

He sees his smallness, taught him by a life wrestling the earth.
He knows his fallibility, taught him by solitary, dawn-lit walks home after weary nights spent by the side of a dying calf.
He understands life, its instrumental purpose, taught him by solemn slaughterings and his own broken body.

He sees his smallness; I see a crown of humility.
He knows his fallibility, and so keeps his sword of judgment sheathed.
He understands the instrumental purpose of life, and so mocks the approaching dragon,
Death.

He touches my arm and tells me my skin is beautiful and brown like my mother’s
And that my heart knows best,
And I remember blackberries so ripe they could be gathered with concentrated breath;
I remember the tulips, my compass, every spring returning to spell out our heritage;
I remember racing -- downy legs on hot horseflesh -- through tobacco fields toward the place where copper clouds meet Kentucky bluegrass;
I remember the land, something so secure – something that will outlast us both,
Enduring despite our limitations, our forgetfulness.
Line by line, I see the impression of his soil-stained hands on my heart.
I see us on different sides of the semantic chasm, bridge-building, plank by tender plank.
As we cry together, understanding the misunderstood.

The Massacre One Morning Of The Ancestors

We arrive on our spaceships
Highest of hopes and good intentions
We plant our gardens vast and green
Harvest our grapes and olives and corn
We build our cities tall and white
Stretch out the road, through land and space
Pointing -- "Hark, the promise of it!"

The monuments we raise, tempting fate,
We scrawl our names over them,
Condemning ourselves.

Here comes the army now
The angry, quill and brush wielding legions
Remembering us hateful, our own children
They paint our gardens and cities and roads
with their ever-growing palettes of words and colors,
But we recognize none of it.
Were not our sylvan-scapes pleasing?
Were not our Babylons and Romes pleasing?
Were they not the fruit of honest toil and imaginations as bright as any's?
Were not our hopes and intentions high and good?

I am old now, I am your mother and father
Baffled by your condemnation
Head on the chopping block, but
Was I not yesterday a promise, a hero?

Go and see!:
My name,
the now-ashen monument, still standing, if bowed and melancholy, in the center of town
bears it!

Alas, and at that, the ax falls:
"It is your fault, these miseries: these ill-conceived cities, these poorly managed gardens, these inefficient roads. One must pay for errors in judgement and deficiencies in information."

It's a bloodbath to make Robespierre blush --
The baby-faced victors, they arrogantly brandish their advantages, youth and no damned Congressional Record.
To be something other than the tormented practitioner, living in the gray,
Was not our lot.
God forgive us for our ignorance, we suppose, but
We stand proudly by our lives --
Even as we damaged, we repaired
And even as we destroyed, we created,
Which is the story of our race, the young ones will soon see.
- - -
Ah! How can I?
Defame the wombs and truncate the loins
Of teachers, explorers, innovators, and artists?
How can I bear their shamed confusion as they are led to slaughter,
the Old Guards, which were, one must remember, at one moment, the New Guards?

"Did I not yearn and strive," they ask me,
"Much as you. Did I not ponder stars and with a butterfly net, chase them, much as you?
Did I not encounter puzzles in new places, puzzles without a key, that I struggled to answer, but likely failed to understand, much as you?"

As they set to us these questions,
Which we answer with silent, stony piety and a finger toward the history books, the verdict,
Our own children look on.

They are sharpening their pencils and wetting their brushes,
Already conspiring against us and our endeavors.
They know, as we knew, that the battle has already been taken.
They will prevail.
With their vigor and technologies from on high and lessons learnt at a tender age from our own missteps,
They will prevail.

Wondering Where the Wonder Went

I'm leaving for Madagascar in a little over two days. I'm not nervous; maybe that should be worrisome. I've tried to whip up what seems like the appropriate amount anxiety -- luckless. I'm sleeping, eating, focusing well...which is a shame. I remember when I was a little girl, in the days leading up to my family leaving for Vermont at Christmastime: I was living the countdown. I kept my own calendar in the kitchen next to mom's and sliced through the days one after another; stealthily creeping upon "LEAVE FOR VERMONT". Its box was decorated with stickers and exclamation points. I carry a brown leather planner now. January 29 doesn't have stickers or illustrations - in the bottom right corner I have printed very unobtrusively "Flight to Paris: 4pm, JFK". It is sad when the awe is lost, isn't it? I think that is one reason I wanted to go to Madagascar -- if any place can restore my wonder at this grave and comical (comically grave? gravely comical?) planet, it is the red island.