Civil society participation in Copenhagen

COP 15 in Copenhagen has ended this Saturday in the early morning with practically no real results. Not only were decisive measures to mitigate climate change postponed, there was not even a clear signal regarding COP 16 in Mexico. If the world's leaders were not able to produce a post-Kyoto treaty, it would have at least been their duty to set the foundations for further (meaningful!) negotiations at the next talks. But not even this absolute minimum was achieved.

Nevertheless Copenhagen also delivered some positive signals. I was impressed with the 'Klimaforum', the 'alternative summit' of the civil society and NGOs active in climate change which was organized right next to Copenhagen's main train station. There were a lot of presentations from different NGOs and scientists working on climate change everyday. At most times there were at least four different seminars and talks to choose from, each focusing on very different issues of climate change. And most importantly climate change got a real face at the 'Klimaforum'. There were representatives from the landless movements from Latin America, Bangladeshis explaining the dire situation of their country to other visitors and photo exhibitions on the effects of climate change from the Maldives, Sri Lanka and many different places. The pictures of vanishing beaches and dying coral reefs on the Maldives underline that we are not only talking about abstract figures but about the lives and homes of people.

The Klimaforum had everything the Bella Center was missing: the talks were close to the realities on the ground, victims of climate change were directly included, there was a spirit of change uniting participants from all continents and most importantly there were hope and determination. This strong, multinational civil society movement is still at its starting point. It will grow with each UNFCCC meeting and will ensure that the pressure on the world's leaders to act will rise.

The professionalism some NGOs are already displaying in steering media attention and pressure is reassuring. On Wednesday for example, a group consisting of Canadian citizens, the red clothed 'Climate Debt Agents' and the Yes Men managed to make Canada's obstructive climate change policy look completely foolish in the global media. The group had sent out e-mails from a fake Canadian government e-mail account called press@enviro-canada.ca in which Canada promised a 40% cut of emissions and considerable sums of money to pay back their 'climate debts' to developing countries. Of course Canada could have reacted somehow at this point to avoid a public loss of face, but the NGOs were too cunning to let this happen. They published a video from a fake press conference of an Ugandan delegate that they had recorded in a reconstruction of Bella Centers main press room. The supposed Ugandan delegate as well as the 'media representatives' in the video were all climate change activists. In the press video the Ugandan delegate lauded Canada's recent commitments and talked about a break through at COP 15. In another e-mail form a fake government mail account the group then faked a Canadian reaction, stating the following: 

- We at Environment Canada wish to thank the international press community for their measured and understanding response to the hoax that struck our agency earlier this afternoon, while expressing our condolences to the Ugandan delegation who were swept up in the excitement of this false future "vision."Environment Canada wishes to stress that the Ugandan delegation's impassioned response to the announcement is a dramatic tragedy for those who stand to suffer the most. 
"It is the height of cruelty, hypocrisy, and immorality to infuse with false hopes the spirit of people who are already, and will additionally, bear the brunt of climate change's terrible human effects," said Jim Prentice, Canada's Minister for the Environment. -

At this point a small group of climate change activists had exposed Canada's climate policy and shut all loopholes the Canadian government would have had to escape this public relations disaster unscathed. Sophisticated actions like this heighten the pressure on governments that are not willing to make concessions regarding climate change. If we see more activities like this in the future, obstructive policies in climate change negotiations will become more and more costly for governments. And eventually we will reach a point at which the parties just cannot afford another failure like the one in Copenhagen.

The Copenhagen 'Roundup'

So I arrived home today after my two-days short trip to Copenhagen to visit the UNFCCC talks. Even though I have only stayed there for two days it was an incredibly rich experience. There was really everything in Copenhagen, from multinational NGO events communicating a real 'one world feeling' to massive, green-washing PR-campaigns of large multinational companies. I will write a short series on my experiences in Copenhagen over the next few days, trying to reflect the diversity of what is going on in Copenhagen these days. De facto the Climate Change Talks are split up in three, more or less separate, parts: the official talks in Copenhagen's Bella Center, where only accredited government representatives and civil society organizations may enter, the Klimaforum, an alternative civil society summit with NGO representatives from all over the world, and an exhibition area in the town center that is mainly (but not exclusively) used by companies and businesses to present their would-be green image.

When I arrived on Monday morning in Copenhagen after a ten hour trip in the night train from Frankfurt, I went directly to Bella Center for registration. The travel was stopped short at Orestad, one metro station south of Bella Center. We had to go on walking since the metro could only be used by people who had already registered. When we approached Bella Center by foot we soon saw that things would not be as easy as anticipated: there was already a queue of roughly half a mile of diplomats, NGO representatives and delegates waiting to register at Bella Center. In the beginning things were still interesting. We met a lot of people from different NGOs and from different backgrounds in the queue and time was going by quickly. Later people from the Asian web-tv "supreme master tv" started to distribute "vegan starter packages", calling attention to the masses of CO2 that are produced by cattle breeding (even though they were exaggerating the figures grotesquely, claiming that 90% of global emissions stem from cattle breeding). Some activists were disguised as chickens or elks, my personal favorite was the shrimp girl in a pink full-body shrimp suit, complete with antennae and red cheeks.

After three hours waiting in the cold I started to put on extra layers of clothes. Progress was VERY slow, but the queue was moving. I didn't have any  feeling in my toes anymore, but I really wanted to get inside, so I stayed. After three and a half hours there was absolutely no movement in the queue anymore, but I could finally see the entrance. Some people were slowly getting angry, chanting 'let us in' and 'shame on you'. But there was still a big screen TV on which I could watch the 'climate change report' from India or the 'Fossil of the Day' award for the hundredth time, so somehow we carried on.

During all this time there was absolutely no information from part of the UNFCCC secretariat or the Danish hosts. All the people standing in the line for hours had received a preliminary accreditation and were encouraged by the UNFCCC secretariat to start planning their travels to Copenhagen. Some people were standing around in mini-skirts for hours at temperatures below 0°C, others had traditional African or Arabian clothes, clearly not prepared for the long wait in the freezing cold.

After waiting five hours in the cold there was an announcement that the organizers did not know how long registration for the waiting people would take, but that registration would close at 6 pm as planned. At that time it was 4 pm, the queue was still nearly half a mile long, some of the people waiting since 11 am (like me). Some minutes later people passed around a single sheet from the UNFCCC secretariat, stating that apart from Tuesday even less people would be let in. Additionally a system of limited 'secondary badges' was due to be introduced to limit the number of people accessing the conference grounds. On Friday, the most important day, only 90 NGO representatives will be allowed to enter.

To make the long story short: like thousands of other NGO representatives we have not seen Bella Center from the inside. We stayed the rest of our time at the civil society summit "Klimaforum". I was disappointed, but after all we had not put in as much work, time, money, effort and HOPE into our trip to Copenhagen as many NGOs and their representatives from Africa, Asia and Latin America. Some of these people have traveled for  thousands of miles and have paid a lot of money to make their voices and the voices of the principal victims of climate change heard. And the UNFCCC secretariat, the Danish hosts and the government parties are actively excluding these people. Their voices matter most, yet they will not be heard. Additionally many NGOs from poorer countries do not even have the money to stay for one or two weeks in Copenhagen. These NGOs are coming on the last days, because they were hoping for a maximum impact of their participation at the peak of the negotiations. These people will never gain access to the Bella Center. The 90 NGO representatives allowed in on Friday will probably be hand-picked and the secondary badges necessary to enter will have run out long ago.

This is the background of the demonstrations and the attempts to storm the Bella Center that we see on the news tonight. I went to Copenhagen because I was interested in gathering first hand experiences, because I was curious and because I wanted to witness international negotiations from up close. Today I am angry, frustrated and deeply disappointed of how the issue of climate change is handled at the expense of the poor and excluding the persons most concerned. 

And of course other people, who feel the impact of climate change in their everyday life, are even more angry and frustrated because they see that our leaders do nothing. They only debate meaningless figures of percentile emission reductions, referring to different base years, while the atmosphere does not care about base years and output reductions. What really matters is the total amount of CO2 in our atmosphere, percentile output reductions only buy time but do not solve the problem. Even if climate change is a phenomenon too complex for anyone to grasp in its entirety, people see that this game of numbers our leaders are playing is meaningless. And additionally our leaders exclude the people on the ground, the ones who really suffer from climate change. The heads of states in Bella Center are sure lucky that the majority of the victims of climate change is too poor to come to Copenhagen. The message to the heads of state is clear: step up to your responsibility and lead, or step aside and let people really willing to make a change do the job!

The run-up to Copenhagen 2

Tomorrow is the starting day of the biggest and most decisive intergovernmental conference in 2009, the UNFCCC in Copenhagen. So far the year has been dominated by conferences and meetings on the global financial and economic crisis which have tied a lot of attention resources that probably would have been better invested in discussing the issue of the single most historical importance of our generation: global climate change.

Only in the last months have the efforts of climate change mitigation been able to reconquer some room in the global political agenda that they had lost to the efforts of coping with the fallout of the global recession. But this process has been gaining momentum recently. Newspapers are full of series, articles, essays and opinion pieces on climate change and the Copenhagen talks. And seemingly the trend is even strong enough to counter tendencies to postpone the decision-making in climate change mitigation to future conferences. Some of the most important powers on an international scale, including China and the USA, had already denied the possibility to implement decisive measures in Copenhagen at the APEC summit some weeks ago. Now US-President Barack Obama felt obliged to change his Copenhagen schedule due to rising public pressure: he will attend the decisive final stages of the talks instead of only visiting the conference along the way to pick up his Nobel Peace Price. Taking into consideration that he personally attended the IOC meeting deciding on the scene of the Summer Olympics 2016, it would have been grotesque to absent himself from the final stages of the Copenhagen talks.

From the perspective of an observer organization attending the talks, the mounting flurry of activities connected to the Copenhagen summit is even more obvious. In the final days leading to the start of the talks more and more e-Mails concerning the conference have arrived at the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations (FRFG). They reflect the plurality of organizations attending the talks and the range of interests that will be voiced in the process. Event managers are promoting berths on cruise liners for representatives of observer organizations. Other organizations are trying to sell excess rooms that had been booked in advance or are looking for funding of their travel and accommodation costs. A 'spiritual on-line TV station' contacted us to ask if we had a booth at the venue of the conference and if they could cover our activities in Copenhagen in the scope of their program. Many organizations contacted us in order to arrange for meetings during the talks to discuss future possibilities of cooperation. Other organizations have been passing around petitions to include everything from water shortage to livestock breeding in the talks. Companies from Brazil are advertising their know-how in ethanol fuels and are pushing for funding of their technology. Other organizations are informing fellow participants ("There is some good news you should know about so as not to be surprised when you get to Copenhagen.") of a "new green, low-cost sustainable fuel" that "can be stored at any location" and that will be "the solution to global warming". It can even be used as a fertilizer!

It becomes clear that organizations, companies and people from very different backgrounds with very different agendas and interests will participate in the summit. The conference will be a very diverse event and the venue will surely be bustling with interesting, dedicated and eccentric people. Lets hope that the observer organizations will be able to put some pressure on the government representatives deciding about the fate of future generations despite their very different interests and approaches. There is no time to bury one's head in the sand/snow.

The run-up to Copenhagen

Contrary to the usual topic of the blog this article will be the starting point of a small cycle of posts dealing with the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen from the 7th to the 18th of December 2009 which I will attend as part of the delegation of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations. I hope to share some first-hand impressions here that are both fun and informative. The first short posting will deal with the climate change agenda of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations.

There are only seven days left until the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen starts. The conference itself was prepared for months and months through preliminary meetings within and without the UN framework. All this preparation will culminate in a 12-day conference of tremendous symbolical importance in mid-December, but that's also about it. Barely anyone is still counting on an ambitious post-Kyoto agreement in Copenhagen. US-President Barack Obama will be at the conference in it's early days, stopping by on his way to pick up the Nobel Peace Price in Norway. No other head of state will be there during the same period, and some newspapers already joke that President Obama is combining the Copenhagen and Norway trips in order to save kerosene, as Americas contribution to cutting CO2 emissions.

I will attend the COP15 talks as observer in the delegation of the Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations on the 14th and 15th of December. A high workload in December and a very limited travel budget unfortunately make a longer stay impossible. Nevertheless we are determined to make the best out of the stay, meeting with other NGO delegations and getting a first hand impression of the process. Chances to really influence the talks are close to zero anyway. 

The Foundation for the Rights of Future Generations is advocating a more concerted and ambitious approach to climate change mitigation. The principle of Intergenerational Justice is only observed when future generations have at least the same chances to satisfy their needs as previous generations. In terms of climate change this would mean that we have to pass our climate system and the environment down to our ancestors in a shape that allows them to sustain an equal level of wellbeing that we are enjoying in our lifetime. In practice this is of course nearly impossible. After all we have already brought the absorption capacities of earth's atmosphere close to collapse which makes the maintenance of today's lifestyle impossible - at least on a fossil energy basis - if we do not want to destroy our planet. But, since future generations will bear the brunt of negative climate change consequences it is at least our duty, as the generations living today, to minimize the damages for future generations. The growing tendency of some scientists to enforce adaptation over mitigation as the "cheaper" alternative is directly violating these duties.

In a nutshell, adaptation says that we should adapt to the consequences of climate change by building higher and better dams against rising sea-levels and ultimately leave areas that become uninhabitable due to climate change. There are two catches though: first, only rich countries have the resources at hand to adapt to climate change and secondly, we will eventually reach a threshold of climate change, at which adaptation becomes impossible. At this point, future generations will pay the bill for our negligence. This means that environments that have been home to humans for centuries will become uninhabitable and people living there for generations will be turned to homeless refugees. We argue that the loss of the place one calls home cannot be calculated economically like any other commodity. This is why the advocates of an adaptation approach are wrong when they want to make us believe that it is the cheaper alternative. We see adaptation as a short sighted strategy, disadvantageous both for the poorest people living today as well as for future generations. Therefore the FRFG is advocating a strategy to combat consequences of climate change that focuses on mitigation over adaptation.

Why intercultural exchange needs to go beyond culture

Currently there is something like a 'hype' about Latin American and Spanish culture in Europe. This process has been accelerating for months and years and has only gained further momentum in recent times. Examples to support this claim are manifold.

In Germany the number of pupils choosing Spanish as a third language is growing faster than the schools can manage. In every German region there is a lack of qualified Spanish teachers for schools. Three German regions, Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia are offering an exchange programme for teachers from Spain and Latin America who want to teach Spanish in Germany in order to be able to meet the demand. Some schools are even starting to offer Spanish as a first or second language.

Additionally Latin America is becoming more and more popular as a tourism destination. According to the most recent tourism report of the European Commission, Latin America still plays a marginal role in the overall statistics for the tourist destinations of Europeans, but the growth rates for tourism in Latin America show the increasing appeal of the destination. Naturally tourism figures have dropped in the wake of the global financial and economic crisis, but tourism in Latin America is still doing significantly better than in any other region.The same goes for exchange programmes of all different types. More and more university students are heading to Latin America for exhanges or internships of one year and many young people leaving school after A-levels spend a year backpacking through Latin America.

Last but not least Spanish and Latin American popular culture is reaching more and more people in Europe. Apart from Flamenco, Salsa, Tango and other dances that were always hugely popular and well known, Spanish music is also becoming popular in Europe beyond the peninsula. Almost everybody nowadays knows Spanish singing artists like Shakira, Juanez and Alejandro Sanz. Furthermore Latin American literature has inspired an entire generation of European authors. Daniel Kehlmann, the young German author of the bestseller 'Measuring the World', told the audience at a literature event in Frankfurt´s Instituto Cervantes that reading the books of authors like Gabriel García Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa and Juan Carlos Onnetti completely changed his approach to literature.

Even though this rising interest in Latin American (popular) culture can be a good starting ground for deeper intercultural exchange, it is necessarily only a first step. Dancing Salsa to Shakira songs and learning Spanish does not already create a deeper understanding for Latin American cultures. Quite the contrary, there is even the danger of seeing Latin America as a continent of dancing, celebrating people that are fun but not to be taken too seriously. A cliché sadly prevalent in parts of Europe from my experience.

This is why an interest for the culture of a country/region can only be a first step. Civil society initiatives and cultural institutions like Instituto Cervantes need to take it over from here and facilitate a broader and more general understanding of Latin America, it´s different countries, cultures and social and political problems. Culture can be a powerful door-opener for intercultural exchange, but the experience the ´Latin America meets Europe´group had at an exhibiton organized by the Peruvian embassy at the Instituto Cervantes in Berlin shows what happens, if exchange is limited to culture.

The Peruvian embassy had organized a small, multilingual exhibition on Inca Garcilaso de la Vega. With a conquistador father and an Inca princess as his mother he was supposedly one of the first mestizos (person of Spanish/Indigenous origin) and the first Peruvian author of 'mixed' descent. The exhibition focused on the life and the works of de la Vega and pictured him as one of the origins of modern Peru. Thus the mixed heritage of Latin America and Peru with all it´s history and conflicts was implicitly mentioned. Nevertheless the exhibition did not elaborate on this in any way. Some critical remarks by forum participants from Latin America soon led to a discussion of these issues that was rather embarassing for the Cultural Attache of the Peruvian Embassy. An average visitor to the exhibition perhaps would not even have realized that one of the core questions of Latin American identitity was broached in this exhibition without being discussed.

The lesson for people trying to further real intercultural exchange between Europe and Latin America is clear: If exchange is reduced to general cultural topics beyond dispute, everybody is feeling good. But a real in depth look and a real exchange can only be reached if the deep-rooted social, historical and political context of culture is also discussed.

Europe and Latin America - Shoulder to shoulder for a post-Kyoto Agreement

Progressive climate change is one of the great dangers to a secure and peaceful future of mankind. Even though most world leaders today understand that in theory, it still seems very difficult to draw the right conclusions and act in practice. For centuries mankind has been altering the face of mother earth in order to make use of its riches. But never before did we have the technological capabilities to alter or destroy the earth forever and pre-determine the environmental circumstances under which our offspring will have to live. The risk potential of nuclear technology and genetic engineering are two examples, but the consequences of climate change are already beyond abstract risk calculations. Since climate change is a lagged phenomenon the scientific consensus expects an unavoidable rise of the global mean temperature that will inevitably change our environment and endanger ecosystems in which people have been living for centuries. Again, these consequences will mainly strike the poor and disadvantaged as droughts, desertification and floods mainly affect the poor South of the globe. But the industrialized North will also suffer. Security specialists are preparing the European public for waves of migrants on the run from the devastating effects of climate change. Additionally rising sea levels are democratic: The Netherlands are threatened by it at as much as Bangladesh, even though the Netherlands have more means and resources at hand to adapt. The question is no longer IF climate change will affect us, but HOW MUCH. Can we stay below the threshold of a two degree Celsius warming seen as critical by the IPCC and most other scientists?  

Everything depends on mankind's ability to find a consensus on how to solve the questions of distributive justice when determining each nation's burden share in climate change mitigation. Since the Rio Convention in 1992 the history of climate change mitigation has been one of failures. Kyoto was a failure because the USA, as one of the main polluters, decided to free-ride instead of participating. And the run-up to the Copenhagen Talks in December 2009 has only proved that a post-Kyoto agreement is more than unlikely. US President Barack Obama will not be able to pass legislation on climate change mitigation before the COP 15 talks, the EU has refused, partly thanks to German pressure, to offer tangible figures for the sum they are ready to provide to developing countries in order to lower emission levels and China and India are refusing to make deep cuts in their emission budgets, pointing towards the high historical emissions of the industrialized world and the danger to their economies. UN-Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon recently said that he does not believe that there will be a post-Kyoto Agreement in Copenhagen.

Nevertheless there is hope. The Copenhagen talks have to become a first step towards a tangible and determined post-Kyoto Agreement. Since the US are blocked due to a legislative impasse, hope lies on Europe. And Latin America again would be a perfect ally for pushing the cause of climate change mitigation forward together with "the old continent". Environmental degradation and the consequences of climate change are issues for which awareness is raising rapidly in Latin America. And some Latin American projects and developments indeed are on the fore of the effort of climate change mitigation. For example Ecuador, a country which rich oil resources were tapped by US oil companies in the past, with little consideration for the environment or the natural living space of indigenous people, has suggested to not develop the Ishpingo Tambococha Tiputini oil reservoirs that were found in the Yasuní-National Park. The plan is to sell certificates to protect the national park to donors from developed countries or to take the saving of emissions into consideration when emission caps are set for individual countries in the scope of a global agreement. In Brazil, farmers are beginning to invest into rain forest areas instead of illegally burning them down to win fertile ground for agriculture. They are beginning to grasp the future economic potential of intact rain forest areas as CO2 reservoirs. 

At the same time large Brazilian companies, among them Klabin, Moinho Brasil and Brasilinvest, are promoting sustainable economic activities and environmental protection. Additionally a lot of their CEOs and leading managers recently joined the Brazilian green party. These companies have understood that they need to get involved in environmental and climate politics at home in order to preserve their international credibility. Corporate Social Responsibility is becoming a big deal on the global market and multinational companies of Latin American origin are starting to help to spread the concept to their home region.

This impetus for climate change mitigation in Latin America should not phase-out unused. Europe and Latin America need to push for clear steps towards a post-Kyoto Agreement at the COP 15 talks. Of course Europe and Latin America have different interests when negotiating burden sharing agreements, but the ultimate goal is the same: to ensure that global climate change is reduced to non-catastrophic levels. As long as the US drops out as a global leader and China and India are focusing their energies on minimizing their own commitment, Europe and Latin America are two of the few actors that can still push for decisive measures.

I will attend the COP 15 talks in Copenhagen as an observer for the foundation I am working at. I'm really looking forward to get some insights into the way the talks work and will be sure to post some first hand impressions here.

P.S. (17.11.2009): Things are not always as bright and easy as they seem at first glance. In the scope of the APEC Summit in Shanghai Chile and Peru, together with the other participants including the US, China and Russia,  have declared that they will not try to seal a post-Kyoto Agreement in Copenhagen.
Brazil recently declared that it will only cut it's emissions by 15 percent on a voluntary basis and has thus joined the position of China and India, blocking a real effort of the emerging nations.
The chances for an ambitious agreement on climate change mitigation in the next months have become a good deal slimmer...

When blogs shake worlds

When this network of blogs was first created, with the idea in mind to foster intercultural exchange between Europe and Latin America on a grass roots basis, it was born as a plan B. We where thinking about cultural diplomacy initiatives to enhance the exchange between our two continents. Ideas ranged from organizing academic exchanges to 'real' bilateral exchanges and volunteer programs that were not exclusively tailored to European university students. Finally we decided to start out with a network of blogs first, since everyone would have enough time besides university studies and work to contribute something and we would ensure that the group stays in touch. But a recent example from Cuba shows that something that looks simple at first glance, like  a network of blogs, can stimulate a lot of movement and change.

In Cuba, about 200.000 people have access to the world wide web and until recently private persons were not even allowed to own a computer. Among the select few with Internet access an even smaller group of people has launched blogs on the everyday life in Cuba. One of them is Yoani Sanchez, a philologist and web designer from Cuba. She started to blog back in April 2007 (http://www.desdecuba.com/generaciony/) and updates her page from hotels, pretending to be a Spanish tourist since she is not allowed to have Internet access privately and the Internet cafés in Cuba are too expensive for natives to pay. 

Her blog is not political, on the contrary, she is focusing on the small things of everyday life. But in unfree countries even writing on everyday life becomes political. Since Fidel Castro was forced to pass on power to his brother Raúl due to health reasons, there is change in Cuba. Things change very slowly, admittedly, but it is a start. As Yoani Sanchez puts it: there has been no change in the circumstances, but in the minds of people. They are not as afraid to speak out as they were before. Yoanis blog is part of this slow and gradual change that starts in the heads of people and slowly, yet irresistibly leads to change of political regimes. The 20 years anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall two days ago, on Monday 9th of November 2009, reminds us how a change in mentality spreads among the population and finally tears down walls and shakes the world. Blogs, twitter and modern communications technologies nowadays enhance these processes, as the incidents in Iran after the rigged presidential elections showed.

Taking these developments into consideration it is not surprising that a blog in a country like Cuba can become very influential. Yoani Sanchez was listed as one of the 100 most influential persons in the world by the "Time" magazine in 2008. Additionally she was awarded Spains most important media prize Ortega y Gasset in the same year. Naturally this influence comes at a price in political systems like Cuba. Yoanis site has been blocked in Cuba since March 2008. Naturally she was also not allowed to leave the country in order to receive the Ortega y Gasset award in Madrid. The immigration authority in Cuba simply kept her passport when she requested the traveling permit. This weekend the regime apparently went even a step farther. Yoani Sanchez was abducted and beaten when she was on her way to a demonstration against violence in Havanna. According to Yoani the offenders where civilian agents of the Cuban secret service. One can only imagine how afraid the regime has to be of one simple blogger when they go to such lengths to try to shut her up.

Yoanis example clearly shows that blogs can stir things up in the modern world. Let's hope that we will be able to spread our network and do our part in creating understanding and cultural exchange between our continents. Clichés and ignorance remain strong in the Euro-Latin American relations, there is a lot to be done.

Simple idea - big impact

When talking about civil society or cultural diplomacy initiatives all beginnings are difficult. The people who participated on the Europe meets Latin America Forum know from personal experience that, even when you have a good team of motivated and qualified people, it is not that easy to come up with viable ideas to start a small civil society or cultural diplomacy initiative. Making the idea work afterwards is another story and even more difficult. But sometimes the simplest ideas can generate the best results.

The Brazilian architect Ruy Ohtake, an immigrant with Japanese origins, had never put one foot into a favela, until he was misquoted by a Brazilian newspaper as calling Heliópolis "the ugliest neighborhood of Sao Paolo". The inhabitants of the slum in the south of Sao Paolo immediately asked him to change something about the looks of the neighborhood if he disliked it so much. Ohtake, until then chiefly known for designing high-class hotels and the Brazilian embassy in Tokio, didn't need to be told twice.

He started a project in order to embellish Heliópolis, painting 278 houses in an initiative involving locals. The simple idea to paint a couple of houses soon generated an unexpectedly big impact: when firt results showed, Ohtake was able to collect funding for further projects. Meanwhile he has designed various housing units, a school center and three daycare facilities for the neighborhood. Additionally he was able to collect 1.000 new books for the local library donated by publishers.

As secondary effects the self-confidence of the inhabitants has grown and they finally have real perspectives to find a job and lead legal lives after the anathema of living in an 'irregular' slum has been lifted from them. The initiative is the perfect example of how to break a vicious circle of poverty, social exclusion and the emergence of slums. 

Additionally Ohtake's initiative shows that the best projects often start as very simple ideas. A reassuring thought for those of us who would like to engage in cultural diplomacy initiatives but don't know where to start. Small, apparently symbolical, gestures can change the (self-)perception of people and thus generate further change, it's just a question of getting things rolling.

Migration and integration

Europe is a rapidly ageing continent. The birth-rates in the majority of the European countries is declining and already below the reproduction level. The Southern and Eastern European countries are comparably worst off, a slightly surprising fact when taking into consideration the stronger familiy ties especially in mediterranean societies of the EU. Of course Europe is not the only region worldwide that suffers from shrinking and ageing populations, Japan is another example for a rapidly ageing society. Nevertheless Europe definitely is a hotspot of demographic change. 

The challenges of an ageing and shrinking society have been discussed abundantly. The highly developed social systems, to date a unique feature of Europe, will bear the brunt of the pressure that stems from these changes. A shrinking working population will soon meet it's limitations when trying to finance the health insurance and pension bills growing as quickly as the perecentage of elderly people in European societies.

But why is this of interest for a network blogging on (cultural) relations between Latin America and Europe? Well, Europe has but one chance to meet the rising challenges of demographic change: to become an attractive destination for qualified migrants from around the globe and to manage the challange of integrating a rising number of immigrants living in European societies. Many members of this network have made first hand experiences of living in European cities as a migrant, and I would love to read about your experiences. I can unfortnately only contribute a European 'second hand' perspective of somebody who has been following the European (and especially the German) migration and integration policies during the last years.

Unfortunately the picture of Europe as a continent for migrants is a rather gloomy one. Even within the EU you will have difficulties in getting your university degrees homologated when moving from a member state to another. Especially when you are planning on working in a public sector like, say, education. For well qualified migrants from other parts of the world this is even more complicated or close to impossible. Additionally many European countries still force the second and third generations of migrants to choose between their European citizenship and the citizenship of their ancestor's country of origin. Maintaining stable dual-state identities is a privilege for EU Member State citizens.

Additionally Europe is focusing nearly exclusively on the challenges of regulating illegal migration instead of seeing the opportunities migration and integration have to offer.With Frontex there is a whole EU institution dedicating itself to 'protecting' European borders from migrants while you won't even find the words 'integration' or 'migration' in the names of one of the 27 directorate generals of the EU.

I would like to share a little story of what happened to an aunt of mine from Finland to clarify what I think is going wrong in Europe. My aunt started to fill in an application form for a Green Card to the US. She was just doing it out of curiosity, to see what kind of information they would ask for and how the process works in general. On the second page the questions started to become too detailed and she stopped filling out the form, closed the browser tab and forgot about it. Next day somebody from the US authorities called and asked her if she had had any problems while filling in the forms and why she had stopped. They told her she would have good chances to get a Green Card and should send the application in.

I am well aware that the USA are not a model state for a good migration and integration policy. But this little story shows all the difference between the old and the new continent. While the US realize the opportunities of migration (after all, their melting pot history was one of the factors that led to it's strength today), Europe is ageing in isolation. I for my part am sure that there is nobody in the EU picking up a phone in order to convince somebody to come to Europe. And if we are not even caring to make use of the abilities of highly qualified migrants, how will we ever be able to confront the challenges of integrating refugees or 'illegal' migrants from disadvantaged parts of the world?

The need for a second discovery of Latin America

Europe is in dire need of a second discovery of Latin America. But should we really be talking about discovery? The word has a very bad sound in European/Latin American history. Over centuries the European interpretation of discovery went hand in hand with conquest, exploitation and imperialistic expansionism. And the 'discovery' of Latin America deeply altered the social and cultural structures of the South American continent for ever. Our (the Europeans') ancestors killed millions, nearly destroyed a priceless cultural heritage and brought unique civilizations to the brink of extinction. Additionally the classical interpretation of discovery has a deeply Eurocentric smack. After all America did not come into existence when European sailors discovered that there was a whole unknown continent between Europe and India, but already looked back at thousands of years of cultural history.

But there are different meanings to the word of discovery. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the verb discover as:

1) to find unexpectedly or in the course of a search.
2) to become aware of (a fact or situation).
3) to be the first to find or observe (a place, substance, or scientific phenomenon).

Our ancestors had a rather ignorant mindset for today's standards and clearly thought of the discovery of America as a mixture of the definitions 1 and 3, with a an emphasis of being the first to find a place. While Europe's approach to Latin America was that of arrogant ignorance for the already existing societies at that time, it is one of nescience today.

Latin America was home to the so called 'third wave of democratization' in the 1980's. It is one of the vital and growing regions of today's world and it's leading powers, like Brazil, have emerged from the global financial and economic crisis nearly unscathed. The economy of Latin America is among the most dynamic in the world. The continent gave birth to a unique culture, drawing from different traditions by blending indigenous Latin American cultural roots with European cultural roots.
In our changing world Latin America is one of the few regions that shares most of our values, that shares what we call 'western culture'. The region is thus a natural ally for Europe in working towards a multilateral world that endorses peace, respects human rights and promotes democracy.

Nevertheless the interest of Europe's elites for Latin America's political, economic and social developments is slim. Following the proverb coined for the European mass media's approach towards Africa 'no news is good news', European newspapers barely address political or social developments in Latin America. Only high tension conflicts like the political crisis in Honduras or the drug war in Mexico make it into European newspapers. Latin America mainly plays a role as a tourist destination or the destination of exchange programs. Even during the EMLA (Europe meets Latin America) forum at the Institute for Cultural Diplomacy many presentations focused on these aspects! While the relations of Germany and Europe to the (re-)emerging powers of China and Russia are discussed intensely in the media and the general public, this is not true for Latin America. For example China is in the focus of German public interest due to it's role as the host country at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2009. One can only hope that Argentina's role as a host country in 2010 triggers a similar interest.

The ongoing negligence of Latin America is going to cost Europe dearly in terms of lost opportunities. Economically Europe is wasting it's historically grown privileged economic ties to Latin America and politically it is failing to recognize a potential ally in today's trend-setting debates. It is high time that Europe discovers Latin America again, but this time around in the sense of becoming aware of a continent of opportunities.

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La necesidad de un segundo descubrimiento de América Latina

Europa necesita con urgencia un segundo descubrimiento de América Latina. Pero tal vez no sea  “descubrimiento” el término adecuado. Dicho término implica un sentimiento negativo en la historia compartida de Europa y América Latina. Durante centenarios el concepto que Europa tuvo de descubrimiento, significaba conquista, explotación y expansionismo imperialista. Además el “descubrimiento” de América Latina cambió radicalmente y para siempre, las estructuras sociales y culturales del continente. Nuestros antecesores (los de los europeos) mataron millones de personas,  destruyeron prácticamente una herencia cultural invalorable y casi exterminaron una civilización única. Además la interpretación clásica de “descubrir” es profundamente europeo-centrista. Porque finalmente América no obtuvo relevancia, solo gracias a que marineros europeos se dieron cuenta de que había un continente desconocido entre Europa y la India, sino que ya tenía una historia cultural de miles de años.

Sin embargo hay diferentes significados para la palabra “descubrir”. Según el Diccionario de la Real Academia Española “descubrir” significa:

 1) Manifestar, hacer patente.

2) Hallar lo que estaba ignorado o escondido, principalmente tierras o mares desconocidos.

3) Venir en conocimiento de algo que se ignoraba.

 En comparación con una escala contemporánea, nuestros antecesores tenían la mente cerrada y claramente definieron el descubrimiento de América  en cumplimiento con la segunda definición. Mientras Europa en ese tiempo veía a las culturas existentes de América Latina con arrogancia, hoy en día las ignora.

América Latina fue transformada  a través de la “tercera ola de democratización” en los años 80. Es una de las regiones vitales y crecientes del mundo y sus poderes principales, como Brasil, han superado la crisis casi sin daños económicos. La economía de América Latina está entre las más dinámicas del mundo. El continente creó una cultura única, que mezcla las raíces culturales de Europa y las de la América Latina indígena.

En nuestro mundo, que está cambiando constantemente, América Latina es una de las pocas regiones que comparte la mayoría de nuestros valores y lo que nosotros llamamos “la cultura del occidente”. Por tanto la región es un aliado natural de Europa, en su esfuerzo de crear un mundo multilateral apoyando la paz universal, respetando los  derechos humanos y promoviendo la democracia.

Sin embargo, el interés de las élites europeas para los sucesos políticos, económicos y sociales en América Latina es escaso. En concordancia con la frase hecha sobre el punto de vista del periodismo europeo de África “que no haya noticias, es una buena noticia”, los periódicos europeos casi nunca tienen en cuenta el ámbito político y social de América Latina. Solamente conflictos de alta tensión como la crisis política en Honduras o la guerra contra los narcos en México y Colombia salen en los periódicos de Europa. América Latina se ve sobre todo como un destino turístico o un destino para programas de intercambio. Incluso durante el foro de EMLA (Europe meets Latin America) del Institute for Cultural Diplomacy, una mayoría de las presentaciones se concentraron en estos aspectos. Mientras las relaciones de Alemania y Europa con poderes emergentes como Rusia y China, es un tema discutido por los medios de comunicación y públicamente, este no es el caso con las relaciones con América Latina en partes grandes de Europa. Por ejemplo China está ahora en el centro de la atención pública de Alemania, por su papel como país invitado a la feria del libro 2009 en Frankfurt. Esperamos que la invitación de Argentina en 2010 cause la misma atención.

La negligencia prevalente de América Latina costará a Europa mucho en términos de oportunidades perdidas. Económicamente Europa está desperdiciando sus relaciones económicas privilegiadas con América Latina, que ha alcanzado gracias a procesos históricos; y en términos políticos está ignorando la oportunidad de ganar un aliado en los debates decisivos del futuro. Europa no tiene tiempo que perder para volver a descubrir América Latina, pero esta vez con el objetivo de venir en conocimiento de un continente lleno de oportunidades.

thoughts after Berlin: Expectations

I am no blogger. I suppose this is not the typical first sentence you would expect to read when accessing a new blog, but there is a point here. There is an infinity of blogs out there, talking about everything from personal vanities to world politics. But sometimes I am wondering how much blogs are still about communication and exchanging views. My aim with this blog is just that: facilitate personal interchanges and perhaps contribute on a very small scale to cultural exchanges between Europe and Latin America. This blog is part of a (hopefully growing) network of blogs by young people from Europe and Latin America looking to exchange their views and trying to take as many people as possible along on the way. This is what I refer to when I say that I do not consider myself a  blogger.

This network of blogs was born at a conference on cultural diplomacy in Berlin, attended by 30 young people from 20 nations from Europe, Latin America and beyond. The conference was originally meant to familiarize the participants with cultural diplomacy, facilitate networking among ambitious young people and spark leadership initiatives (civil society projects with cultural diplomacy relevancy) of small groups. Quite a schedule for a 5-days seminar and the homepage, the application procedure as well as the invitations for the conference just boosted the expectations.

The Institute for Cultural Diplomacy (ICD) organizing these meetings first got my attention when they advertised a conference on cultural diplomacy in Berlin, involving a number of high profile speakers ranging from former heads of state and ambassadors to Havard professors. Since it would have been impossible to attend a conference on such a short notice (after all my employer wants to hear an elaborated excuse for having to ask for a week off), I decided to have a closer look at the program of the ICD. I soon found a variety of forums they organize between different regions of the world and applied for "Europe meets Latin America". I chose the forum because I speak Spanish and like Latin American literature.

But apart from that I also think that Europe is neglecting Latin America as an important region that will only grow in importance in the future. It seems like only Spain and Portugal have a perspective for ties between Europe and Latin America, most other Europeans like Latin American culture (or the cliché of salsa, fiesta and senoritas) but overlook the growing economic and political importance of the region. Just compare the international sections of El País and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and you will see what I mean.

Back to topic, what was I expecting? Well I was expecting to meet a lot of interesting people, learn about cultural diplomacy and spending some days in my former hometown Berlin. Actually this was already enough motivation for me to go there, I just can't spend enough time in Berlin. Probably the only German city I would stand living in for more than a couple of years.

I did not know what exactly to expect from the other participants. The ICD was trying to add a decidedly elitist flavour to it's program, so I was a bit afraid to find a bunch of guys and girls totally focused on brilliant future careers circling each other like predators. Fortunately I was far from right.