Ellie Hopkins
I graduated in 2009 from the University of Sussex with a degree in International Development. I decided to develop and explore my interest in campaigning, particularly on climate change, and became a community events organiser. I then went on to be the Director of the UK Youth Climate Coalition, an organisation I still work for as an International Policy and Strategy Officer. I also volunteer for the London Olympics. I joined Practical Action in May 2011 as the Climate Change Campaigner.
Posts by Ellie
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Neva Frecheville is the Coordinator of the UK Youth Climate Coalition Delegation to COP17. In this blog she tells us about what she learned from travelling to the climate change negotiations in Durban.
It’s not often we hear the voices of those most impacted by climate change. For young people across the world and especially those living in Africa, climate change severely impacts on their lives. But how often do they have the chance to share their experience?
‘African climate stories: voices from the front line of the climate crisis’ did exactly that by giving the young people affected the chance to share their story at a side event at the recent UN talks on climate change.
Young people from across Africa speak out at the climate negotiations in Durban
I’m from the UK. I’ve campaigned on climate change for the last few years because I understand it on a moral level, for future generations and because I’ve always cared deeply about the natural world. But I’d never heard directly from my peers on what it’s like to face the impacts of climate change every day.
Beatrice is 23. She comes from Nairobi, Kenya. Last year she graduated from university, studying engineering. Intelligent and articulate, she describes herself as one of the growing middle class in Kenya who are contributing to its increased stability and hopes of prosperity for the future.
Beatrice at the COP17 talks
Last year, water rationing began in her community. Water is now delivered once a week on Thursdays. As the youngest girl in her family, it’s her responsibility to collect the water containers from her house and to fill them up. Like recent graduates the world over, she interns with a big company for long hours on low pay to build experience and get more chance of career progression. If she returns home from work late and the communal reservoir has already run dry, she has to travel further afield until she finds a water source. She’s often exhausted the next day, meaning she wakes late and misses breakfast, one of her two meals a day. This has only been happening since May 2010 but there’s no end in sight. Sharing her story, she became emotional as she said ‘this is my life.’
I count myself lucky, not only for having access to clean water at the turn of a tap, but also for having had the opportunity to meet people across the world who are affected by climate change and understand why this young people across the world need to take action now.
Find out more about Practical Action’s work to help the world’s most vulnerable to adapt to climate change by clicking here.
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The Good, The Bad and The Outrageous – the UN climate negotiations in Bonn
Bourton on Dunsmore, Warwickshire CV23 9, UK, Bourton on Dunsmore
June 27th, 2011Every time I talk about a session of the UN climate change negotiations to someone who wasn’t there, it occurs to me that I sound like I’m describing the plot of a film that’s part of an ongoing saga. The scene is set in stuffy, often windowless rooms packed with people (mostly middle-aged men) in suits, gabbling in different languages. Holed in there for two weeks, they will be taken on a rollercoaster journey with twists and turns in the plot that make everyone think the whole UN climate process will break down until, right at the end – the denouement – someone breaks the deadlock and everything goes through at the 11th hour. Everyone lives happily ever after. Well that’s the theory anyway.
So here it is, my analysis of the latest UN climate change talks in Bonn at the beginning of this month in a film plot analogy…
The Goodie
Despite last week’s disappointing vote in Parliament on increasing emissions reductions to 30% by 2020 (from 1990 levels) thanks to a veto by Poland, the good guy in this film has to go to the EU.
The group, which the UK negotiates as part of, founds it’s voice in the negotiations for the first time in a few years, breaking its usual line of “what they said” – they usually being the USA.
Not only did the EU stand up to some unrelentingly ridiculous positions from Saudi Arabia (see the next two points), they also made some good noises on efforts to secure money for the funds agreed in Cancun. A standing ovation please.
The EU accepts an award from members of the civil society group the ‘Climate Action Network’ for their positive work in the negotiations.
The Baddie
But for every good guy, there’s always a ‘baddie’, a nemesis who in this case, does their upmost to stall and block the negotiations. This film has Saudi Arabia.
Our friends from the oil rich state did everything they could to hold up the talks, including blocking agreement on the agenda (which ended up taking four of the precious 11 days of the meeting) and thus preventing the negotiations from even getting out of the starting blocks.
To make matters worse, Antigua and Barbuda joined Saudi Arabia in an unexpected alliance pushing hard for civil society groups like Practical Action to be banned from the negotiations. Unbelievably, Antigua and Barbuda said that this was because they once went to a meeting and it was really busy so they couldn’t get a seat…! A troubling turn of events we agree, but not a reason to call for the voices of experts, the vulnerable and those with most at stake in the negotiations to be prevented from being heard.
I know who my nominations for best baddie and their supporting act are!
The Outrageous
Saudi Arabia also gets the award for being the most stubborn and outrageous Party in Bonn. On one occasion Saudi Arabia argued late into the night that a mechanism called ‘response measures’ (compensation for the loss of oil revenues incurred if we move to a renewables-powered world) be discussed in the ‘loss and damage’ negotiations (where compensation for countries suffering from climate-change induced natural disasters takes place).
I don’t know about anyone else, but compensation for not buying oil is emphatically not the same thing as compensating those countries who suffer massive loss through floods, droughts etc. Holding proceedings up until 2am doesn’t get the discussions anywhere, and tired negotiators are less likely to compromise. As my mother always says “if you’ve got nothing nice [/useful] to say, don’t say anything”. Saudi Arabia would do well to listen to my mum.
The Action
No film is complete without some action scenes, and the UN has it’s own brand of action adventures kindly provided by civil society.
Groups often band together to do actions at negotiations – they are a great way to convey a message to the negotiators and let of a bit of steam with some fun too. Bonn saw a visit by Robin Hood and his merry men (and women) to call for a tax on financial transfers that would help fund adaptation projects. There was also a group of young people calling on the EU to increase emissions targets to 30%, thus creating 6million new jobs, and a last-minute call was made by Lady Justice to make sure the voices of local communities are given equal weighting in discussions around the clean development mechanism. What can I say – this film has it all!
Top: Young people queue with their CVs to ask for a green job as part of the Push Europe campaign.
Middle Left: Lady Justice tells negotiators to safeguard local communities
Right: Robin Hood pays a visit to the UNFCCC
Bottom Left: Ellie Hopkins of Practical Action joins the Robin Hood Tax Campaign action.
Keeping the plot moving in the right direction.
But don’t worry, this plot doesn’t all head in the wrong direction. After all, the plot has to keep heading in the direction of a positive ending.
Talks around efforts to enable countries and communities adapt to climate change took a significant step forward with a proposal being tabled for an adaptation committee which would lead the charge on this topic.
There’s still a long way to go on adaptation, not least finding the funding to pay for it all, but the formation of a strong committee would make the chances of significant, effective adaptation a great deal more likely.
The Next Meeting
The final ingredient in any saga; the cliff hanger.
There was some serious debates had about where the next meeting should be and, possibly more importantly, who was going to pay for it (each intercessional meeting costs between $6-10 million). The EU pays for at least two meetings a year which are held in Bonn, but there is usually a fourth meeting held somewhere else just before the COP to finalise agendas and share notes in the run-up to the year’s main event. Last year the meeting was in Tianjin, China, and there were rumours of the this year’s fourth meeting being all over the place, from Bangkok to Panama.
Where the negotiations will take us next – no-one knows!
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Guest Blog: “Not complicated. Just brilliant.”
Bourton on Dunsmore, Warwickshire CV23 9, UK, Bourton on Dunsmore
June 22nd, 2011Last week the UN climate change negotiations in Bonn took another step towards building a strong and effective mechanism to enable people to adapt to climate change.
Today marks a day of global action by the Robin Hood Tax Campaign, an alliance which describes itself with the phrase “Not complicated. Just brilliant.“, and which Practical Action is a proud member of.
Luckily one of Robin’s band took the time out to explain how the campaign can finance these adaptation developments.
There are new and innovative sources of climate finance which remain untapped, one of which is a Robin Hood Tax, or Financial Transaction Tax (FTT).
A Financial Transaction Tax is a tiny tax of about 0.05% on transactions like the sale of stocks, bonds, foreign currency and derivatives which could generate a whopping $400bn globally each year.
The taxes are well-tested, cheap to implement and hard to avoid, and because they are targeted at casino banking operations, they can easily be designed in a way that protects the investments of ordinary people and businesses. They could also help reduce the volume of risky transactions which helped to trigger the financial crisis.
Most importantly, the money raised from a Robin Hood Tax could help those most vulnerable to economic and environmental shocks (hence the ‘Robin Hood’; the tax takes from the ‘rich’ and gives to the ‘poor’). We suggest that half of the money raised ($200bn) be used to fight domestic poverty, with 25% going towards fighting poverty in developing countries ($100bn) and the other 25% ($100bn) towards tackling climate change at home and abroad.
Photo: Ellie Hopkins takes part in a Robin Hood Tax Campaign action on behalf of Practical Action at the UN climate change negotiations last week in Bonn, Germany. Credit: Kyle Gracey
It has been recognised at the UN that at least $100bn will be needed annually by 2020 to help developing countries adapt to a changing climate, and to develop in a low carbon way. When governments come together in November this year at the next UN Climate Summit in Durban, they will be discussing how to set up a Green Climate Fund to provide the money needed to help tackle the effects of climate change.
However, at the moment the fund risks being just an empty shell.
To fill the fund – without simply raiding the overseas aid budget – a Robin Hood Tax is vital. A Robin Hood Tax won’t be able to provide everything – but it can provide a serious chunk of what is missing. This is our generation’s battle. The Robin Hood Tax could raise billions every year to fight climate change, help people adapt to the changing climate and develop green economies.
A few years ago even the suggestion of such a tax on the financial sector would have been unimaginable. The world is now a very different place and significant progress has been made with governments across the world getting behind this good idea.
As a priority of their G20 presidency, the French government has called for a coalition of willing nations to implement a Financial Transaction Tax. The German government also supports a Robin Hood Tax, as do the Spanish and a number of other European nations which are pressing ahead to implement it at the Eurozone level. It is likely that the EU could move ahead with a tax on the financial sector with other willing countries joining in at the G20 summit in November.
But big risks remain: there might be no agreement or else a tax that directs nothing to development or climate change.
Successfully securing a Robin Hood Tax will need even more active campaigning across the world in the next six months to keep the pressure up. You can help by joining Robin’s band of merry men (and women!) spreading the word among family and friends, sharing our videos, joining our Facebook group to find out about the latest campaigns and actions, and by sending an email to your MP telling them why you think a Robin Hood Tax is important.
One of Robin's Merry Women helping decision makers to fill the Green Climate Fund with FTT revenues. Credit: Ellie Hopkins
The political door is ajar; this is a campaign waiting to be won.
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Adaptation – an admission of defeat?
Kurt-Georg-Kiesinger-Allee 1, 53175 Bonn, Germany, Bonn
June 11th, 2011For many people I know adaptation in a climate change context is a much-avoided issue. This may sound a strange concept, but to some, the acceptance that anyone should be working on adaptation projects or pushing for adaptation to be included in climate negotiations is an admission of defeat. It signals to the outside world (and worse, to ourselves) that climate change is affecting people, and therefore our efforts to mitigate those effects have fallen short.
Up until I joined Practical Action recently, I was one of these ‘adaptation avoiders’.
It wasn’t that I was against adaptation – not at all. It was that I succumbed to a contradiction that much of the NGO world perpetuates on a daily basis. We continually push the idea that climate change is happening now, that it is no longer something that will be faced by conceptual ‘future generations’ but something that people around the world today must face head-on. At the same time, however, many refuse to talk about adaptation as part of their campaigns or work because it means facing up to this fact for ourselves and that is a scary thing to do.
Adapation, from what I can see, means to many an urgent scrabble to help people cope with extreme events that happen to them.
But over the past few weeks, I’ve come to see that adaptation doesn’t have to mean sticking a plaster over new wounds caused by climate change. Actually, adaptation can mean several things – often all combined – including
- Being an opportunity to create and implement projects that allow people to overcome the climatic changes that have already occurred,
- Enabling people to continue on a path of development in a way that is sustainable in the long term,
- Making people more resilient to the continuing, and worsening, effect of climate change.
Take, for example, Practical Action’s work with floating gardens. In countries like Bangladesh, regular flooding leaves land either inaccessible or of poor quality, making agriculture very difficult. Floating gardens allow people to continue to grow food even when the floods are at their highest, helping to keep a family fed as well as providing a source of income through the sale of surplus produce.
Similarly in Sri Lanka, Practical Action has been working with farmers to raise the profile and use of indigenous varieties of rice which require less fertiliser, are highly nutritious and are resistant to even severe droughts. By being able to grow this rice, farmers are able to provide food for their families, as well as selling extra to boost the local economy and provide them with extra income which can further expand agricultural production, pay for education or be used for other measures that increase the family’s resilience against climate change.
These are solutions that won’t just overcome the short-term challenges people face, they are solutions that begin the journey along the lengthy road out of poverty.
This revelation may not be new to some, but as I return to the UN I’m struck once again by the focus most people place on capping emissions in order to prevent (or mitigate in the local jargon) climate change from happening. I can see, as I talk at length about the work that Practical Action does, the same realisation that I experienced a few weeks ago dawning across the faces of those I am talking to. They too can see that adaptation doesn’t always mean fire-fighting in a losing battle. It brings into play a new means of development that is truly ‘sustainable’, taking into account not only the challenges that climate change poses now but also that it will pose in the future.
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