From celebration to demonstration in Bali

The Kyoto Protocol is ten years old today. This afternoon, Greenpeace unveiled an enormous cake in the Bali Convention Centre to celebrate this 10th anniversary/birthday (not sure which). I watched as the broadcast media and photographers swarmed around what could best be described as an edifice rather than a cake.

I then had to rush across to a different venue (passing Hilary Benn doing a media interview on the way) so that I could participate in a demonstration, outside a World Bank side-event, protesting against the World Bank’s planned Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. Organised principally by Indonesian activists, the demo was aimed at highlighting the World Bank’s past failure at protecting forests and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples, as well as the danger of including natural forests within carbon trading mechanisms.

There have been several press stunts these past days, mainly involving people dressed as polar bears (today’s cake stunt notwithstanding), so it made a change to see, and be involved in, something with more bite. And I think the die-in that was staged and the boisterous chanting had the desired effect as several journalists inside the meeting raised the issues of concern to the demonstrators and the Danish government stated that its funding for this scheme would be dependent on the World Bank securing the consent of indigenous peoples.

Not so sure what the UK’s approach to this is (Hilary Benn ended up inside this meeting and came out with a now familiar line about the need for people to be ‘for’ things rather than ‘against’ them) but overall it felt like a good result.