Donnerstag, 11. Oktober 2012

GYBN meets Braulio Dias

11.10.2012

This morning the German youth delegation doesn't bother to get up early, because at 9 a.m. we meet Braulio Dias from the Executive Secretariat of CBD.
First Christian welcomes Braulio and then he gives a presentation about GYBN to explain what our network is about. Youth from all over the world is active for Biodiversity. But there is not much youth participating the CBD conferences. Anyway at the last CBD COP 10 youth awarded the dodo and had interventions. Our network should bring youth more easily to CBD COPs. At the UNFCCC, the climate change convention, youth is participating more active, because there the youth network YOUNGO is already properly established. Also GYBN is a network to connect youth organizations from all over the world. in August 2012 the official Kick-Off meeting took place in Berlin. It was hosted by NAJU and funded by the Federal Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety.

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Isabel and Mariana

Once we introduced ourselves, Braulio Dias talkes about hisself and his motivation for biodiversity. He comes from Brazil and its interest for biodiversity arose from the brasilian savannas. Those are really biodivers, but endangered. Today 50 % of the originally savannas disappeared. Braulio Dias always enjoyed being outside for camping, catching insects and watching birds.
At university Brasília he studied biology. He collaborated some NGOs and engaged locally. In Edinburgh he write his dissertation about the relationship of plants and insects. Afterwards he taught as professor for Forest Protection at the university Brasília. He enjoys working with studens, because this way he is able to follow the sience progress. Moreover Braulio Dias funded the biggest brazilian NGO, the Fundação Pronatureza (FUNATURA). Later he got a job offer from the government as research director for the national Environment Institute in Brazil and he accepted. Thereby he founded the Biodiversity Unit. Then he became the national minister for forest biodiversity. Early he participated the CBD process and its negotiations. 1994 the first CBD COP took place at the Bahamas, which he also attended. Since September 2010 he is the Executive Secretary in the CBD process.

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After his introduction he tells us his advices and expectations for GYBN. He admires our engagement and wants to see more of our ideas. Also he remarks, that it is important to pursue not only for the COP, but also locally. Because the real life proceeds at home. At the moment there is a train, that travels through whole India and brings information about biodiversity to students. In Japan and other countries students do research on biodiversity. Moreover capacity building is a big issue. Today it is easy to reach lot of people, because everybody has a cell phone and there are platform like Facebook. Braulio Dias offers us his support by lobbying different countries for our ideas, if we provide him a good plan.
For the CBD COP 11 he gives us the advise to focus on the side events. He would like to see, that different stakeholder groups cooperate and delegates and stakeholders get closer. To be really effective at the COP, we have to understand the CBD process. Therefore it would be a good idea to creat a brochure about the things, that are important to know for a CBD COP. This concept is present within the NAJU since a longer time. To have a contentswise influence, youth should also join the meetings between the COPs.

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This time India hosts the CBD COP and for the next two years it will be the leadership of the negotiations. Therefore everybody hopes, that India will ratify the Nagoya protocol and impel other parties to follow. Furthermore India brings a lot of traditions and problems to discussion. During the last COP in Nagoya, Japan the civil society participated heavily at the COP and so had a big influence on some decisions. This time everybody awaits a strong attendance of Indian society, too.
At last we get a picture with the youth delegates and Braulio Dias!

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Later we meet Horst Korn in the Convention Center by chance. He congratulates us for the intervention yesterday and tells us, that at the EU meeting this morning our proposel was discussed. The EU wants to support us! Moreover he recommends to approach to Korea, the next CBD COP 12 host, to talk about youth participation at the next COP. Maybe they would organize a youth conference before the proper COP like Japan did in 2010.

Today we try to change our „observer”-badges into „youth”-badges. As we arrive at the registration the woman there knows exactly what we want. Chantal from the Executive Secretariat arranged everything for us. We only had to bring the letter from our organization. We are just waiting for some minutes and then we hold our "youth"-badges in our hands.

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Shailyn is so proud.


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We represent the youth.

Afterwards we meet Niel Pratt, who marvels at our "youth“-badges. Also he congratulates us to our speech yesterday and catches up on the meeting with Braulio Dias this morning.

At 1:15 p.m. the German youth delegation visits different side events like the "Modern agriculture and erosion of biodiversity“ from the Center for Sustainable Agriculture and „Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services benefits of Climate change mitigation and adaptation Projects“ from the ministry of nature conservation Germany.

Also we practiced a dance today, that we present to 60 kids this afternoon. In the last weeks different school classes concentrated on the topic of biodiversity and now they get the chance to visit the CBD COP 11 for one day. We are impressed how much the kids know about sustainable use of biodiversity and nature!

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Everybody starts clapping, when we perform this typical indian dancing step.


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In the end we get the “ordenary people doing extraordinary things"-award


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and applause from the ministry and all the kids.


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Juliane and Isabel thank the encouragement.

Before we join the German delegation meeting, Juliane, Svana and I have break outside.

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Black-crowned Night Heron
Nycticorax nycticorax


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Juliane


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At the German delegation meeting we discuss current negotiation topics like biofuels and resource mobilization.

Before we are having out daily GYBN meeting, we join the evening side events or collapse totally overtired in the cosy armchairs and have a break.
At our GYBn meeting today, we see a lot of new faces. So in the beginning we're having an introduction round again. Afterwards we talk about our meeting with Braulio Dias today. Moreover we organize GYBN's representation at side events correlated to youth. We discuss, how we can use the strong representation of youth from the host country India effectively. Recently we review how to get connection to other stakeholder groups like Women, ILC and YOUNGO.

So an eventful day ends. But tomorrow we continue!

On the NAJU-Blog you find a german version!

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