Another continent, three cities, bike lending for sustain ability, and Biodiversity Conference

Well dear readers,

Since I last blogged upon you I was far away in Costa Rica. It's been several weeks since I last wrote and I've changed continents again, twice. First, I was back in NYC for a few days with fam and friends, and then back to Germany.

My arrival in Germany on Saturday morning, May 17th was excellent. Picked up by a former colleague from the UN, out to breakfast in the sun, back home for some unpacking, and then another E-GLO session. My friend Ashley from DC, who works at the US EPA had been doing a short stint as a reviewer at the UNFCCC, came back to my place where she had been staying and using my bicycle (more on that), and we went out to meet lots of my Bonn friends for a welcome back drink in the Doener Haus Biergarten in the Altstadt of Bonn. Lovely.

On sharing of sustainable transportation: While I was in NYC I sublet my apartment to a German student named Ingo. I also let him borrow my bike. While I was in Costa Rica, after I had been living in NYC for two months, I let Dominic borrow my bike in NYC while he was up from Costa Rica in NYC for the Commission on Sustainable Development. And while Ashley was staying in my flat and after Ingo had left, Ashley rode to the UNFCCC every day on my bike. I actually own three bikes, one of which I have given to my brother in Brooklyn. I am very proud that my bikes were used in my absence and that it may in some way make up for my nasty carbon footprint from flying around the place so much.

Anyway, after another day in Bonn, on Monday I took a train to Hamburg, stayed with a former theater colleague from Munich days, Marck, went out with him, his partner and Jean-Luc, also a Munich era friend, and his partner, Tina. Hamburg is wonderful. A port city has a special vibe, and Hamburg fits the bill. On Tuesday Jean-Luc, Tina, and I took a boat tour through the harbor and in the afternoon we picked up our gear from respective places, got a pile of film equipment and then drove all the way to the Danish border to a city on a fjord called Flensburg.

Flensburg is a bilingual city and Jean-Luc and I were there to film a day of events, including a theater show made especially for the power company of Flensburg, a private enterprise and net exporter of energy to other parts of Germany. The event was somewhat ridiculous, corporate trying to be creative and motivational, but mostly soulless and dull.

That evening three of us drove back to Hamburg, dropped off our gear at the couchsurfer connections of Jean-Luc and Tina, and then we went to the Kiez, the dirty port area with the sex shops and prostitutes, the cinemas, theaters, tourist traps, bars and restaurants, and freaks, where we found a decent spot to watch the Champions League final between Chelsea and Manchester United. I was happy ManU won.

The following day it was back to Bonn on an early train and immediately into Conference on Biodiversity meetings, specifically an event by the Countdown 2010 program of the IUCN. I showed up late, did an afternoon workshop on local initiatives and municipal action facilitated by Monika Zimmermann of ICLEI, an organization I admire but which always rejects my work applications because I have no European citizenship. Countdown 2010 threw a party afterwards at the Chinese Tower restaurant in the Rheinaue Park and I did a lot of networking and yapping with IUCN folk. Very productive.

Two days later it was more IUCN and UNEP sponsored side-meetings, Forum on Biodiversity, in the Maritim Hotel, where the CBD is being held. There were several interesting presentations, including one on a Stern-like report for biodiversity, doing cost-benefit analysis and other such economic tools about biodiversity. The report is acronymized TEEB ( The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity). Google it. I particpated with some commentary in the afternoon and was very aware of the lack of younger people either participating or giving presentations.

On this note, I'd like to write a few words. When senior professionals discuss environmental issues, they often have a perspective of looking backwards at the progress in their lives, about the short time they have left, and the impact they can have in their remaining time in the field. I find this to be very disturbing as I expect to actually be here in 2050 and be active working on environmental issues. So often the senior pros discuss year numbers like 2010, 2015 and they're passionate, sure, but the perspective for me is a limited one in time frame, and one that is less relevant to me as a junior professional with 40 years of work ahead. I would love to be able to refocus a lot of the energy of senior pros from reaching short term goals to buidling capacity in younger professionals and the youth.

Sunday last, I left Bonn again for Prague and spent three days with my best friend from NYC, Alex, watching theater, both traditional style, and site-specific performance.

Yesterday I got back to Bonn again and have been at the CBD since. I just got out of a press conference given by WWF's James Leape and IUCN's Julia Marton-Lefevre. It was not a bad summary of major events and movements here at the CBD. Through the optimism, however, the speakers related that apart from Germany's financial commitment over the coming years, nothing really has been signed or sealed, that the roadmap to 2010 is better than expected, but no agreements have actually been made, that Brazil and Canada are resistant to biofuel standard agreements, that Assets and Benefits Sharing is still a major unresolved issue, and that forests haven't been properly integrated into biodiversity strategy.

There is also a fascinating debate as to how positive or negative the supremacy of the Climate Change discourse may affect the biodiversity agenda. Will climate change simply push the biodiversity agenda to the side? Or can the biodiversity agenda use the force of climate change activity to its benefit? Will UNFCCC come to be the central power point of all environmentally related conventions? What does this mean for the biodiversity agenda?

The results will be in tomorrow as decisions get pounded out, or not, in the night by States' parties. Will any hard agreements or commitments be made? Probably not, but we'll have to wait and see.

Sorry for this bizarre melange of news and opinion. I need to write more often. Until the next time.