Our world and our climate are changing. Each day, humankind is getting closer and closer to a possible end. If we don’t change anything our common fate is really compromised. Since 1992, when they signed the Rio Convention, all the countries of the world have understood this global challenge. Climate change or global warming is one, probably the biggest, of the issues we have to face right now.  

To my mind, from my short experience of blogger, the most important thing to know is that you should never forget why you got involved: personal experience, family context, or everything else. Your history, your experiences made you as a blogger; your readers want to read and understand through you what happens in the negotiations. My personal climatic history began thanks to my family, who are really aware of ecological issues, but my trigger point was a trip in Africa when I discovered the first consequences of climate change. The poorest populations of our Planet are already affected by climate change, I will never forget this reality. Discovering this totally changed my way of seeing things and changed my life. Now, even when I write a blog for Adopt-a-Negotiator or for my blog on Le Monde (the French newspaper) I think about these people, these friends I have left in Mali and who everyday suffer the effects of climate change. 

All of us, bloggers, citizens, children, young and old people are definitely part of this process, we are responsible of climate change, but we can also be the solutions of this global problem. So, it means that the citizens of the world have consequently to understand this new global state and act to make our world better. But, tackle climate change also really depends on the outcome of these current negotiations. Our future is directly linked to these climate summits and especially to the Conference of Parties 15 (COP15). 

But… 

This process of negotiations is incredibly (voluntarily?) complex. I have personally been involved in the UNFCCC process for one year, I was an observer three times (Poznan, Bonn, Bangkok and now in Barcelona) and some points are still difficult to understand. So what can a not-well-informed citizen hope to understand of this process? If you are not aware of these negotiations, how could you understand these expressions: LULUCF (Land Use and Land Use Change in Forestry), REDD (Reduction of Emission from Deforestation and Degradation), Bali Action Plan, and all the technical words, acronyms and expressions used by the negotiators.

But citizens have and want to understand what happens here; it’s the reason why, we negotiators trackers, your bloggers have such an important mission.

Last December, in Poznan, for the COP 14, I met Sir Brice Lalonde, the French ambassador for the climate negotiations. He told me, if you want the negotiations to move forward and become more ambitious, you have to mobilize people around you, in France and in all over the world. Since this meeting, I haven’t been able to forget these words and I really want to spread the word about this. And I really hope that you will do the same; our mobilization and the mobilization of millions of citizens all over the world can change our future. Our future is definitely in our hands ! 

Explaining smartly and simply is our goal. Make people laugh and make the negotiations become sexy are our means! Each of our letters, of our words, can change the world. Helping the citizens to understand this process does and will help the negotiators to achieve a fair, ambitious and binding agreement in Copenhagen.  

Yes, your words can!

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Our website : http://adoptanegotiator.org/