Minneapolis 2015: Last Stop Before Paris

On October 25th 2015, under the auspices of Oslo-based Partnership for Change, Citizens’ Climate Lobby convened a globally-networked day of dialogues on the impact of climate change on communities, the role of citizens in driving change and the catalytic solutions to securing the livable climate future.

Click here for the Full Report from Minneapolis 2015…

9:30 am — PLENARY SESSION 1

What’s your role in global climate talks? (Scandinavian ballroom)

Moderator: Dan Kraker, Minnesota Public Radio
United States Senator Amy Klobuchar
Thore Vestby, Vice President, Mayors for Peace
Scott Nystrom, Senior Economic Associate, Regional Economic Models, Inc.
Joe Robertson, Global Strategy Director, Citizens’ Climate Lobby

During the two days of Minneapolis 2015, delegates joined in the founding of the always-active Citizens’ Climate Engagement Network, celebrated local leaders from the Twin Cities, heard from stakeholders around the world, and developed a strategy for coordinating business and local leaders’ actions to support a stronger global climate response.

1:30 pm — PLENARY SESSION 2

Citizenship as climate action (scandinavian ballroom)

Moderator: Don Shelby
Madeleine Para, Program Director, Citizens’ Climate Lobby
Harry Boyte, Senior Scholar, Sabo Center for Democracy and Citizenship
Kristen Poppleton, Director of Education, Climate Generation

This initiative is the first in a series of dialogues that will establish a process connecting citizens to decision-makers, to ensure that what starts in Paris reaches all people and results in real, sustained, and successful outcomes for people and the climate. This dialogue series will lead up to the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Forum.

The October 25th Day of Dialogue included:

Interactive plenary discussion with experts and participants around the world;
Sessions featuring leadership from around the Twin Cities;
Working groups focused on six work-streams;
Discussion of the outcomes of work-streams in plenary session;
Foundational meeting of the Citizens’ Climate Engagement Network.

4:00 pm — PLENARY SESSION 3

Founding the Citizens’ Climate Engagement Network (Scandinavian Ballroom)

Moderator: Dan Kraker, Minnesota Public Radio
Richard Eidlin, VP and Co-Founder, American Sustainable Business Council
Natalia Vega Berry, Director, People+Planet Project
Ellen Anderson, Executive Director, Energy Transition Lab, University of Minnesota
David Thoreson, Arctic Explorer
Joe Robertson — presenting CCEN Governance Strategy and Work Program

5:20 pm – CLOSING REMARKS

Ingrid Stange, Founder and Chair, Partnership for Change
Marilyn Carlson Nelson, Co-CEO Carlson Holdings

The next dialogues in this series will be:

December 2015: Paris, during the COP21
April 2016: Washington, during the Spring Meetings of the World Bank and IMF
May 2016: Oslo, during the Partnership for Change Conference
June 2016: Minneapolis, during the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize Forum

Thematic Dialogues

The day’s 18 thematic dialogues were spread over three hour-long sessions…

10:25 am — DIALOGUE SESSION 1

BUILDING THE WORK STREAMS

Carbon Pricing — facilitated by Paul Thompson, Citizens’ Climate Lobby (Norway 1) — #m15cpw
Adaptation — facilitated by Ariane Laxo, HGA Architects and Engineers (Norway 2) — #m15adapt
Participation — facilitated by Madeleine Para, Citizens’ Climate Lobby (Norway 3) — #m15ace
Oceans — facilitated by David Thoreson, Arctic Explorer (Fjord 2) — #m15oceans
Human Health — facilitated by Dr. Bruce Snyder, MD (Fjord 3) — #m15health
SDGs & Climate — facilitated by Matthew Anderson, National Audubon Society (Fjord 4) — #m15sdg

11:40 am — DIALOGUE SESSION 2

HOW LOCAL LEADERSHIP DEFINES OUR CLIMATE FUTURE

Minneapolis-St. Paul experiences — facilitated by Steve Kelley, University of Minnesota (Norway 1) — #m15twin
Global-Local Policy Link — facilitated by Matthew Anderson, National Audubon Society (Norway 2) — #m15global
Affordable Clean Energy for All — facilitated by Scott Nystrom, REMI (Norway 3) — #m15se4all
Community-driven Policy-making — facilitated by Frank Hornstein, Member of the Minnesota House of Representatives (Fjord 2) — #m15polis
Is sustainability a basic right? — facilitated by Tom Hanson, University of Minnesota (Fjord 3) — #m15right
Who deploys solutions, and how? — facilitated by Ariane Laxo, HGA (Fjord 4) — #m15deploy

2:40 pm — DIALOGUE SESSION 3

WORK STREAM FOCUS GROUPS

Carbon Pricing: Energy transition and the consumer economy — facilitated by Scott Nystrom, REMI (Norway 1) — #cpw
Resilience, preparedness and full-spectrum sustainability — facilitated by Steve Kelley, University of Minnesota (Norway 2) — #m15adapt
Participation: Who can do what to build up to better outcomes? — facilitated by Harry Boyte, Augsburg College (Norway 3) — #m15ace
Oceans: How local policies connect — facilitated by David Thoreson, Arctic Explorer, (Fjord 2) — #m15oceans
Human Health: Local impacts, global policy — facilitated by Mindy Ahler, Cool Planet and Claudia Egelhoff, University of Minnesota (Fjord 3) — #m15health
Which SDGs relate to climate, and what that means for how we live — facilitated by Richard Eidlin, ASBC (Fjord 4) — #m15sdg

The CCEN is a strategy for convening local meetings, building local networks of volunteer leaders, and carrying citizens’ voices into the intergovernmental negotiating space. We encourage planned and spontaneous meetings at any time, to confer and advise on issues relating to climate challenges, policy and solutions.

If you would like to host a local CCEN event, and participate in any corner of the world, we will be facilitating this kind of engagement to expand the global civic space.

During the COP21, our Workstreams will operate through a network of local meetings, in connection with a core team in Paris. Get started now, and you will be able to play a role in this exciting new way of bringing personal insights and local genius about human needs and priorities to global leaders.

Click here to learn more about hosting a satellite meeting.

JOIN US FROM ANYWHERE

You can view the Dialogue Sessions through the Periscope app, or on Twitter, by using the hashtags attached to the sessions, as laid out in the full program, above.

We will be aggregating social media comment through the Minneapolis2015 RebelMouse site.

The site is already full of interesting material and will continue to live on after the big event. We will be bringing the most useful or timely insights from the themed discussion boards into the Dialogue Sessions on Sunday, October 25.

The main hashtags for this event are #b4paris, #Minneapolis2015, #beyondparis, and #peaceitforward

You may also want to include the Twitter accounts of partners, such as: @pf_change … @citizensclimate … @pathwaytoparis … @augsburgcollege … @umnews

Our Dialogue Sessions will use themed hashtags which will feed into dedicated sub-sections of the RebelMouse page. To ensure your comment makes it to the social media team inside the dialogue session you are viewing through Periscope, use the hashtag you find at the end of the line for that session in the Program above.

This day of dialogue is your opportunity to participate actively in the creation of a new global network of partners, working locally to empower citizens, strengthen government action on climate, and drive needed solutions across the world. Outcomes from the 25th will inform a high-level Chatham House rules dialogue on Monday, October 26, featuring leaders from business, government, advocacy, and scholarship.

Our aim is to ensure the voices of stakeholders and experienced leaders bring human needs, best practices, and over-the-horizon thinking together into a plan to strengthen the official strategy for decisive climate action.

Citizens’ Climate Lobby and the Pathway to Paris coalition will bring outcomes from Minneapolis 2015 to the global climate negotiations that open in Paris on November 30.

Social media discussion for this event will use the hashtags #b4paris, #Minneapolis2015, #beyondparis, and #peaceitforward.

Click here and register to become a Minneapolis2015 Climate Delegate.