Sunday, November 30, 1997
By Lee Poston

Daily Diary Archives

Greetings from Kyoto, host of the Climate Summit, or as it's more affectionately known, the Third Session of the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change --that's UNFCCC-COP3 to you and me.

Lee Poston My name is Lee Poston, Communications Manager at WWF-US. Between now and Dec. 10, my co-author Andrew Kerr, WWF-European Coordinator, and I will bring you all the highlights, lowlights and general bunk from one of the most highly anticipated environmental conferences in years. We'll try and shed a little light (and a little light-heartedness) on the conference --our only regret is that we weren't here early enough to give you a report on one of the more intriguing pre-conference events, AKyoto Yancha (naughty children) Festa 97.

Climate Team
Left to right: me, Peter DeBrine and Marijke Unger at the beginning of our flight.
So what is this conference about? Well unless you've been living in a cave for the past couple of years, you've probably seen or heard all the media coverage about global warming. For more information on this, follow the links. The Kyoto conference is the third annual UN Conference to address the issue, and the one that's been tapped for a binding international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The first one was held in Berlin in 1995 and the second one in Geneva in 1996.

A little aside is necessary here to point out a significant, if not ironic, fact about your co-authors --we were both born in Wolverhampton, England, in the heart of the Midlands and birthplace of the Industrial Revolution. The region is known as the ABlack Country because at the height of the industrial revolution the sky and landscape were often black from pollution. So as Andrew likes to say, we work on global warming as penance for the sins of our birthplace!!

Climate Team
Here's a photo of us (a little less chipper) at the end of our 17 hour flight.
WWF has about 35 delegates here from the US, UK, Japan, Netherlands, Denmark, Australia, Germany, Switzerland, Ecuador and Malaysia who can speak Spanish, French, English, Japanese, German, Danish, Dutch, Vietnamese and Tennessean (my particular expertise after living there for 13 years). Over 5,000 participants are expected representing governments, NGOs (non-government organizations such as WWF, Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth) and various communities from over 170 nations.

Over the next two weeks, we'll bring you daily updates from the negotiations, including insights, anecdotes, inside information and just plain funny goins'-on. We'll also include photos of the people and places in Kyoto. I've included a couple to get you going--they feature three of WWF's intrepid travelers, l to r, me, Peter DeBrine and Marijke Unger at the beginning of our flight, followed by one showing us a little less chipper at the end of our 17-hour total flight. Enjoy, and see you tomorrow.