Trip to Bonn + SB60 June 1st-5th 2024:

Day -1, Samstag 1st Juni: Opening Mindset + Expectations

Leaving London early on a sunny Saturday morning, I was full of the usual introspective apprehension that has become typical for these voluntary conferences. Once or twice, phrases of "Am I really choosing to spend my holiday on this?" and "Will my efforts over the next days be worth it?" run through my head. 

It is a bizarre experience, travelling in self-funded capacity to some foreign location, spending the minimal free-time of my twenties at a conference which many negotiators call "work trips". Of course there is an ambiguous nervousness coming to mind. With recent memories of a fairly traumatic indulgence of my sometimes obsessive work drive while following the GST for YOUNGO in Dubai, I feel I subconsciously resisting much real excitement about my time in Bonn. 

However, what I was conscious of was the fact that less than two weeks ago I had already thrown my heart into a long weekend of hosting the European Young Engineers conference in Ireland. Even the past weekend, my only 3 day weekend of freedom from occupational and voluntary capacities in what would be a span of 26 days, had been spent on the move between social events in my home city of London. As a de-jure ambivert de-facto introvert somewhat aware and also only somewhat in control of my own need for rest, this clouded thought was only fogging my brainspace more. 

Nevertheless, once journeying beneath the seabed of the English-French channel upon the Eurostar, reading the post-WW2 accounts of Primo Levi's return to his home in Turin, a blanket of anticipation overcame me. 

The space for mindful presence with friends of new and old

The freedom to chase passions around some new conference campus

 And the time to turn to memories of shared development toward a common "thing" 

Highlight:

Time spent with my EYE friends, Laurens, Paul and Andrea 

- A 15 minute whistle-stop hug and catch-up with Laurens in Brussels

- Drinks beside the river Rhine, talking about our year-long friendship spanning meetups in 9 different European cities

- Celebrating international childrens day with local Bonn ice cream

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Day 0, Sonntag 2nd Juni: Orientations in the City

Late on Saturday night, I was welcomed to a cozy flat in the south of the city by a lady called Julia through the local German climate activism group KlimaDelegation's BedExchange programme. This is a system set up by the organisation for civil society activists & observers like myself to make use of free accommodation at the annual Bonn Subsidiary Bodies conference. I was pretty struck at how warmly Julia was in welcoming me and my friend Boro (who I previously had met at COP28) to her place in Bonn. Despite my arrival at 10:30pm following drinks by the Rhine, and more alarmingly Boro's at 6am on Sunday after her 20 hour FlixBus journey from Budapest, Julia was a peaceful, non-judgemental and open host throughout the trip. 

She kindly prepared what was apparently a fairly typical German breakfast of bread with several homemade organic spreads - of which I enjoyed the mixed berry jam, elderflower jam and hummus on locally sourced baked goods. We spoke at length while Boro caught what little sleep she could; Julia was intrigued by our activity as youth of Non-Governmental Organisations attending this conference, and she shared about her lifestyle in the local area. It was lovely to hear of the horses she took care of, Wind and Stormy (only 8 weeks old!) just outside the city. Her nature and the village-core vibes were definitely a fair representation of the city - though, Bonn certainly has a loud voice from its now-old days as capital of West Germany.

After breakfast, I quickly scootered north into the city to meet Paul and Andrea once more ahead of their respective journeys back to Ternuezen in the Netherlands and Hamburg in Germany at lunch that day. We ate and spoke in a local cafe called Koffeesauras - and with that ended the pure socialising holiday section of this trip. Right away, I headed to the Botanical Gardens of Bonn Universitat for a mind-preparing short walk while awaiting the YOUNGO strategy orientation meeting hosted nearby.

Soon, the venue of this session filled with many "hello's", "how have you been's" and "is this your first SB's?" as youth conference participants similar to myself descended. Without wi-fi or mobile data, the YOUNGO team did what they could do align the old, harden the new and inform all about the logistics and approach the overarching youth were set to take to the next days at the conference. 

I met with colleagues from online for the first time like my friend Nicc (from Samoa was a way bigger guy than in his Whatsapp icon!), others from COP28 like Zi Han and Amelia (some of the ever-working well-known engines of YOUNGO) and some for the first time like Harshita (an excitable doctor from India advocating for climate Health developments) who walked with Boro and I to our next destination of the Bonn Climate Camp.

The Climate Camp was a new initiative birthed through the cross-constituency efforts of several civil society observing entities. Here, we had a safe space just outside of the conference for civil society to share learnings, meet one another and (most importantly!) be fed and watered for free throughout each evening of the conference. Today was the first feast - one of a delicious curry, which I shared with more new friends of Harshita, Imran, Anchal and Gokul from 4 separate corners of India, Sallah of Gambia and of course Boro of Hungary. More bumping-into with old friends happened at the camp, including Shreya of the Nepalese mountains - my dear partner-in-crime through the final dreaded days of GST negotiations in UAE. 

After some brief inaugurational introductions at the camp, our new pick-and-mix group of backgrounds joked along the rising rhine as it threatened to burst the riverbanks, collecting many a photo, before heading back home. An early night would usually follow, but this was not meant to be - instead, I spent the best part of 4 hours working on finalising and compiling the EYE SB60 and Annual policy statement, readying for launch at the conference.

Highlight:

The unawkward energy of aforementioned new friends

- Sharing our thoughts on the free curried food

- Parkour-dancing on the metal poles hanging precariously over the river

- Slow goodbyes at the Museum Smeile tram-metro-station

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Day 1, Montag: Suspensions and Apprehension

For day 1, Boro and I awoke heading early to skip the queues and collect our badges. Despite my late night working beyond 1:00am, we arrived via taxi to the UN World Conference Centre Bonn before 7:45am, already to find lengthy lines of eager attendees before us (the building would not open until 8am, with few meetings pre-9am and certainly no plenary session scheduling before 11am). 

As youth observers, there is one place that we head to right away at any UNFCCC conference, no matter the location - and it is called "Spokes"! This is the daily strategic alignment session, held by members of the core YOUNGO conference team, whereby youth share updates, inspiration and key points to note for the day ahead. 

This time, Spokes was held at a room in the deepest darkest corners far on the other side of campus - though I still managed to proudly arrive early, joined shortly after by Boro. As we waited, I was pleasantly surprised as my friend Fidelis, a young German lead for Sustainable Development Goals, sat right beside me. We met first in Dubai for COP28 but then again more recently in Geneva for the annual UNECE RFSD conference a few months ago, and more excitable catchups & rushed exchanges went on till the room filled and Spokes began. 

Following the all too common technical difficulties that us young volunteers face setting up shop in a new unfamil

iar conference rooms, updates were given by members of the core conference team as to what we can expect with the days ahead. Midway through the session, Saikat, my closest colleague at the conference, joined behind me. We exchanged the silent smiled glances, politely delaying our catchup till after the meet - where we discussed matters relating to each of our friendship, the YOUNGO Energy team and of course EYE.

Slowly, Saikat, Boro and I made our way back to the main conference centre (yet another security check..) before stumbling from meeting room to meeting room trying to familiarise with our new surroundings. The building is split into several levels, each shaped with rooms of different shapes, sizes and names. The largest conference room, the New York room, was an entire arena in itself - reflective of the UN headquarters being held in this location. Meanwhile, rooms titled "Wien", "Nairobi", "Tokio", "Santiago De Chile", "Genf" and many others help to complete the UN base naming pattern. 1 coffee down, and we took our seats in "New York" for the full opening plenary session.

What happened next was fairly unprecedented to say the least - as the UN secretariat leading the session opened the discussions (nearly 45 minutes behind schedule), 2 climate activists from CAN international took to the stage silently with posters and a Palestinian flag in protest of the ongoing genocide in Palestine. This was followed by certain awkwardness throughout the opening speech of UNFCCC Secretary General Simon Stiell, as almost 10 large UN security guards attempted to blog the protesters from the audiences view. The session moderator requested that the protesters leave or else the session would be unable to continue, which was met with refusal, leading to a suspension of the session. To my left were the lead negotiator for Gambia (with whom I exchanged contact details after he told me of some local young engineering communities and solar-based projects in his country) and a Canadian professor - each with upwards of 15 years of COP conference experience. Never before had they seen such kind of a suspension. Though personally I am in support of such protest and felt inspired by the ladies peaceful act, it sure set the conference off with an eerie tone. 

And after that, all seemed to be getting far worse very shortly after - as once the session resumed at last and the moderator called for any objections toward the secretariat's tentative agenda, the Russian deligacy rose to complain, in Russian (though English through the instantaneous translation headset - translating directly from and into 6 different languages) objected on the basis that 4 of their lead negotiators had been unable to secure diplomatic missionary visa's from the German government. Chaos initiated in the room. In the midst of it all, me and a few friends sneakily saw some of the rooms most influential members in heated discussion with the Russian delegates about way's forward to resume the session. This concluded shortly, as the German persons involved rushedly agreed to hurry the approval process for said 4 Russians to join the conference. This was an interesting breakthrough - particularly what with the challenges faced more frequently by Global South representatives in attending UNFCCC conferences rather than Global North - though it will surely be a reference point used in future instrumentally to overcome barriers for those in the same situation.

Despite the drama, I had to leave New York early to support Saikat's moderating at the youth dialogue in Genf next door. Here, I watched on as he and other YOUNGO representatives went toe-to-toe with the COP Presidency Youth Climate Champion in discussions surrounding youth orientation for the SBs. We followed up with lunch to talk about how his session went, recuperate and work on the EYE SB60 report. It would be best to have had this already completed and in draft ready to publish before getting to Bonn, but (as ever) things got in the way, time was short and lots of menial compiling tasks still sat ahead... with Saikat having led the bulk of the work so far, I took my necessary responsibility to try and get this piece over the line later that evening.

Before that time came, I joined some New Collectively Quantified Goal (NCQG) negotiation discussions - talking about the framework and procedures necessary to realise climate finance and update upon the current $100billion financial pledges from developed to developing countries that is in place till 2025. With some countries calling for upward of $4trillion, this entire negotiation track is a rather tense place to follow. 

After more meeting hopping, I headed back down to Bonn Climate Camp for the usual daily free dinner - today of tomato based pasta! I ate with largely the same friends as the day before plus one or two new faces, and joined a workshop session where an indigenous tribe was sharing on his experiences with the climate and items that our developed world may benefit from relearning in the climate fight. I kept eating my dinner with Anchar and Imran until suddenly a selfie came through from Boro of her, Saikat, Vaibhav (a food and agriculture-focussed student from the University of Leeds whom I had met in Dubai) of themselves with none other than Simon Stiell himself. Wow! I immediately left in the direction I had last seen them leave, making it to the reception faster than my citymapper tracker expected me to once Boro shared the address.

 Here, I found a room packed full of negotiators, youth and other conference participants networking away around several tall circular tables. I wasted no time heading to Boro and Saikat beside the free wine, picking a glass and quickly catching up before we redispersed in our bid to meet with some fancy important negotiators.

There's always a certain pretension to networking settings like this - but even more so when you arrive late! I drifted around the room seeking to make eye-contact with somebody interested in not such a big group. First of all, this led to me talking to a guy from an observer organisation who I can barely recall now - no luck. After some polite conversation, I then sought out the "pink" badges that indicate party members, and took my shot asking whether I could join a table of 4 who seemed in open conversation. These turned out to be 3  negotiators for Papau Nu Guinea, Greece and South Korea respectively - alongside another British guy working for a news reporting NGO. I shored up my spot on the table and we spoke at length into the evening, enjoying the somewhat pretentious, somewhat calculated but still fascinating discussion with my odd chime here and there. A glass or two later and I became confident enough to centre myself in the discussion, sharing on my experiences at EYE and honestly asking of any advice for a youth activist like myself. I stayed with two of the negotiators until most except youth had left, we exchanged contacts and that was that.

Once only youth remained, we could roam freely around the event - taking selfies, placing flowers in eachothers pockets and counting business cards like some kind of precious collectables. There is such a fun tangent to speaking at networking events when you spot a friend perpendicular to yourself working for some kind of connection with a negotiator or way of implemented the shared goal of youth. It brings about a synergy like no other! 

We left toward our homes once more and drew a line on the day past, readying for the best part of 6 hours sleep ahead.

Highlight:

Networking with Lead Technology negotiators from Greece and Papau New Guinea at the Bundeskunsthalle Museum Reception

- Free wine

- Polite and unjudgemental advice from seniors in the business

- Some "slay" flower fun with the new friends who stayed behind at the venue afterwards to catchup

- And finally getting the EYE SB60 position paper posted at gone 11pm of day 1

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Day 2, Dienstag: 

Tuesday started early. Boro had signed herself up for moderation duties at the YOUNGO spokes event, so had already left by the time I woke - in order to arrive early and suitably prepare herself. Like lightning, I awoke, checking my phone to see her stress at being stuck by the railway signals on her way to the campus - amongst dozens other conference related informational messages. I showered, prepared my huel and suited while calling for an uber - timing perfectly so the driver waiting would be ready as I left the door. 

Arriving to venue today was different. Now familiar with the layout of the buildings, I knew to use the side entrance nearer to spokes rather than the main one. This actually led to even me getting to the meeting well in advance, finding Boro and the spokes coordinators rushedly working on the technicalities of a hybrid meet. Shortly after, Chair of the IPCC Dr Jim Skea arrived with a number of other very admirable world leading scientists. 

IPCC were to attend this spokes session bilaterally to discuss with the YOUNGO constituency on their plans for increased youth involvement in the next IPCC AR7 climate change science reporting cycle - set to be published at the end of this decade. It made for an inspiring opportunity for young people to be involved, and Ladislaus Chang'a, a vice chair of IPCC, even called upon YOUNGO to produce statements in response to IPCC reports moving forward. This was such a tremendous piece of engagement and exactly the kind of option that youth aspire to deepen at these events! Though, I could not help but laugh as I took photos for Boro and noticed that she had her broken, lenseless glasses on her forehead next to Dr Skea!

After an exchanging QandA, the usual YOUNGO daily updates were ran through and all resumed with their days. Before leaving for the next session, I ran into Joy and Elise, a fascinating couple from the Netherlands. They were independent freelance young scientific reviewers who actually live out of their campervan! The lengths some young activists must go to have a full time role in what is primarily a volunteered sphere... We spoke of youngo, energy, science and climate fresk - an NGO we have in common. The world is a small place, and the climate world is even smaller!

Next up was a relatively quiet and slow morning. I spent it discussing just that with Nicc, as we planned our Energy Working Group catchup for the afternoon, as well as attending the Children youth engagement dialogue. For the afternoon, I fell into a negotiation session with Saikat looking at the Energy Transparency Forum reporting tools - where member states are consulted about a tool being revised for Carbon accounting and monitoring in the future. This is an interseting topic - with attempts to make a tool suitable for the varying subjetive needs of every member states proving an extremely difficult task.

Shortly after we ran into Boro and Nicc once more to discuss energy working group activities. I was pretty disappointed since all of our bilaterals and press conference materials would be occuring on Thursday - the day after I leave back to London, at which point I would be back at work as a district heating engineer. Either way, we made more plans for widely sharing our call for a dedicated energy negotiations track within the UNFCCC and organising further bilateral opportunities with the GRA, IEA and other international NGOs or interested member states. It is a little hard to immerse into these organisational efforts knowing that I would be leaving in no time at all, but still I would go about forwarding whatever chances for partnership I can find.

The afternoon went by fairly uneventfully - I followed negotiations on my favourite topic of the Global Stocktake, having helped to represent the voice of YOUNGO with statements in response to progress of what became the UAE Consensus in Dubai last December. Here, all drama of those late nights in the UAE had subsided - and instead it was time for talk on how to implement the outcomes and move to the next stage of the GST. This involved lots of high-level, indicative, vague comments on progressing and accelerating the somewhat underwhelming momentum received from the "phase-down" text. 

Afterwards, I followed down into the Addis Ababa room to follow a panel featuring Saikat alongside several notable corporate speakers - acting as part of his YOUNGO support team. Outside of this, in the afternoon I caught another IPCC vice chair in the hallway for brief discussion on the powerful potential youth have to further the IPCC dissemination outreach avenues.

Into the evening - and I joined a crammed YOUNGO room for the policy debrief discussion, where we collectivised our negotiation findings together. I shared my findings on GST and listened intently to the updates of all others, before somewhat switching off for the day headed down to the Bonn Climate Camp for some food once more. Here, we ate pasta with other civil society groups and shared more findings of the day - before leaving into the city with some friends. 

Now having the EYE statement report published, there was little imminently pending and so I was able to instead enjoy my last evening with climate friends of new and old. Here, we walked around the small, proud city of Bonn - collecting pizza and a few drinks to accompany us. With more conferencing underway tomorrow, we left for the metro system before midnight.

Highlight:

Watching on as Boro hosts spokes alongside Dr Jim Skea / Dancing along in the pizza shop post conference with my new friends

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Day 3, Mittwoch: 

My third and final day of the conference started again in a flash. Knowing that I would be sleeping in my own bed in London later today meant that I was filled with extra energy as I packed my 65L rucksack ready to be picked up when I left the conference venue in the early afternoon. I wanted to get into the venue as soon as I could manage since there was an early COP29 Presidency Youth Climate Champion (PYCC) ((yes, another acronym!)) taking place at 08:30. This is a key opportunity for youth to be directly consulted by the presidency and always an intriguing meet to sit into. Joining slightly late, I heard passionate accounts from many YOUNGO colleagues, though met with a fairly underwhelming response from the presidencies representative. Hoping to see some actions taken to fulfil the items from the session between now and Baku - it is an unfortunate truth that youth have to fight for "meaningful" engagement, as opposed to "youth washing" or token, checkboxing.

With my journey out of Bonn set for 14:00, the rest of the morning was rather aimless. I continued with some intrigued notetaking through another GST negotiation session alongside my friends Saikat, Boro, Lorraine and Zi Han, before a short session on meaningful youth engagement, again hosted by the COP29 presidency. Here, I saw my friend Lorraine as she deliverd a powerful opening statement among several other youth and engagement orientated UN officials, before needing to depart early. 

I left with a quick goodbye exchange with my Gambian friend Tamsir - heading out into the rain for my taxi with my stomach sinking - an all too familiar feeling. As I rode to my BedExchange free accommodation to collect my luggage, I searched the last few days for much hope to grab hold of. It is terribly lonesome to leave such an amplified environment early, and I learnt the hard way that not saying goodbye leads to a painful emotional closure - we are human after all and next time this will be my priority rather than following whatever of the agenda is most interesting. It is somewhat ironic that out of all of these people from all these places, the majority come and leave alone, no doubt with many feelings this same sinking feeling. 

Highlight:

Free climate friendly vegan hotdogs 

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Closing Mindset + Outcomes:

Adjective: Electerrorific

Definition: To be so overcome with emotions and adrenaline after an intense few days that you feel each of electrified, terrified and terrific in overwhelming proportions - to such an extent that you do not feel any of them at all. 

Use in a sentence: Did you hear from Paul after that conference? Yes, he said it was an electerrorific experience...

Maybe it feels more surmountable a challenge when we are together - and yet so overwhelming once alone. Either way, the progress always stays marginal, calculated and slow - as it seemingly must with the threat that we try to combat. These places are not natural. They are amplified worlds, with all nations, all challenges and all passions on display.  

As I sat from train to train, across the river rhine, through brussels and beneath the channel, my entity felt as though a balloon slowly depressurising. Now I am here, in office at work two weeks later, trying to recapture the feelings felt before immersing back into my normal work rather than my holiday work. 

There is inspiration, there is joy, just in so much as there is frustration and annoy. I know that this is not just a circus - and history is being written very quickly. With that in mind, I will continue to do whatever little I can in these spaces to make a net negative carbon and net positive social influence within the world

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