THE COP-19 WALK-OUT

- How the Polish COP Presidency and the Fossil Fuel Industries inadvertently helped out the Climate Action Movement

It took a while to find some inspiration for a blog from COP-19 in Warsaw. It’s probably telling that the inspiration was finally provided not by any of the drawn-out and contentions discussions on climate finance, loss and damage, or the 2015-agreement, but by civil society.

Last week Wednesday, about 800 representatives of civil society organizations, including WWF, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam and 350.org, jointly walked out of the UN climate negotiations, which had been going on in Warsaw since November 11^th.  Most of these ‘observers’ are members of environment and development NGOs, who left the negotiations in protest with no intention of returning (until Lima, I should add).

For me, the ‘walk out’ raised a number of questions. The obvious one is Why?, and I mean not only reasons for protesting, but also the reasons for choosing a walk-out to express this protest. The more important question may be What does it accomplish?, which picks up a topic I wrote about at COP-17 in Durban – Who cares?

Motivations

Given that observer status at the UN climate talks is highly valued and hard fought for by civil society, why did 800 people leave a conference whose progress they were trying to influence through their presence?

Using Twitter, blogs and statements on their organizations’ websites, the protesters offered multiple reasons for or purposes of their action. These included: 

• “Inaction and lack of progress” in the negotiations, “low ambition, dirty energy influence & no new finance” or more generally “UN climate talks going the wrong way.”
• To “protest the corporate capture of the talks,” “turn our back on polluters,” or to “intensify struggle against fossil fuel industry to create ground for progress at #UNFCCC.”
• “To help Mobilize people around the world” to push their governments towards climate action,
• To show “solidarity with people who stand to lose so much from climate change,”
• To protest governments’ disregard for “the voice of the people” and democracy.

Interesting mixtures of these motivations appeared, such as “Standing with the Philippines, not with the polluters” (in reference to Typhoon Haiyan, which has been linked to climate change frequently over the last two weeks),  “to push governments to stop failing civil society and work towards better #climateaction” and “disgust at rich countries #fail to live up to moral responsibility on climate change.”

Most of these motivations can be summarized as “voicing discontent with the way things are” – the walkers wanted to send a message to governments and the fossil fuel industry, letting them know that they are unhappy and frustrated. Another and less obvious element of the complex motivational set is the desire to change things by mobilizing people around the world, and putting pressure on decision-makers to make different kinds of decisions.

Why did they chose a walk-out as their form of protest? Given that being present is usually considered the minimum condition for having any kind of influence on the negotiation process, leaving seems counterintuitive, even counterproductive. Walking out means that they give up their ability to observe the process, to speak with delegates, to stage actions in the conference center, or to produce papers and flyers that might be read or even considered by the people around the negotiation table.

The answer to this question is simple: symbolism. In a world where the only power you have is the power of meaning, a walk-out held more symbolic power than any other kind of action. This is particularly true at this particular COP, where the financial and political resources of the corporate world have played a larger role than ever before. The sense of ‘being outspent’ and ‘made voiceless’ by the industry players that have been invited to sponsor this event played a major role in shifting the mood of civil society participants.

Accomplishments 

If the walkers sought media attention, they certainly succeeded. Reports about the protest flooded the Twitterverse, the Blogosphere and a range of online news media. But it is less clear whether the protesters were able to reach their main audience – delegates in the negotiations and governments in the developed countries. A small number of well-known negotiators from developing countries (@yebsano and @cscaldera) tweeted their support, but I am not aware of any response from the delegations. And even if they got the message from civil society, how would the walk-out change the decisions of a diplomat acting within a narrowly prescribed negotiation mandate?

Regarding the second motivation, the walk-out itself will hardly mobilize people around the world. But the action can play an important role by strengthening the participating organizations and energizing their respective campaigns all over the world. The walk-out has brought together a range of organizations that are usually pursuing different interests in the climate negotiations - protecting the environment, communities with urgent development needs or workers’ rights. Uniting these diverse actors behind a cause, the protest has created a larger sense of community and possibly power.

Besides creating a sense of agency and collective power, there is a third – less appreciated – reason why hundreds of passionate individuals relinquished their most direct ways to influence the climate negotiations for a single moment of attention, a moment of meaning-making: emotions.

The civil society movement for climate action is fighting not only un-ambitious governments, but an enemy that is much harder to identify and counter: demobilizing emotions such as fear, sadness, depression and frustration, which slowly drain the energy for political mobilization. Most people around the world avoid these negative emotions associated with the overwhelming climate challenge by denying the problem, or its relevance for their daily lives. While climate activists have overcome this massive, initial obstacle to political engagement, their minds need a positive and optimistic story that allows them to feel hopeful and empowered to change the world, regardless of the difficulties they face. Walking out of COP 19 was a way to regain a sense of power and agency.

The Polish COP Presidency and the fossil-fuel industry caused this walk-out as much as the people who took part in it. They provided the much needed emotional energy for a movement that struggles to make its mark on global climate politics.