Day 2

Street view of Cancun Downtown

Terrace of our Hostel

New Zealand Youth Delegation's Art Message from school kids

After negotiating crazy bus stations, negotiating with taxis, getting lost for a bit, going past endless police and army trucks with machine guns, we arrived at Cancun Messe to get our accreditation for COP16. Accreditation is permission to enter the COP events and be on location – its essentially a backstage pass. However as we aren’t official government delegates, we don’t have access all areas, but we get pretty close!!

We navigated across the city, it took over an hour, to get back to the university where COY was being held. We arrived in time to see the final few presentations that were on success stories of youth Climate Change campaigners.

 We saw presentations from the New Zealand Youth Delegates who have been travelling around their country giving workshops on climate change impacts and science at schools and helping the kids to see where they can make a difference!  There was also a presentation from the Philippines Official Youth Delegation and one from the Nepalese Youth for Climate Action. The Nepalese group ran a campaign which raised awareness about changes in mountains ecosystems and glaziers melting in Nepal as a result of climate change. This campaign influenced their national government, which lead to a change to the government changing the way they address climate change in Nepal.

After the mornings sessions it was off to working groups. I didn’t mention it yesterday, but COY is run by YOUNGO, the international youth organisation that campaigns on climate change. The working groups are formed within YOUNGO and are working on position statements or policy platforms as part of the YOUNGO campaign. I still hadn’t decided on a working group to join by this stage so I went to go a see what a few of them were up to. I went to a Women and Youth working group, led by one of our very own WAGGGS delegates, which was aiming to bring the issues of women and youth into the UNFCCC negotiations and get the words, young women and girls into the text of the convention.

The next working group I went to was the long term strategy group, which is working on developing a long term plan to guide the work and focus on YOUNGO in the next few years. This is a relatively new and abstract working group so it was more exchanging ideas about what we saw as possible future visions for YOUNGO.

On top of all this, all the WAGGGS delegates are in working groups of our own; either policy, actions or blogging. I am in the blogging working group and we are creating written word, videos and photo content for WAGGGS and UNICEF everyday! We have a blog and are putting videos on the WAGGGS website and the UNICEF youtube channel. Today the other four bloggers and I were finding youth delegates to interview and find out hopes and expectations on the COP negotiations. I interviewed two young women, one representing the Cook Islands and the other from the Indian Delegation and central policy agency! We have had a bit of difficulties with internet the last day or so, so hopefully they will all be up soon and I can post the link!

After such a long day we got a real treat! YOUNGO and the university within which we were holding COY at had organised a session of traditional Mexican dancing – there was so many beautiful dresses and costumes and the dancers were so very talented!! It was a really great way to end the day J

Day 1



Dormitories at Ticalli



Common Room at Ticalli

Well I finally made it to Cancun – after months of preparation and just over 23 hours of buses, flights and hanging about it airports I am here!! But it was worth it, Mexico has been a great place to visit and being a WAGGGS youth delegate at the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties 16 (COP16) is going to be tops!

In case you don't know, WAGGGS is the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts and the 12 other youth delegates and I are in Cancun to be the voice of the 10 million Girl Guides and Scouts at the COP16!

I stayed overnight between flights at Ticalli in Mexico City, which is a hostel owned by the Mexican Guides and Scouts. It was a beautiful building, set just back from the road with massive gothic gates with big trefoils on the gates [will load picture soon]. The lady that runs the Hostel is called Corni and she is truly lovely and helped me my Spanish so I didn’t sound like a complete numpty when I ordered my dinner!! Would definitely recommend it to any Guide travelling in Mexico and it’s a great extra if you are heading to Our Cabana! Here is the website with more pictures – check it out! They even have a really nice English speaking tour Guide that comes to pick you up from the airport with a little sign with you name on it so you don’t have to negotiate taxis!!

But first day of the WAGGGS delegation was spent at COY 6 – the 6th Conference of Youth. COY is held just before COPs and its chance for youth from all over the world to get together and prepare for what action and work we are going to do at COP! There were youth present from over 25 different countries – the largest delegation being from Mexico J but the largest international delegation there on the day was from New Zealand with 12 guys from the New Zealand Youth Delegation. They had been really active before the event as well and bought with them a huge tree banner which they had taken around to schools and asked youth to write what they wanted global leaders to achieve at COP this year! It was really impressive, some of the kids must have been pretty young because there were a few cute spelling errors, but just meant that there are some really young kids switched on about the impacts of climate change in NZ – top marks to the NZ guys!! [Will load a picture soon!]

COY is a set up as a series of youth led workshops related to climate change science, sustainable development, gender issues, UNFCCC processes and advocacy work, that all youth delegates can attend if they are passionate about or want to learn more information about. There was about 4 or 5 choices of workshop each session, so there was a lot to choose from! Being new to the COP and COY scene I spent the morning session at the UNFCCC Crash course – OMG there are just so many acronyms and some really long ones as well, like LULUCF or AWG-LCA...google them to find out what they are J The course was really useful and is going to be helpful as the TLAs and other acronyms come flying thick and fast on Monday!

The afternoon was a “Speed dating” session held in a gorgeous and lush resort right next to a pool and marina!! We weren’t dating people, we were dating Youth Working Groups – there have been working groups set up for loads of topics relevant to Climate change and COP16 such as communication strategies, Long Term Policies, Positive Actions, Girls and Young Women, Finance etc. Essentially if they are talking about it at the COP there is a youth working group planning actions and interventions to try to influence the global leader’s decisions!!

The session after that was a meet and greet with NGOs that are working in the Climate Change space. There were so many that we didn’t get to meet everyone, but there representatives from NGOs in Africa and Latin America as well as people from HUGE NGOs like Climate Action Now International which has 500+ member organisations all the way down to small localised NGOs that were making local impact!

It was a great day but I am suffering from information overload at the moment! After a speedy diner at Maccas (default to what you know when you are in a hurry!!) we rushed back to the hostel to de-brief and plan for Day 2. Someone has entrusted me with a Video camera...so expect videos galore...mwhahaha!!

Q.