미지센터의 청소년 국제교류이야기

 

There are various factors and hypothesis that claim what changes our climate. The most certain and influential factor is the pollution by human activities. Thus, emitted greenhouse gases (GHGs), especially carbon dioxide (CO2) make the planet to become warmer. Global warming increases the sea level and melted icebergs not only change the salinity of seawater but also make currents unpredictable. Extreme climates make our lives more unstable, more frequently. Among MDGs (Millennium Development Goals), the seventh goal focuses on hygiene and living condition of the poor society, but it is now losing its direction towards systematic reformation in the means of industrial system. With only four years left before the deadline, 2015, talks between nations about sustainable development is receiving lots of attention while not making much progress.

In front of the United Nations

 

Maldives and Tuvalu gave up their sovereignty, and rising sea level presses the people to be submerged in the middle of an endless ocean. While time is ticking off, no government has been able to come up with a practical, measurable solution. MUNCCC (Model United Nations Climate Change Conference) seeks bright youths to solve it for the adults who are confined to economic benefits and worried about its losses.

 

Before the debate, each delegate wrote their Position Paper, a short essay stating their nations’ goals to achieve throughout the meeting. Here is a part of mine:

“Germany would like to achieve two things in this climate change conference: 1. Setting framework policy that reinforces both economic growth and conservation of nature capital. 2. Coming up with measures to provide incentives to use natural resources efficiently and making pollution more expensive. Both idea stress that environment should no longer be free. Germany finds the most basic reason why nations have been free to abuse nature capital without hesitance in that it is nobody’s responsibility to restore what one has taken. However, while number one requires international and long term compromises, the latter calls for the measures for the time being, before the green economic structure completely stabilizes in societies.” (Tip: In all sessions, in writing or during the debate, everyone including yourselves must be recognized as a third person pronouns.)

 

Every participant represents a nation in a committee as a delegate. Each committee has its own agendas, and mine was ‘OECD and Green Growth’. Only OECD member nations were open to the debate, so there should be a different focus compared to a session in the General Assembly. It is important to grasp which countries with certain economic and social capacity is participating in the debate. Whereas OECD members can more easily afford money costing projects, not all members in GA are capable. Also, there are always main countries in the center leading the debate, ones highly involved in the agenda. It is important and inevitable to form power structures around those delegates. Also, always take notes, because almost all the speeches made during the conference are impromptu; delegates take notes while they listen to the others, and at the same time how to refer to it. But above all, do not get too emotional, or you might personally hurt the other delegate.

 

In the debate session, delegates from US, ROK, Spain have expressed their recent concerns over their fiscal difficulty compared to Switzerland, Germany or UK. But a decision paper written by Switzerland and UK merely suggested already comparably eco-friendly nations to take part in green technology share without the mention of IPR (Intellectual Property Rights). In vice versa, there were no incentives for the technology/ fiscal aid donor nations. The entire decision paper was appeasing to environmentally developed nations for their benevolence. Since decision papers are not mandatory or legally binding, the paper was merely a justification to deny their window dressing. In the mean while, highly developing nations (ROK, Mexico and Brazil) were helplessly waiting for developed nations’ aid. This was not going to work. The paper did not encourage any of the developing nations to voluntarily strive harder to achieve the knowledge of green management, nor for developed nations, pass on to other nations to make this world greener.

 

With Spain, ROK, US and Ireland, we introduced BAMP(Bilateral Appropriate Mitigation Program / 양국간적절완화프로그램). This is a practical form of NAMA (Nationally Appropriate Mitigaton Action), which the president of ROK has brought attention to in 2009 COP (Conference of Parities) in Copenhagen. Developing nations would have to pay small payment to developed nations in exchange for the green technological support, thereby establishing a world sized immense partnership. If the developing nations have failed to achieve the CO2 emission percentage, they had to pay interest to the developed nations; the rate was left to be determined according to their fiscal situation. World Bank will be participating as a mediator. This idea gained the support from the majority and refined the paper in a more practical manner.

Members and student officers of Committee 8, 'OECD and Green Growth'

           MUNCCC 2011 was held by YTN in Korea University with cooperation of British Embassy. Prize winners were later invited to a reception in the British Embassy in Seoul, and had a luncheon. Smaller number of people among them will be lucky enough to participate in COP 17, South Africa as observers. For those of you students wishing to be a diplomat one day, this experience is indispensible and priceless. Become a face of one country for a few days! This experience has motivated many youth including me to find their passion, career, dream and potential. Do you want to feel the goose bumps? Dive in one of the Model United Nations and voice your opinion.

     ‘Behind these professional, well organized UN charts are stories of humanity.’

     Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) are eight international development goals that all United Nations member states and some international organizations have agreed to achieve by 2015. The goals encompass from eradicating poverty to forming global partnership for development. Promised due date is only four years away. 
On July 31st 2011, Ju Hun Kim (김주헌) former UNEP consultant and an author of 'Cross the World'(하루에 국경을 두번 넘는 사람들) reminded us the importance of MDGs. He lectured on “MDG Goal 7 and TEEB” at MIZY Center. He divided his lecture into two and emphasized the importance of ecosystem, MDGs, and TEEB. Overall, he tried to encourage our participation by keep asking questions. It was easy to understand, even though the content was quite challenging.

Part 1. MDGs and Environment
     

                             
      Ju Hun Kim especially discussed the 7th goal of MDGs. The 7th one is on environment. He began the lecture with his worries on the earth – despite people’s increasing interest on environment, people still lack understanding on global environmental issues. He stressed environmental issues are essential; they affect people, countries, and the earth.
      He explained different sectors of environment – forests, ozone layer, natural resources, and water – with statistics. The statistics revealed “the rich get richer and the poor get poorer” reality.
      “2011 is International Year of Forests …” Forests alone absorb one sixth of world’s CO2 emission. In other words one sixth of CO2 emission is lingering in the atmosphere, left unabsorbed by no longer existing forest. Developed countries in Europe and Asia know this and try to form forests in their nations. And Asia and Europe are getting greener. However countries in Latin America and Africa which used to have rich forests are losing trees. It is because they need to export natural resources to sustain their lives. In short developing countries are more suffering from decreasing and lack of forests.
      Similar situation occurs with water. “The UN proposed that world is likely to surpass drinking water target by 2015 though more than one tenth of people would still be without access to clean water,” said Ju Hun Kim. Ironically the poor need to pay more to get drinkable water since clean water is rare. It is shown in statistics that poorer people are less opportunity there is to be accessible to clean, sanitized water: people in the city had more access to clean water while 32% of people in rural areas still used contaminated water.
      But there is also success story; it is about ozone layer. Montreal Protocol helped restore the ozone layer. It legally prohibited consumption of ozone depleting substances (ODSs) to 2%. This was possible because the protocol was legally binding.

Part 2. Ecology and Biodiversity
     

                             After a short break, the resumed lecture began with the introduction of the second phase: Ecology and Biodiversity. Two ecological terms were introduced: “ecological footprint” and “ecological capacity.” Ecological footprint shows how much environment is destroyed due to economic development. Ecological capacity is self explanatory – how big an ecosystem can stay balanced in a nation. When the footprint overwhelms the capacity, the nation is in a seriously environment deprived situation.
      Governments are used to abusing the environment for their convenience. Why are they not so hesitant to do so? Is it because environment is just everywhere and does not requires monetary exchanges. “Just because it is economically invisible, it does not mean that it is not economically valuable.” He suggested that environment must be valued to our currency. It should be visibly monetarily numerable so that they will be cautious of letting their money spill out.
      Nation’s economic strength has been measured by simple economic compass like GDP. However, for ‘sustainable’ development, natural capital must be taken into account when deciding national competence.
 “We may dismiss ecosystem service as only 10-20% of GDP, but they are actually 50-90% of the GDP of the POOR.” – Pavan Sukhdev, Head of the UNEP Green Economy Initiative TEEB.
      Poor class of the society is more dependent on environment for their economic activity since many work in primary industry. When climate change gets out of our hands, the first ones to be affected will be nations in archipelagos and poor, rural class. I was moved by this explanation. People seeing gray skies everyday in enormous headquarters will never learn the reality by heart, even though they may know all the statistics. Statistics may even be foamy and the reality could be quite different from the graph.
      RIO+20 2012 is coming up. There should be a 3 month experience of Maldives for high governmental executives and law makers without any help of the civil culture. Then, the world should be in much better shape.

                          

/ MIZY Youth Reporters Yeong-ran Ahn & Chorok Lee