Garry Thomas Posts Blog of UN Climate Change Conference in Nairobi

05/16/07

Last November, Ithaca College sent a delegation of two observers to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) held in Nairobi, Kenya. Garry Thomas, recently retired from the anthropology department, and Sean Vormwald, assistant director in the Office of Alumni Relations and Park School graduate student, attended the conference.



Garry’s blog, written during and immediately after the UNFCCC meetings, entitled "Observing Climate Change in Nairobi through Anthropologist-Colored Glasses," is available at the following site:

https://www.ithaca.edu/biology/icpse/unfccc_thomas.pdf

His account, which includes 20 photographs and numerous journal entries, offers a perspective on where the international community stands on various issues pertaining to climate change 10 years after the Kyoto Protocol. The narrative draws upon Garry's attendance at numerous formal plenary sessions, panel presentations, and press conferences and briefings. Of particular interest was the how the U.S. delegation handled itself in these sessions and how the Americans' position was regarded.



He also writes extensively on such issues as carbon finance, "carbon colonization," and the roles played by various celebrities in attendance. The blog also describes his immersion in an event which he found to be highly ritualized, and notes his mode of entry and his "currency" for establishing rapport and making informal contacts, his need to learn a new language, and how he created a "village of face-to-face relationships" out of a conference of 6,000 people from more than 180 countries.

His "Generation Kyoto" article for Positive News, focusing primarily on the positive role young people played at the Nairobi conference, can be found at:

http://www.gvnr.com/120/2.htm

Garry Thomas is a development anthropologist who has worked and carried out research in Tanzania for more than six years in total, spread out over the past 45 years. During the 1990s, he had numerous consultancies with the Community Forestry Unit in the forestry department of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization at its headquarters in Rome and in Tanzania. This was his 15th trip to East Africa.

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