Post your thoughts/ideas/musings on global poverty and climate change for Policywonk - Mumsnet's blogger at the G20 summit...

[JustineMumsnet]

Ok so hurrah, Policywonk is to be our Mumsnet representative inside the London Summit as part of G20Voice initiative - a group of 50 bloggers connecting the rest of the world with the G20 world leaders.

There is more information about the project at here but in short G20Voice has been organised by a coalition of non-profit organisations Oxfam GB, Comic Relief, and Save the Children with the support of the Blue State Digital and the UK Government. They have convinced the UK Govt to allow 50 bloggers into the summit with equal access to the mainstream media.

It's a 3 day programme starting April 1st the day before the summit and ending the day after. Day one will be about providing the bloggers with information and helping them get to know each other so that they can understand the issues they and their readers care about. It will be fairly unstructured along Barcamp/Unconference lines. We want the bloggers to decide the priorities and the questions they ask the next day.

The day of the summit will consist of a stream of people from the G20 delegations. They'll be asked to speak with the bloggers either en-masse or at round table discussions. People outside the summit can join in via Skype or phone lines.

The analysis day is about feedback from the bloggers and experts from Govt and NGOs on the decisions and announcements from the Summit.

All three days will be filmed and a video and audio stream will be available.

The main themes are global poverty and climate change/the environment but as they say on the website: 'This is the plan but in reality the event belongs to the bloggers. Everyone attending will have the chance to shape the schedule themselves.'

So anyway, that's the background and here's the thread for discussing your thoughts on global poverty and climate change in particular.

Well you've got to hand it to those donkey-porn people, at least they take an interest.

Hey! We've been re-stickied!

Everyone look busy.

I really, really want you to bring up the Nestle thing. Try and shoe horn it in with reference to the UN Declaration on Human Rights cos they've all signed it.

^Article 25.

• (1) Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
• (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.^

Soooooo the govs that allow Nestle in to distribute have to pay to keep providing the milk in a particularly desperate interpretation of Art 25(2), or just not let them distribute in the first place.

A baby could fall into subsection 1 as possessing a lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control and therefore has a right to security re. food.

Anyway, if you want to bring it up, there is a signed declaration there to wave in faces stroppily.

Please, please, please do a comb over count.

Sorry my italics didn't work. I don't know why.

Depressing story today that the US Congress is going to be reluctant to sign up to the climate change treaty due to be negotiated in Copenhagen towards the end of this year. It seems Obama's not prepared to risk too much political capital on it.

Some European countries had actually been hoping that the US would pass some carbon-reduction legislation before Copenhagen, but that's looking very unlikely now. US Democrats are more interested in passing legislation to promote alternative energy sources, but without any binding targets.

Oooh hello toddlerama. Will have a look.

(Italics - you have to put the chevrons either side of every single word you want to italicise - can't do it for big blocks of text unfortunately.)

Congratulations on getting this job Policywonk, I look forward to reading the blog.

I would really like to know to what extent it's going to be business as usual at the summit in the light of recent economic upheavals, and how far the need for tighter regulation is going to be recognised.

And I can't read the discussion here of Bjorn Lomborg go without putting in my 2 pence worth: what really, really annoys me about his view is, why does it have to be an either/or argument? C02 emmissions need to be addressed now on all fronts, but why should that stop us from addressing malaria, AIDS, planning for relocation etc etc?

When you look at what has been spent on Iraq (to protect supplies of C02 producing fossil fuels) the resources required to properly fund research into clean energy, or burying C02, or, for that matter, mosquito nets to protect from malaria, look like peanuts. What is lacking is political will, and people like Lomborg only provide policy makers with another excuse not to address global warming.

Lomborg's work has also been found to be full of factual errors.

Thanks sputnik. I agree about either/or and political will.

I'm going to be away from the computer tomorrow but will be back to check the thread on Saturday.

wanted to go demonstrate in london today but dp reluctant so got on with the washing up..

for a minute considered putting the dds in nursery on weds and heading to a 'street party' outside the bank of england instead of going to work..

accepted the fact that demonstating in person is not easy with two kids (i thought it was just dancing that was a thing of the past!)

read this thread (its 2.34am), feel better...nice one policy wonk - its great to know we have an insider!

think focus on maternal health is excellent btw love the potent combination of low and high brow issues

Do we really need a third runway at HEathrow,in the light of the fact that routes are being cancelled and people are flying less.

I don't know if it has been mentioned.... but farming subsidies screw up the developing economies.

Tinned tomatoes illistrate this point really well. European farmers are paid to produce more tomatoes than the local population need. The excess are shipped to poor countries at a knock down price, undermining the prices of local farmers so the economy stagnates. Food aid has a similar effect - making developing economies reliant on foreign aid hand outs. Several poor countries are now refusing food aid as in the long term it reduces their economic viability - making poverty more prevelent and long term.

However in the present economic climate it would be a very brave polititian who scrapped subsidies as it would harm the farmers who elected them. Much easier to dress it up as doing good and keep your electorate on side than acctually assist the developing world economies.

Hi Policywonk
congratulations on getting this official blogging role - am very pleased that there's going to be a female voice as a blogger at the summit as there's precious few amongst the politicians there

Loads of good ideas about what you should be looking out for already (environment, better consideration of maternity issues etc.) the thing that I'm interested in is what the role for women will be after all the headless-chicken crisis stuff is over.

Seems fairly obvious that the post crisis economy needs to be greener, but what about accepting the reality that happy people work better?
By that I mean work-life balance and realising that more-time-at-work-count-yourself-lucky-to-be-in-a-job approach might not actually be getting the best out of people?
In any case, some of us (with children, with parents that need care etc.) still have brains and skills and would love to use them, but find it hard to do so in traditional work patterns. I know too many mums who were professionals before they had kids but have had to take a much less professional and/or well paid job in order to be around for their kids.
What about more encouragement for business in making this a reality so that employing people with young children is less of a risk and the right to ask to work flexibly is not just answered with "no"?
Oh, and normalising fathers also taking time out to look after children might also make it easier for women and men to fulfil their potential at work, keep families together more, and therefore better for society in general?
Would love to know if anything like that will actually come up - keep us posted!

Thank you for these.

They want each of the bloggers to host a round table discussion on his/her 'area of expertise'. Heck. It seems the freakishly extended breastfeeding will be getting an airing after all.

They want me to set up RSS feeds and pipetubes. They've all been blogging for hundreds of years in between working for the World Bank and running successful campaigns to address global poverty or carbon capture. HELP

deep breath

You will be brilliant
You are not alone
There is plenty of expertise amongst the mumsnetters i've been very impressed with all the info they've posted on this thread

you have to prioritise the issues you want on the agenda. have you got an idea of what you think you should focus on (as there are so many many issues)?

who is to be on this round table?
B.O. perhaps?

I'm interested in what countries make up the G20 (it may help with getting together some comparable statistics - ie infant mortality).

Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States of America, and also the European Union

Thank you noopska.

I am genuinely having a small anxiety episode - I just feel I haven't got the time to prepare for this properly.

Will just have to accept that I'm going to be the slightly foolish, capering generalist.

The round tables are only with the other bloggers (there are 50 of us) - but OMG some of them seem really impressive.

I think I will definitely lay most emphasis on the maternal and newborn health issue.

Would like to do something about education of girls, if anyone has anything about that...

I like gizmo's question about the use of sustainable energy sources in Africa

I want to find out what the US plans to do re.Kyoto/Copenhagen climate change treaties

Lots of people are concerned about China, so it will be interesting to see what we can achieve there

Lots of people concerned about the third Heathrow runway

erm... those are the things that I can remember off the top of my head - I will have a proper look through this thread the night before and try to make notes on everything.

Part of the problem is that we won't know who we're meeting (in terms of politicians/delegates) until the day itself, so there's a limit to the preparation we can do.

I'll have to run on here and bark 'MEXICO!' at you all and get you to tell me what to ask.

this link illustrates importance of educating girls/women in rural africa

us.camfed.org/what/

(the least we can do is surf on your behalf!)

Good site noopska - thank you

Interesting article by Ruth Sunderland in yesterday's Observer about how the credit crunch is effecting women and girls in devloping countries: here

Don't worry PW - you will be fine! It is also fablously interesting for the rest of us if you go, and listen, and report back, without feeling you have to shout about loads of things and that you've somehow 'failed' if you haven't shouted about them!

Don't forget to count those comb-overs!

Thank you for that, Bramshott. Duncan Green (from Oxfam) is one of the other bloggers and he's been publicising that report on the blog site.

There's also a very powerfully-argued (but long ) speech here about women's empowerment in developing countries - particularly wrt the interplay between education, economic empowerment and sexual/reproductive rights.

What? eh? Oh, PW, I promised you some bite sized bits of info then vanished without trace. That was not helpful. I'm sorry

Here, then, is a summary of the most well thought out plan for exploiting Africa's solar resource. If you look at the section marked 'status quo' it will give you, for about 10 minutes reading, a working understanding of the policy changes that need to happen.

If you want to go further on the subject of renewables in Africa this presentation is helpful in dividing up the territory by technical and market potential, and The Global energy revolution report has an interesting and specific suggestion in chapter 2 on a model that would support smaller scale, distributed generation in the developing world, while providing a disincentive to produce CO2 for the OECD countries.

And I am sure you will be terrific. I'm mightily excited by the idea of having an inside voice here!