Kindred spirits from a globalised world

Here's the latest news from Lasse Bruun in Copenhagen.

As the COP15 venue started closing its doors on Thursday to the thousands of NGOs eager to change the world, the parallel climate summit, Klimaforum, opened its doors even wider to embrace these many kindred spirits. This coincided with the day Compassion was hosting an event to present our new report, showcasing how we can humanely feed and fuel the world if global meat and dairy intake is decreased.

Having been promoted both at the COP15 and at Klimaforum, people flooded to the event to hear why humane farming, climate change and food security are inextricability linked. We showed our new film about meat consumption and climate change but the main part of the event was a long debate, enabling participants to raise their concerns about animal welfare and climate change and to reinforce the message that caring for animals and the environment are not
mutually exclusive – on the contrary, they are clearly bound together.

Klimaforum has been branded as the 'people's climate summit'. And it was refreshing to be presenting to people who are personally affected or touched by climate change who then could provide a real account of the state of the world. Maybe that was why Compassion's messages resonated so well with most of the attendees. Or was it because many of the people came from countries where meat consumption still is seen as a treat and not as an everyday commodity?

Having covered everything from land use rights, socio-cultural issues in Asia, the socio-economic implications of factory farming in Latin America and naturally farm animal welfare, the event came to a close in a spirit of consensus that left the COP15 negotiations much to envy. Compassion reached out to representatives of the people of the planet and it was gratifying to see that they were open to our suggestion to improve the status quo. Now we just need to hope the negotiating leaders to follow this example.

Lasse's interview on climate-change.tv is now available to view - see the following link to get a feel for the issues we've been talking about in Copenhagen: www.climate-change.tv/component/content/article/47-inside-climate-change-solutions-interviews/324-lasse-bruun-december-2009