CSD: Day 3

It’s Wednesday, the third day of the CSD, and it feels like it should be at least Friday. Perhaps this is because the Youth Caucus really started last Sunday with the all-day Youth Blast orientation and policy drafting session. The atmosphere at the CSD seems to have lulled a bit although it is still as busy as ever with delegates rushing about from meeting to meeting to side event to meeting in the North Lawn Building of the UN.

This is my first TYN/CSD experience yet it feels like I’ve been doing this for much longer than a mere four days. So far, as a Youth Caucus we have divided ourselves into regions (North America, Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe). There are three of us in the Latin America and Caribbean group, tasked to create and implement a strategy to lobby the Latin American and Caribbean delegates on the policies of the Youth Caucus on Mining, Sustainable Consumption and Production, and Transport. I find it rather ironic, and somewhat cumbersome that the Youth Caucus does not have any actual Latin American or Caribbean youth in attendance at CSD-18, which also a point we are actively trying to change; thus our little Latin American and Caribbean youth group consists of myself (hailing from France and China, among other places), Sven from Belguim (also a TYN-er), and Melody from Canada with Persian roots. No matter though, we plough ahead with our mission to speak to the delegates. So far, between yesterday and today, we have successfully managed to speak to some of the delegates from Belize, Guatemala, and Brazil.

Apart from being dispersed into regions within the Youth Caucus, we have each elected to focus on one (or more) of the thematic topics of this year’s CSD. My theme of choice is transport. Yesterday was the first half of the Thematic Discussion on Transport in which I ended up delivering the statement on behalf of the Youth and Children Major Group to the Commission, which was quite exciting. The Transport Working Group of the Youth Caucus worked on etherpad.com (a wonderful little piece of innovative collaborative technology) during the actual discussion to tailor a statement that reflected the various points brought up by the panelists and delegates up until the very moment of our turn to address the Commission. We thought that by doing this, our statement would be a take-off from the general country statements where country representatives speak about what their governments have already done to create or support sustainable transport systems in their respective countries.

We highlighted issues related to how transportation systems need to reflect the needs of peri-urban (slum dwelling) populations (since only rural and urban populations have been mentioned before). We emphasized the need for a change of not only culture and behavior through which we as individuals have to lead by example. One of the more dramatic and poignant points we made was to call on the delegates of the CSD to offset the carbon emitted by their travel to this very conference. In other words, we called them (and ourselves) to task to lead by example. I even asked the delegates to raise their hands if they had travelled to the conference by plane, just to engage them a bit. We finished the statement by stressing the need for the involvement of the people and communities affected by transportation systems and policies to be involved in the planning of said systems.

All in all, my experience at the CSD has been exciting so far, and I look forward to what the next days will bring.

- Tara Yip-Bannicq