Thoughts as COP17 is about to begin in Durban

Shuo Zhang

The conference of youth has already begun in Durban and the actual Conference of the Parties will be kicking off on Monday. I am both very excited and also a little bit concerned. I am excited because I feel that this year the Medsin delegation has put in so much work on framing our message and in understanding the negotiation process and the various audiences we want to target, that even though I won’t be going to join them, I know that they will all do their best to make the health message be heard.

What I am a little bit concerned by is how the media is going to cover the conference- would very little coverage be preferable to coverage of in fighting and walkouts? How much of the content of the negotiations, as opposed to the dramas will be covered? And something perhaps a little bit more philosophical- is it good that climate change has turned from being news-worthy to being something that is more in the features pages...

Most of these worries are a bit excessive, and probably mainly to do with the fact that I won’t be in Durban to throw myself into the work, so instead I will be scouring the media keenly here to keep an eye on how things get translated.  However I have been thinking, and realised that sometimes lack of media coverage can perhaps be a good thing. It is easy to get caught up with the negotiations, but what is really important is the long term work on personal, institutional and wider societal change that really matters.

Durban is a good spring board to encourage action and enthusiasm and offers a time and place to take stock, however what is really important is for us to let people know about the wonderful work that the already being done. And as healthcare professional we have already been doing a lot, and we have the capacity to do a lot more; we just need to incorporate sustainability into our everyday practice and clinical thinking and make use of the partnerships that are available to us.

And as medical students we are in the right place to make these changes, whether through asking climate change and health to be included as part of our curricular, doing projects and SSCs on the subject, and even just asking the consultants who teach us about their own clinical practice, and how they can make it better.  So even if we don’t get the media exposure we wanted from the Durban conference, there’s still a lot of very important work to be getting on with!

Below are just a few links to the work that the UK health community is already doing well:

http://sustainablehealthcare.org.uk/green-nephrology-programme : Spearhead clinical programme that aims to look at how to make renal medicine and dialysis more sustainable
http://www.nottenergy.com :  A local government and NHS trust partnership that aims to address health inequalities, by working on fuel poverty.
http://www.bluegym.org.uk :  Community and university project that aims to look at how our coasts can be used for health benefits