A special opportunity for COP26
Hello!
…and welcome to another week
Today we breaking our regular schedule of Friday Features to share a special opportunity for journalists who want to cover COP26. But don’t worry, we’ll be back later this week to share more great stories from around the world.
This week we’re launching an incredible opportunity for 5 Global South journalists to report on the UN climate talks from Glasgow in November.
Because this year is so challenging, we’re also launching a paid fellowship for more 20 young journalists from around the world to cover the talks online.
Both of these opportunities are paid, and include online training, individual mentoring, editorial support and an opportunity to collaborate and connect with some of the best young climate reporters around the world.
If you would like to apply, or know someone who should, please this opportunity it with them
A flashback, to 2011
I still remember my first time at the UN climate talks. It was a decade ago in Durban, South Africa. Back then, the COP17 negotiations were also hailed as a “critical” moment for the planet.
We’re now up to COP26, and I don’t think a year’s gone by in the last decade when these negotiations weren’t framed with the same, “urgent” importance. Ironically, the same core issues remain unresolved between the largest historical emitters and the rest.
In the days before the UN climate talks in South Africa, heavy storms and floods had claimed 11 lives in the townships around Durban. At the time, journalists were more resistant to link these types of events directly to climate change, but many still did.
On the day before COP17 began, Mthatheni Mabaso, a regional government spokesperson told South Africa’s Mail & Guardian that;
"This shows that even the posh areas are not spared of the effects of climate change."
It was a story that shook the floorboards of the negotiations that year and clearly showed the suffering that climate change is causing around the world.
At the time, African countries in particular were looking for certainty from the West that they would genuinely offer their support to combat the worst impacts of climate change.
Promises were made. It’s ‘negotiable’ if they were kept, I guess.
At the time, the EU was struggling to hold ranks, Canada had just discovered its tar sands, Japan was focussed on its economy and New Zealand was in the middle of a right-wing, inward looking shift. China and Brazil had grown rapidly, but both were still treated as middle powers.
Times have changed.
There is a far broader consensus on the impacts of climate change. Canada is now back on the table, Japan has a 2050 net-zero commitment, and New Zealand has just banned offshore fossil fuel extraction all together.
While they remain on a geopolitical crash-course; China, the EU and the US all seem to agree on climate change, if nothing else.
But the core issued debated in 2011 around climate finance, particularly finance for adaptation, remain. The questions over how much responsibility historically high emitters have, and the ability to enforce global promises, also remain, relatively open.
And the critical question of whether any countries are actually going to stop digging up coal, oil and gas they know is just below them, has never really been answered.
Last week, Dan Welsby and other prominent scientists tried to address the urgency behind that question in Nature. No-one I know, has answered the political question.
This is one of the many reasons why we believe we need to keep offering young journalists opportunities to dive in and try to address these questions. To tell global stories to local audiences, and be able to see exactly what these negotiations are really like.
If you know someone who wants to dive in a try to answer these questions this year, please share this opportunity it with them
That’s it for now.
How do you like the Monday flash-back? Its a little more from me than in the past, but I hope it’s not the worst thing in your inbox. If you have any questions, comments or want to get involved, email me at chris@climatetracker.org.