Uncomfortable truths

COP26 has been bringing together parties from across the world to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The Open University has official observer status at COP26 and is learning from the conference to inform the university’s wider sustainability mission and inspire students and staff to take action. Here are some of the conference’s highlights, as told by our Open University observers. 

COP26 Diary - 10 November: Rosalie Faithfull, Team Assistant, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Today a Tongan told me about his disappearing beach, an East African man about the oil pipeline which will soon be run through his country, and a native Mexican about how her land had been grabbed, for a wind farm of all things.

They dressed in traditional clothing, feathered headdresses, and used different languages. They played music, told jokes and stirring stories, and made great photo opportunities. They were generous in their language, welcoming in their approach. And then I left to get my train home.

I walked along Sauchiehall Street, turned right into Wellington and headed towards Central Station. I passed the scruffy chic of basement bars and cafes, the gritty yet grand architecture, always broad and spacious, rarely pretentious. A city with a raised eyebrow, a rye smile, a beating heart full of history; a place that’s seen a thing or two in its time.

I didn’t see the slums, the open sewers, the hunger and the cold because they’re no longer there. I didn’t see the barefoot children running in rags, begging for bread and filthy with soot, sometimes struggling to breathe. I didn’t hear their shouts and their cries for change, for education, jobs, decent homes, against the misty damp backdrop of the shipyards and The Clyde. A city built on slavery and full of slaves. I caught my train home and tomorrow I will do it all again – COP26.

Perhaps when my house is flooded, when my land is stolen, when people are taking my photo and shaking my hand and leaving; perhaps when I have no shoes, no home, no food, perhaps then I’ll wish I’d stayed a little longer and thought a little harder about how to stop history repeating itself. About adaptation and mitigation and no more blah, blah, blah. About bearing witness and then doing something about what I see, whatever I can do in my own small way using my voice, my body, my time, and my money on being the change I want to see in the world.