Guest post — Diéssica Gurskas: OMG CLIMATE — Climate change awareness in developing countries

This is the first of a series of guest posts from OMG CLIMATE attendees, covering each of the nine sessions at OMG CLIMATE in Berlin on May 25th.

This abridged post covers the notes from the “Climate change awareness in developing countries” session on the day, from attendee Diéssica Gurskas. You can see the full unabridged post on her blog.

Planet Earth, May 2019. The UK has announced a state of emergency for climate change and Canada considers the same; we are more confident about our model to capture rising global temperatures, and students all around the world walk out of school protesting the lack of climate action. Yet, not enough of us are genuinely concerned about the role we’ve played on this catastrophe.

A Saturday afternoon of May and a few square meters in Berlin were what a couple of people needed to open- and voluntarily discuss how we impact the Planet to change and how those changes impact us. Topics ranged from radical solarpunk utopia to more down-to-earth and short-term ideas within our generation’s reach today: musings about climate change awareness, sustainability policies for companies, traveling sustainably, tech tools for political change, and how to get out of our bubbles and active listen to other realities.

In this post, I’ll be sharing my personal notes on that engaging and constructive afternoon. There will be, also, references at the end of this post so you can keep yourself posted.

Pitching and picking topics for discussion ¶

OMG Climate is an unconference, meaning that attendees proactively come up with the agenda and topics to be discussed. To kick it off, we got instructed to pitch topics for discussion that’d be prioritised also by ourselves into tracks, attended based off our preferences. Everyone was expected to have at least a certain knowledge, even if rather tacit, about the challenges we’re facing right now with the climate emergency.

These were the tracks of the first OMG Climate:

• Track 1: “Low-carbon travel” / “Green Mafia” / “How do you sleep at night? Coping with climate anxiety”
• Track 2: “Tech tools for political action” / “Circular economies: Re-use and tech” / “Company sustainability policy template”
• Track 3: “Solarpunk, imagination and excitement” / “CO2 Offsets as an API and tracking carbon” / “Climate change awareness in developing countries”

We had enough attendees for tracks to make for productive discussions. Listening and talking to one another, while facilitated by a volunteer, did the job on keeping up an constructive flow between finding root causes and ways to take action.

An awareness of climate in developing countries ¶

The rich, the poor and the Earth.

World’s richest 10% produce half of the global carbon emissions, while the poorest half contribute a mere 10%; but climate change affects the poorest people the most. Moreover, developing countries are the most responsible for climate change now, and vulnerable too.

Coming from a developing country, I was looking forward to this topic! Apart from Brazil, we had people from India too. There was a range of issues that could be tackled within this track, such as the risk of massive displacements of people in developing countries, the need of support to adapt, environment destruction for the sake of economic prosperity, how to approach climate change education etc.

Meeting notes ¶

• We are building awareness, not “teaching” others about climate change.
• Climate change is an existential threat to life, but it seems rather remote if you think about poverty, disease and economic stagnation. How do we educate children for the long-term if, for some of them, not showing up at school tomorrow means not eating at all?
• How do we let them know about the risk of massive displacements of people who have no resources whatsoever to move?
• Just by existing in a developed country in Europe, our carbon footprint is more impactful than any developing country.
• Indigenous people are already defenders and protectors of the environment more than we will ever be in our generation.
• Economic development is a priority in developing countries, and politicians may ignore environmental impact for the sake of it. (See Brazil’s natural resources open for business, says Bolsonaro)
• Developing countries idealisation of economic development, influenced by “developed world standards”: tall buildings and industries all over the place, where often we don’t see the green implications of “success”.
• What about a model of development thats puts together the simple living of developing countries with the green development of developed ones?
• How waste affects developing countries; example of Philippines to sail garbage back to Canada.
• We could shift the discussion to think about environmental impact in terms of social classes instead of countries. After all, rich lifestyles and “status” in general damage the environment in untold ways.
• The Swadeshi movement brought back self-manufactured clothing in India to boycott foreign goods, a part of a movement to liberate India from British control and industrialisation.
• When teaching, consider what’s in people’s context, reach and language instead of what’s “out there”.
• We should actively listen more to those communities and what’s happening in those countries. Sometimes, instead of thinking that there is something to be taught, we should rather learn from their realities so we can bring about a meaningful conversation.
• This is a problem not to be approached by technology, remotely. It’s rather about Politics and Education.

Action points ¶

• everyone to assure inclusivity, cooperation and engagement across boundaries, first and foremost.
• countries to keep cooperating efforts internationally through policies, institutional frameworks for development and investments in infrastructure.

Conclusion ¶

Well-led communities that strive for welcoming environments enable the best out of people. OMG Climate has shown that — its unconference format got everyone to take responsibility and engage towards constructive and meaningful discussions about climate change.

Although most of us had a tech background, everyone seemed aware: tech alone will not solve all problems, but we are eager to address them either way.

Originally published at https://diessi.ca on May 30, 2019.