CSD: Day 8

Crazy day – first, since I took the Youth Caucus’ meeting’s minutes yesterday morning, this morning I have to chair. We only have about 40 minutes to get through a half page of agenda points, so I can’t leave too much room for questions and discussions. Fortunately, everyone by now is so tired that that is not a problem. We breeze through most of the agenda points and end with a presentation by Felix Dodds of the Stakeholder Forum, on the major Rio+20 conference that will take place in 2012. He’s a great presenter who energizes the room, not only for Rio+20 but for the rest of this day as well.

This is an exciting day, because it’s the opening of the High Level Segment: from today on, everything moves into flux as ministers and other big shots arrive to finalize the conference. That is not to say that these people are particularly knowledgeable: since they have such broad portfolios, it’s more a matter of them being brief by staff who have followed CSD in detail, and then giving the official rubber stamp to decisions. This goes with the necessary decorum: in the morning there is a 3-hour plenary meeting at the General Assembly hall in the main building, which most of us can only attend from the 4th-floor balcony. I come in with high expectations, but they have to be rapidly adjusted to the realities of the UN: almost all of the speeches given by the invited ‘eminent speakers’ are excruciatingly boring. My notebook, which I had eagerly taken out, stays empty.

The latter half of the day is devoted to the topic of which I lead the Youth Caucus working group: Mining. This ‘interactive ministerial roundtable’ turns out to be basically the same as previous sessions: a long list of 3-5 minute pre-written statements by governments. A lot of these simply reiterate things that we all knew before coming to CSD: “mining can be a driving force of the economy, but also can have negative impacts, which we must seek to manage and reduce” etc. etc. At the end of the session, the Major Groups are allowed to speak and I take the floor to deliver our statement. It’s primarily about child labor, and ends by directly asking countries what steps they will take to eradicate child labor in mining by 2015. Apart from the Belgian government, we are the only ones to mention child labor – disgraceful. Hopefully our statement will contribute to the topic’s inclusion in policy. The positive feedback I informally receive on our statement gives me some hope.

We close the day by going with a group of 12 to the Apollo Theater’s Amateur Night, in Harlem. After this extremely busy day, it’s great to spend the evening shouting and clapping at the contestants, as well as doing a little dancing. All this energy that gets bottled up during the day needs a way out – I wonder what Friday night will look like… two more days!

- Bastiaan Bouwman