Today...I slept in.

That's right. I successfully performed the 21-year-old equivalent of waking up to watch Saturday-morning cartoons. Which is to say, I decidedly did not wake up to watch Saturday-morning cartoons. It's interesting, though. The sun, in relation to the Sri Lankan clock, rises and sets about two hours earlier. With my bed so close to my window, I find my body aligning itself to this rhythm in the wee hours of the morning. It's kinda nice, actually. 6:30 is my normal wake-up time, and the sun has been fully out for over an hour by that point. Rolling out of bed at 9:00 today was sorely welcomed, though.

This past week has been really cool. I've been able to finally start the kind of work I really came here to do. Some of the least-exciting tasks have been paperwork and bureaucracy-related, as the Centre applies for consultative- or partnership-status with a number of UN Programmes, Departments, and Councils. All told, Uchita and I machete'ed our way through three applications for consultative status this week. I imagine they will all be accepted, which will lend CED much greater freedom (and responsibility) in participating and reporting on UN activities. The Centre is already de facto operating at consultative-status level, but hopefully now it will become official. And now I know how these things work.

The details of one of the projects on which I'm working are still kind-of-classified as the legal details of the arrangement are negotiated. I can say, though, that it involves designing a curriculum for a professional certificate course on Climate Sustainability. These first stages have involved lots of brainstorming, big-picture thinking, heckling, and an occasional obscenity between me and Uchita. As we hashed out the context of a serious academic course, I found that I was having a really good time. Exploring the complex interlinkages between all the sub-contexts of an issue like Climate Sustainability and then trying to map those units into a linear pattern to be taught over a period of time proved to be a welcomed challenge for me. It also made me realize that an Eastern mind like Uchita's is much more accustomed to thinking in circles and webs than a Western one like mine. My analytical skills proved useful in this context, as we had to present a salable sequence of lessons to a potential collaborative partner, but it's clear I have a long way to go in the art and practice of holistic thinking. We all do.

My other main task has been to prepare for a large project. The result of the project will be a comprehensive report on Sustainable Consumption and Production Governance to be issued well in advance of Rio+20, the goal of which is to seriously influence policy in the official negotiations. One of the "themes" of Rio+20 is "Sustainable Development Governance", one part of which ought to be SCP Governance, specifically. My mental stumbling block in trying to situate our SCP Governance report within this theme for Rio+20 has been the sheer hodge-podge that is the existing institutional framework for SD Governance of any kind. Within the UN, there is a mind-numbing web of programmes, councils, and offices who claim some authority in the matter, and determining the power flows between them and their real-world efficacy has absorbed a good deal of time lately. Thankfully, an NGO called Stakeholder Forum for a Sustainable Future has put together a ton of neat reports on the matter (some targeted to the uninitiated, like me) and are working hard to spread information. CED is also in this track, and I've been asked to start contributing to our blogs over the next few weeks. Looks like I'll get some more experience in this strange form of writing! Chip chop chip. (Chip chop chip?)

On a more-interesting note, I had a near-pants-soiling moment this morning while walking to Uchita's. I was groggy from sleeping so much, so imagine my brainfog when I was charged by a slather-mouthed, 7ft-long monitor lizard bent on stealing my soul and feeding my remains to his hellish offspring. Nugegoda's a heavily urban district of the greater Colombo area, so the most-threatening wildlife I've been exposed to have been fruit bats and stray dogs. (Well, actually, dengue-mosquitoes ought to be my biggest fear, but they're so...little.) This lizard though...sheesh. It forced me into a fight-or-flight response, which mostly resulted in a noise I can only represent onomatopoetically with the word "BLLLLEEEEAARRAAAAAGGGGHHHHAAAAAA", in combination with some gymnastico-evasive maneuvers. And thus, dear friends, was I the laughingstock of a half-dozen white-and-blue clad Sri Lankan punk-children. Uchita explained to me that the stream that runs through a concrete channel near his home affords them some habitat a little further downstream, and that being charged by this lizard was not an offensive move on his part. He was merely trying to return to the water in the drainage ditch, and I just so happened to be in his way. Indeed, he plopped into the water just behind me and disappeared underneath the sidewalks that cover the drainage ditches here. This is the Sri Lankan version of alligators-in-the-sewers, I think. But these ones are real. Appallingly, Godzilla-ly real.

I'm now in Colombo 7 after visiting the National Museum of Sri Lanka (pictured). All I can report is that I was more interesting to the three-and-a-half-thousand schoolchildren there than their own cultural artifacts. Which might be an quantitative exaggeration, but surely not a qualitative one. I had a prolonged moment of being followed by at least 20 giggling children who kept asking me my name in their beautifully-clear-but-limited English. One was even bold enough to pull my bun. Have I mentioned that long hair on males is an extreme curiosity to the people here? Apparently men haven't worn long hair in this country in a long, long time, and many children just haven't seen enough tourists to get used to white skin or long hair. The museum got really warm and my entourage got too close and numerous. When I got politely-but-sternly reprimanded by a museum official for taking a picture without the requisite permit, I decided to quit while I was ahead. Now, having ingested some caffeine and dried out my back-sweat (yuck, I know) I'm ready to hike over to the Galle Face Green (Google it). Hooah!

A Week of Vesak and a Day at the Beach

This past week marks the occurrence of a week-long Buddhist celebration in Sri Lanka (and throughout much of Asia) called Vesak, or Vesakha. It's also called Buddha's Birthday. In a country where 85% of the population are practicing Buddhists, you can imagine how much potential it has to completely shut things down in the name of compassion and giving and having-at-least-two-days-off-work. You might also be able to imagine how strange it was for this to be my introduction to Sri Lankan culture. Paper lanterns everywhere, Buddhist flags hanging from every hangable surface, zero car traffic, and all the liquor stores were closed! In all sincerity, though, it was a beautiful week, particularly last Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the start of the festival, we worked a half-day and then Uchita and his family took me out for a "night on the town". We drove, which turned out to be a bad idea due to the ridiculous amount of foot traffic. Regardless, they took me to their temple, which was a beautiful, old complex in a quieter area of Nugegoda. I had worn a white shirt for the occasion, as had everyone else who would visit a temple that day, and I followed the de Zoysas around as they said their prayers and performed their rituals. The first part involved them circumventing a stupa once, stopping with palms together and heads bowed to pray. Then they lit sticks of incense and stuck them in bowls of sand with hundreds of other such offerings. Sheshi, Uchita's daughter, lit a small coconut oil lamp that was hung on a screen between the two biggest buildings of the complex, joining hundreds more lights just like it. Sheshi and Shani made some more rounds, and Uchita took me to the temple's Bo tree to spin some Buddhist lore. There were a lot of old women there, I noticed, sitting or standing around the tree, eyes closed, praying. I was struck by the beauty of it, much the same way I've been struck by the beauty of such devotion in other faiths in the past. If ever there was an appropriate place to worship, though, I think it'd have to be under the cavernous canopy of a Bo tree.

We also spent a few hours with some family friends of the de Zoysas'. The father of that family is a dynamic character, a businessman of various sorts, and a "devout Buddhist". I began to see firsthand that the vast majority of Buddhists (laypeople) use their faith the same way that people whose religions are more familiar to me use theirs: as a frame of reference in a changing, inconstant world. They go about their business carrying their faith in the same way that Christians, Muslims, and all the others do. There's nothing mysterious about Buddhism when you see it up close. It has sects, schisms, and mystical elements that require faith, just like the other major religious traditions. It's also just as beautiful and useful. I'll continually be intrigued by it, I think, throughout my time here.

I finished up the week without much ado. Friday night was spent exploring a ritzy, colonial area of downtown Colombo, called Colombo 7. I found a shopping mall with both air conditioning and coffee, which were both sorely and shamefully welcomed. It was the first time in many years that I voluntarily spent an hour in a shopping mall. It was also the hour that I realized firsthand how successful the development project has been at establishing consumer classes all throughout the world. The goods in this particular mall were more European in style than American, but they indubitably bore the stamp of western consumer culture. Sri Lanka has a strong economy and a wealth of resources, and since its government secured victory in its 26-year civil war in 2009, it's proven to be a heyday for investments from the developed world. It will be interesting for me to witness how this has affected the culture here.

I took it easy over the weekend, and was able to get to the beach on Sunday. I've been living closer to the shore than I had thought, though there's a complicated bit of travelling necessary to get there. With the help of Shani, I commissioned a tuk-tuk to take me to a non-tourist portion of beach called Kinross Avenue, and it was an interesting experience for me. I found myself unable to relax completely, partly because everyone was staring at the long-haired white person with the large tattoo, partly because I had some anxiety about being able to use the bus system to get home, and partly because I'm not good at relaxing anyway. It ended up being a fun six hours, but I was thoroughly drained of energy and quite sunburned when all was said and done.

It's a different experience traveling alone; I've never done so before. It takes a conscious effort to not put up a defensive front all the time. When I first arrived here, I had my guard up all the time, and it was a slow realization that the negative vibes I was feeling from people on the streets were not malevolence. Now, I see the stares as curiosity, and recognize that outwardly in public, Sri Lankans just aren't smiley people. I hope to become fully comfortable with these cultural ways, and hope peoples' curiosity gives way to normalcy. I'm having a good time living here, and hope to live here in the fullest senses allowable by my 3-month stay. Though I doubt I'll ever get used to finding small, flattened, scary-looking dried fish hiding in my rice-packs. Sri Lankans probably aren't used to having plastic-wrapped toys tumble out of their cereal boxes either, so I'll take it as a learning opportunity.

Recap of CSD19: Part II / A Meditation on Linen Pants

My body finally rebelled against the heat last night. I think, physiologically, my body has been expecting the heat to ease off and the humidity to subside, as if I was only subjecting it to an eight-day sauna and would soon step back out into sweater-weather in Boone. I awoke this morning and felt physically and mentally frustrated; a full night's rest had become an eight-hour wrestling match. As Shani's 85-year-old father explained to me with a laugh, "It's always hot here, and sometimes it rains." My advice to any man who finds himself in a culture near the equator where men are expected to wear pants? Find some linen ones and a gracious grandmother to alter them as fast as you can. (True story: two pairs of Pierre Cardin, 100% linen pants for ~$30 total. Truer story: Uchita's mother was extremely kind to me and hemmed them by hand in less than a day, the saint.)

I realize my post from yesterday was a downer, and I'd like to clarify one thing: I really wish the UN would work. With all the silly tea-party spasms in the US about the UN being the root-of-all-evil and the path-to-one-world-government-slash-eternal-hellfire-and-slavery-for-Americans, I'd not want anyone mistaking my criticisms for such unexamined pandering. The problem with the official UN process is that it was NEVER wholly supported by the developed world. Since its inception in the brief spurt of high-minded ideals that followed WWII, the UN has been forced to limp along, trying to live up to beliefs in peace and justice while tackling the world's most serious problems. It seems to me that the UN is one of humanity's most noble experiments, and I believe that we have collectively failed to make its dreams a reality. I also struggle to see how its mechanisms can be reformed, or if such a path would even be worth treading. As far as sustainability processes go, Rio+20 will be the pivotal event. As I've joked before, Rio will be our "Last+20 chance to save the planet!" We'll see what happens there. Actually, I'll probably be there in person, rooting for progress, peace, and sustainability governance.

But my involvement will not be with the official processes. Nay, I'm convinced that the most hopeful paths towards equitable economies for all and the survival of our species on a warming planet lie in civil society initiatives. Civil society, as I've come to understand it, is the political space within which citizens can organize to pursue their interests, independently of governments. It is also the space from which they can appeal for change in their governments. Civil society consists of NGO's, independent (not corporate-owned) media, labor unions, and religious organizations. Here, I believe, is where we can find the freedom to do good things and join the ranks of those who are already doing so.

I was continually struck at CSD19 at the sheer amount of creativity bursting forth from civil society organizations, all while their governmental representatives were tangling themselves in unimportant nuances of grammar one floor below. For example, I helped Uchita launch the Millennium Consumption Goals Initiative, which is now in its infancy stages. The MCGI are designed to correlate to and complement the Millennium Development Goals of the UN. The main gist is that while the MDG are targeted at the poor who have too little, the MCG are targeted at the rich who have too much. On a finite planet like ours, we must address the overconsumption of the rich with the same ardor we address the underconsumption of the poor. Well, actually, the Development Goals have failed, so I hope we can do better on ALL fronts from here out. I like to think of the MCG as an opportunity for the rich, who currently lead overconsumptive lifestyles and who experience some of the lowest rates of happiness collectively, to re-engage right livelihoods and lifestyles where sufficiency is the dominant value and generated wealth will be shared. It's an interesting initiative, and its already bearing fruit. The Chairman's summary of CSD19, though I haven't read it myself, reportedly contained hopeful references to the MCGI, and scholars and activists are already rallying around the concept, contributing intellectual content in the forms of blogs and reports. At this stage, it has yet to take an implementable form, so the members of the MCGI (which includes me) will spend the next three months (conveniently the length of my internship) determining its shape. This is something I believe in, so I'll keep the updates coming as work progresses. We've not had a chance to work on the MCGI since CSD19, so that's on the docket for next week.

The other main event I participated in was the issuance of a report by Uchita called "SCP Governance: A Guide for Rio+20". (SCP, remember, stands for Sustainable Consumption and Production.) Uchita's report, and the panelists who responded to it, dealt with institutionalizing in the UN the mechanisms for governing for SCP. Realistically, none of the analysis will result in real changes to the UN system, but the point, I think, has been to frame a model of an international-governance mechanism capable of dealing with the intricacies and complexities of sustainable consumption and production. The discussion varied between governmentally pragmatic to downright philosophical; I enjoyed being part of it. The road to Rio will likely see many such reports from civil society members, some who aim for reform and others who are more concerned about the mechanisms for change and good governance, whether or not they will be heeded by the UN.

I'm about to not have internet until Monday, so forgive my curt ending. It's a strange adjustment to not have connectivity at any given moment. Admittedly, it's taking some conscious work to remain comfortable without cellular or internet service. I'm catching up on some good reading, however, and will soon begin to more fully explore Sri Lanka on my own. Having a weekend without serious work-plans is a phenomenon I've not enjoyed in a long time!

Recap of CSD19: Part I

The heat here makes my writing bland. I just re-read my inaugural post, and realized how hard it is to write compound sentences with words-with-lotsa-syllables when your body's store of water is oozing out your every pore. Even Sri Lankans feel that these days have been hotter than average. Welcome to the equator, white boy!

Anyway, in trying to recap CSD amidst a ton of other things, I need to keep it short and be done with it, so as to be able to move on to reporting more interesting things, like learning to shovel really spicy food into my mouth with my fingers, and buying a sarong to (hopefully) escape the awful clutches of sweaty underwear.

Upon arriving at the UN complex in New York City (42nd St.), I was struck at how bad it looked while under construction. The complex is being heavily renovated and right now has little going for it in the way of aesthetics. I shuffled through security, scooted past hoards of noisy, uninterested American schoolchildren in the visitor's center, obtained my NGO pass, and headed to the North Lawn Conference Building. This is where many UN negotiations take place, and where I'd spend the bulk of the next six days.

I found Uchita in the masses of people occupying the "Vienna Cafe" on the second floor of the building, which, as I would soon learn, is where the real work takes place at the UN. I was introduced to a number of people who were sitting with him and was warmly brought into the conversation as if they assumed I had any idea what was going on. It took me a few minutes to get tabs on who everyone was, but I was struck that they were all very high-ranking members of civil society organizations, mostly NGO's, which I hold in high regard. And here I was, yellow-bellied student-intern, speaking with them about the status of the negotiations as well as the civil society initiatives they were launching independently. I was operating at the most-global level I had ever been.

Uchita thought it would be a good idea for me to spend "some time" watching the official negotiations. I was at first confused by this; I'd assumed most of my time would be spent in this manner. He told me to go and watch, and that we'd discuss my place in the machine afterwards. I went and sat in on Working Group 2's negotiations on the text of the chairman's draft proposal on Waste Management. (For those who are unfamiliar with the format of CSD, they were set up in two-year segments to work on specific clusters of issues by negotiating statements towards a 10-Year Framework of Programmes, 10YFP. The issues on the plate for CSD19, in the second year of one such cycle, were transport, mining, chemicals, and interlinkages & cross-cutting issues (all handled by Working Group 1) and SCP (sustainable consumption and production), waste management, and the Preamble of the policy recommendations, handled by Working Group 2.)

I was entertained by the negotiations for about 30 minutes, whereupon the "new" wore off and I realized I was not in the presence of brilliant statesmen and stateswomen, or even particularly efficacious diplomats. To make a long story short, I very quickly realized that the mechanisms for this kind of negotiation are horribly broken. And the American delegate sounded like Ben Stein. I observed this session for about two and a half more hours, and then for a few more in the afternoon, and altogether, the negotiators navigated through about two paragraphs of text. For reference, the chairman's draft (unedited) text is twenty-five pages.

When I emerged from the chambers between the two sessions, I found the Vienna Cafe to be stuffed of civil-society members, most crouched around laptops in groups or otherwise discussing their own plans for advancing sustainable development. I found Uchita again and expressed my dismay that the negotiations were so ineffective. I had witnessed the delegates from the United States and the G-77 go back-and-forth for a few hours over some minor points of verbiage, and to no avail, and I was skeptical any of the real concerns of sustainability would ever be discussed in those halls. "You will learn this," he said, "that the UN is the Palace of Bullshit." I learned it well, and thereafter spent only a few minutes each day observing the official negotiations.

Here's what I learned: The UN is NOT a place for developing the mechanisms that will advance the causes of environmental, social, and economic sustainability. It is not even a place where nations discuss, in good faith, what the world community can do to live more equitably on this planet. It is, rather, a bargaining table at which national interests pay lip service to social and environmental justice while negotiating a (non-binding) agreement that enables them, as far as possible, to continue with business as usual. Or, as the case turned out to be for UNCSD19, they will reach no agreement whatsoever and countless hours of hard work by many parties will result in naught but deadlocked negotiations.

From what I observed, the UN negotiations on sustainability are being smothered by selfishness, greed, and lack of wisdom on the part of many of the developed nations and bitterness and obstructionist-foot-stomping from many of the developing nations. The truth is, the forum is not conducive to keeping humanity's best interests at heart, and until we develop such a space, the outlook is bleak for any really worthwhile solutions to be put forth in the international-public sector. We cannot wait for governments to codify sustainability; as I saw at UNCSD19, they move too slowly, if at all.

This leaves civil society. My hopes now lie here, and in my next post, I hope to recall some of the more positive lessons I took from the week.

Recap of CSD19: The Prelude

The first week of my internship with the Centre for Environment and Development took place in New York City between May 4 and 11. There, I was dropped into the deep end of international negotiations on sustainable development at the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development's 19th meeting. I learned a lot from the experience and will start this blog by recounting the lessons I've taken away from that week. Unfortunately, I was too exhausted the entire time to take good notes of exactly what I was involved with, so much of what remains in my memory is unordered. The details are typically unimportant in things of this nature anyway; my impressions of it will be what shape my future thoughts and actions on sustainability.

A quick note on my life leading up to my time at the UN: it was hectic. If you're reading this blog, it's likely that you interacted with me at some point in the weeks preceding May 4. I'd like to quickly apologize if my chaos introduced any anxiety into your life. I would undoubtedly have been unable to get to where I am right now (Nugegoda, Sri Lanka, for the record) if I hadn't had a network of caring people to back me up. I'm a fortunate fellow in so many ways.

My UN experience really began on May 2, the longest day of my life. Still in Boone, NC, I had a number of loose ends to tie up before heading north. A final exam for Sustainability in the Modern World System, a final presentation for Creating Cultures of Sustainability, a meeting of the Boone Town Council Sustainability Task Force, one meal, and a small carload of items to be packed later, I was ready to head home. I left Boone, NC at 7:30pm and arrived in Bloomsburg, PA at 5:05am on the 3rd. The dogs didn't even bark when I entered the mudroom. They were too sleepy.

I slept for about 7 hours and awoke shortly before 1pm. I ate a hasty breakfast, noisily and messily packed my bags for the next three months of my life, registered my travels with the state department, said some f-words, and by 3pm was in the car with my dad, heading towards New York City. The Lincoln Tunnel was clogged, so we didn't arrive at Appalachian State University's Loft on E 24th St. until 7pm. I checked in, moved my bags upstairs, ate a couple of delicious burritos with my dad, then bid him farewell. At that point, I was uncertain I'd see any of my family again before I departed for Sri Lanka, so it was a sad moment for me. The whirlwind that was May 2-3 set the tone for my time in New York. I reported to the UN Headquarters at 9am on May 4 to begin what has proven to be one of the most interesting journeys of my life.