Day 9: Highlights from Poznan - The Wilderness Society delegation hits overdrive in Poland

The next four days are the most critical in Poznan, with The Wilderness Society's five representatives frantically running around lobbying country delegates, attending actions and briefings, holding press conferences and coordinating strategies with environmental groups from around the globe.

In Poznan, The Wilderness Society delegation will be urging world leaders to take strong action to reduce logging and land clearing - as part of the global plan to tackle climate change.

In particular, The Wilderness Society will work more with other environmental groups working on the "Umbrella Group" countries - especially Australia, Canada, the United States and Japan who have played a spoiling role so far at the talks, especially with regards to setting strong emissions reduction targets.

But the push for Australia to embrace strong targets has also come from some other powerful and unlikely places.

Business leaders call for Climate Action

Business leaders from 140 of the world's largest transnational companies, including Australia's Westpac and National Australia Banks, PriceWaterhouse Coopers, Lend Lease, Mirvac and Linfox issued a statement saying that the global economic downturn is no reason for countries not to adopt fast and deep emissions reduction targets.

Meanwhile Chinese Expert Climate Change Adviser Dr Jiahua Pan and Brazil's Climate Change Ambassador Sergio Serra urged Australia, Japan and Canada to pull their weight and commit to significant targets.

Today hundreds of delegates from environmental groups took the 3-hour train ride to hit the street of Warsaw, to confront the German and Polish Prime Ministers and their Cabinets, who are meeting to undermine the European Union's Climate Package with weak emissions targets and plans to get carbon credits for coal plants!

Meanwhile in Poznan, The Wilderness Society participated in two press conferences.

The first press conference was with Australian NGO's the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF) and OXFAM. The Wilderness Society talked about the need to protect natural forests as part of the climate package by any country who has them, and to address loopholes which might actually encourage logging in developed and developing countries in a new agreement (refer to my December 6 postcard for details).

ACF talked about the need for Australia to adopt a strong emissions reduction target of at least 25% - 40%, and OXFAM raised important equity issues for developing countries, and the assistance they need to reduce and adapt to climate change.

Then we participated in another press conference with the Climate Action Network (CAN) International. CAN is the umbrella network for the conservation Non-Government Organisations (NGO's) participating in the climate talks between now, Copenhagen and beyond. Then we met with the Australian government to push the case further. Phew!!

Tomorrow we meet with Australian Climate Change Minister Penny Wong before attending an international event she is presenting at.

 
Check out our regular 'Postcards from Poznan' for updates and progress on the climate change negotiations.

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