Boiling Point: A COP26 Coalition Speaker Series

In this series of six one hour-long webinars you will have a chance to learn the basics of international climate change politics and the infamous COP, or "Conference of the Parties," ahead of the COP26, scheduled to be held in Glasgow in November 2021.

Expert speakers will share their knowledge of the history and process of the talks as well as the major issues and main players. You will learn about the real "rules of the game"and have a chance to ask questions big and small of activists, policy analysts and journalists with years of experience working behind the scenes of major summits.

The Boiling Point series will run weekly on Thursdays from 17th September through 22nd October. Sessions will be recorded and available on our website www.cop26coalition.org at a later date.

17th September, 1pm (BST)

Climate Change Negotiations for Beginners

Our first session will introduce basic concepts and terms, provide a brief overview of the process, and pose questions which we will explore over the course of the series.

Guest speakers

Dorothy Guerrero, Global Justice Now

Dorothy "Dottie" Guerrero is an internationalist with 30 years of experience in social movements and campaign work as researcher/analyst, political educator, and organiser. She is currently Head of Policy and Advocacy of Global Justice Now. She works on and writes about social and economic justice issues linked with climate change, corporate power and accountability, migration, China, geopolitics/new cold war, and other related concerns from a radical pluralist Left perspective. She is a member of the Coordinating Committee of the COP26 UK Coalition and the Board of Trustees of London Mining Network. She is originally from the Philippines and started her activism against the Marcos dictatorship. She has lived in and worked with organisations in The Netherlands, Germany, Thailand and South Africa before moving to the UK.

Doreen Stabinsky, College of the Atlantic

Doreen Stabinsky is professor of Global Environmental Politics at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine, USA. She has an undergraduate degree in economics and a PhD in plant genetics from the University of California at Davis. In 2015-2016, she held the first Zennström visiting professorship in Climate Change Leadership at Uppsala University, Sweden. Doreen teaches a range of courses, including Climate Justice, Land and Climate, Practicing International Diplomacy, and Global Environmental Politics. She guides a delegation of students to the yearly meetings of the UNFCCC COP.

Her scholarly and other professional work focuses on political and policy responses to the impacts of climate change on agriculture and food security, with a particular interest in impacts on the African continent and least developed countries. She actively researches and writes about land and climate and the emerging issue of loss and damage from slow onset impacts of climate change and serves as advisor to a number of governments and international NGOs on these topics in ongoing negotiations under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Agreement.

Her most recent publications include: Environmental Politics for a Changing World: power, perspectives and practice (written with Ronnie Lipschutz) and Missing Pathways to 1.5 *C: the role of the land sector in ambitious climate action (published by the Climate, Land, Ambition and Rights Alliance (CLARA), with several co-authors). She is a contributing author to the climate finance chapter of the 6 th Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) currently in development.

24th September, 2pm (BST)

A Potted History of International Climate Change Negotiations (Part 1: Rio to Paris)

Our second session will look at the history of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, from the Rio “Earth Summit” in 1992 through to the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and landmark summits such as the 2005 Bali round, the 2009 Copenhagen disaster, and the famous 2015 Paris Agreement.

Guest speaker

Meena Raman, Third World Network

Meenakshi “Meena” Raman is the President of Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth Malaysia), Legal Advisor to Consumers Association of Penang, in Malaysia and Coordinator of Third World Network’s Climate Change Programme. She was a co-founder of Environmental Lawyers Alliance Worldwide (ELAW), practiced environmental law in Malaysia from 1983-2009, and was Chair of Friends of the Earth International, which has 72 member groups around the world. Meena served as an “Active Observer” of the Green Climate Fund from 2012 to 2015, and has actively participated in the UNFCCC negotiations since 2007. She has been representing grassroots communities as a public interest lawyer taking on big corporations in Malaysia.

1st October, 2pm (BST)

A Potted History of International Climate Change Negotiations (Part 2: Paris to Glasgow)

Our third session will explore developments since the Paris Agreement - asking how much has really changed and what is there still to fight for.

Guest speaker

Meena Raman, Third World Network

Meenakshi “Meena” Raman is the President of Sahabat Alam Malaysia (Friends of the Earth Malaysia), Legal Advisor to Consumers Association of Penang, in Malaysia and Coordinator of Third World Network’s Climate Change Programme. She was a co-founder of Environmental Lawyers Alliance Worldwide (ELAW), practiced environmental law in Malaysia from 1983-2009, and was Chair of Friends of the Earth International, which has 72 member groups around the world. Meena served as an “Active Observer” of the Green Climate Fund from 2012 to 2015, and has actively participated in the UNFCCC negotiations since 2007. She has been representing grassroots communities as a public interest lawyer taking on big corporations in Malaysia.

8th October, 1pm (BST)

The Big Issues In Climate Politics

Our fourth session will take a closer look at the major issues that are present in the negotiations, including carbon markets, loss and damage, and finance, and unpack the recent clamour from some quarters for “net-zero” goals.

Guest speakers

RachelRose Jackson, Corporate Accountability

Rachel Rose Jackson is Director of Climate Research and Policy at Corporate Accountability, an international member-powered organization that challenges the abuses of transnational corporations. She has a background in corporate campaigning, public health, and investigative research. She has worked in partnership with activists, movements, policymakers, government officials, and frontline communities around the globe. Corporate Accountability's climate campaign is focused on ending corporate interference in climate policymaking (Kick Big Polluters Out) and holding Big Polluters liable for knowingly fueling the climate crisis (Make Big Polluters Pay).

Teresa Anderson, ActionAid International

Harjeet Singh, ActionAid International

Harjeet Singh is the global lead on climate change for ActionAid. Based in New Delhi, India he supports countries across the world on climate change policy and advocacy. He is a global expert on the issues of climate impacts, migration and adaptation. Previously, he managed disaster resilience programme globally and coordinated emergency response and preparedness work in Asia and the Americas. Until 2007, he led the tsunami response programme in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands for ActionAid India. He writes regularly on climate change and disaster resilience issues. He tweets at @harjeet11.

15th October, 1pm (BST)

What to Expect at COP26 in Glasgow

Our fifth session will lay out climate justice movements’ expectations of COP26 while also exploring what can feasibly be achieved in terms of COP outcomes and the role of civil society in advancing the talks.

Guest speakers

Lidy Nacpil, Asian People's Movement on Debt and Development

Dipti Bhatnagar, Friends of the Earth International

dipti bhatnagar is International Program Coordinator for Climate Justice and Energy at Friends of the Earth International. She has been in the role since the beginning of 2012. She is hosted by Justiça Ambiental (JA!) / Friends of the Earth Mozambique where she also works on climate justice and dirty energy. An activist for almost 20 years, with a deep-rooted sense of justice, dipti worked with the Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save the Narmada movement) to fight destructive dams in India, and in California she worked on immigrant rights and safe drinking water for disadvantaged farmworker communities of colour. An environmental scientist by training, dipti was born in Kolkata, India, and lives in Maputo, Mozambique, with her partner whom she met whilst both were fighting against destructive dams.

Alex Rafalowicz, 350.org

Alex Rafalowicz is the Co-Director of Global Program at 350.Org. He has worked with organisations across the world fighting for climate justice and tracking the UNFCCC since 2009, including assisting in the founding of the Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice. He served as the movement-strategist at CAN-Australia and is on the board of GetUp. He has also worked as a consultant on digital and campaign strategy for political and NGO campaigns in the US, Europe, Latin America, and Australia. He lives in Bogotá, Colombia with his family.

22nd October 1pm (BST)

What Are Climate Change Negotiations Really Like?

Our sixth session will share insights from negotiation veterans about what it is really like to attend a COP. Activists, academics and journalists will all speak about how observers participate and what they contribute.

Guest speakers

Graeme Reed, Assembly of First Nations

Graeme Reed works at the Assembly of First Nations (AFN) as a senior policy advisor, ensuring federal and international climate policy safeguards First Nations rights, jurisdiction and knowledge. During this time, he has had the opportunity to represent the AFN at the COP 23, COP 24, and COP 25 of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since 2019, he has been the Co-Chair of the International Indigenous Peoples Forum on Climate Change. In his spare time, he is a doctoral candidate at the University of Guelph, studying the intersection of Indigenous governance, environmental governance and the climate crisis. He is of mixed Anishinaabe and European descent.

Tracy Bach, Washington University

Tracy Bach serves as the Co-Focal Point of Research and Independent Non-Governmental Organizations (RINGO) to the UNFCCC Secretariat. She is a law professor who has taught and published on climate change, international environmental law and human rights, and health care and environmental health law. She received her B.A. from Yale University and her J.D. and M.A in public affairs from the University of Minnesota, after which she clerked for the Honorable Harriet Lansing of the Minnesota Court of Appeals. Bach is a Fulbright Scholar who has been a visiting professor at the law faculties of the National University of Rwanda; Petrozavodsk State University (Karelia, Russia); the University of Paris 13; Cheikh Anta Diop University (Dakar, Senegal); and Qatar University College of Law. She has conducted workshops and consulted in China and Myanmar with IUCN, UNDP, and UNEP. She has attended COPs and SBs since 2009, and led delegations to more than a dozen of these international meetings. Bach is currently a visiting professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

Aruna Chandrasekhar, freelance journalist

Aruna Chandrasekhar is an independent journalist from India. Her work covers corporate accountability, climate change, energy, environmental justice, human rights, conflict, politics and public health.

Kera Sherwood-O'Regan, Indigenous People's Caucus and Activate

Kera Sherwood-O'Regan (Kāi Tahu, Te Waipounamu) is an indigenous and disabled multidisciplinary storyteller and rights advocate based in Aotearoa New Zealand. She is the Co-founder and Communications & Impact Director at Activate, an indigenous and disabled social impact agency specialising in campaigning and narratives for social change. Her work focuses on centering structurally oppressed communities in social change, is grounded in kaupapa Māori practices and approaches, and is informed by 15 years of work in the climate movement. She advocates for indigenous rights at the United Nations climate negotiations every year, and is a prominent activist in Aotearoa New Zealand's climate justice movement.

Jason Boberg, SustainedAbility and Activate

Jason is the Co-founder and Creative Director of Activate, a disabled and indigenous social impact agency specialising in campaigning and narratives for social change. A proudly disabled film director by trade, Jason applies a critical disability rights and justice lens to his filmmaking and campaign work, while grounding this in the rich expertise and whakapapa of the disabled community. Jason is a fierce advocate for disability rights in the climate movement, and is the founder of SustainedAbility, an organisation that centres the intersection between disability rights and climate justice, as well as an advocate surrounding the UN Convention on the Rights of Disabled Persons. Jason has been active at the UNFCCC climate negotiations in calling for the establishment of a disabled persons' constituency, and attends COP every year.