UNA Canterbury: Successful UN Earth Day talk in Dover

On Friday 24 April, the Canterbury and Deal UNA branches hosted a talk in Dover entitled 'Reforms to the UN to achieve the Green Economy’. The speakers were Stephen Hockman QC and Professor Biermann from VU University in Amsterdam. Over 50 people attended and each participant received a copy of UNA-UK's foreign policy manifesto, ' A Global Force for Good'.

Both speakers used the example of why reforms to the UN are absolutely necessary to secure the climate change deal we need in December 2015 - this is obviously key if we are to achieve a 'Green Economy'. This objective fits squarely within UNA UK's 9th manifesto proposal, 'A vigorous drive to secure the climate deal we need'. Furthermore, the reforms advocated by the speakers, such as the establishment of a World Environmental Organisation (WEO) and an International Court for the Environment (ICE), have been selected as topics of discission for the upcoming UNA-UK Policy Conference 2015 on 16 May.

We hope that at Policy Conference, our proposal for an ICE will be further supported by a set of agreed actions so that ICE can be pushed onto the international agenda as soon as possible. It is also hoped that UNA-UK will adopt the policy of a WEO so that both policies can be taken forward by UNA-UK ahead of the upcoming United Nations General Assembly Meeting in September, when the new set of Sustainable Development Goals will be agreed by member states. It is important to create a galvanising, ‘integrated’ push before the key international climate meeting in Paris in December 2015, in order to gain momentum towards getting the climate deal we need.

During the question and answer session after the talks, a further policy was suggested by the audience. It was thought that public participation needed to be improved across UN institutions in order to help meet the pressing environmental problems. This suggestion will also be taken forward by UNA Canterbury. It is already supported in principle and regionally by the Aarhus Convention.

The event was filmed and is in the process of being edited. The plan is to upload it to Youtube once it is complete and include link on UNA-UK’s website to help spread the message about the importance of tackling climate change with adequate measures to avoid surpassing the UN-agreed two degrees Celsius warming limit, locally, nationally and internationally.

The event was covered in the local paper, the Dover Mercury, on Thursday 30 April 2015.