Dawn Bickett (PO '10), Grace Vermeer (PO '10), and Politics Professor Rick Worthington.

After a long day the Bella Center, our research team attended a WWViews side event that was happening at the Klimaforum, a Danish side conference aimed at providing a venue for civil society and other groups that didn’t have access to the COP meeting. (If you don’t know what WWViews is, check out WWViews.org! Briefly, it was a citizen’s deliberation project I worked on that brought together groups of citizens around the world to discuss their policy recommendations for climate change.) The event consisted of a panel with 2 participants, one from Viet Nam and one from Egypt; 2 public policy and participation experts; and two politicians, one a young Finnish Member of Parliament, and a Danish cabinet member...

 Hello again from the Bella Center!

I spent much of my second day here planning with other members of the WWViews team. As a research body, we’re still trying to design our plan of action for this conference—who we will try and approach, what questions we will ask, and how we wish to define our goals. In many ways, we hope to explore this conference in terms of the efficacy of participatory democracy—how we can integrate citizen opinions more effectively into the actual deliberations. We hope to speak with delegation members, but there are no formal channels for this interaction—which leaves us resorting to crashing delegations at lunch. We are also hoping to speak with press and non-governmental organization members to see how we can make a project like WWViews more compatible with their efforts.

Part of what we did yesterday was probe the boundaries of the conference center to see where, as non-party members, we were allowed...

Hello everyone!

Dawn and I have been having some internet issues--I apologize for the delay!

 The first day of the conference was full of rousing speeches, smiling delegates, and hand shaking all around. I attended the opening ceremony, which, as Professor Rick Worthington had predicted, started with mostly “fluff”. It began with a video full of activist imagery—scared children running from climate change induced floods and storms, their teddy bears falling in their wake. This was followed by a song by the Danish Girls choir, calling on the world to “tread lightly” on our planet.

(click read more for the rest) 

Hello everyone!

 I arrived a bit early to the Bella Center this morning, so I thought I'd check in--there are computers for all to use in the main lobby. I'm currently surrounded by hundreds of booths set up for organizations--Climate Action Network International, Federation of Young European Greens, Wetlands International, and Tropical Forest Group are a few within seeing distance. It's been incredible so far, and I've run across more than a few important party members, I'm sure. There's more than just observers, and party members, though--there were at least 8 or 9 different protesting groups upon exiting the local metro station!

 The opening session starts at 10:00am, so I'm going to go get a good seat. More to come soon!