Amalen here from #MYD, I’m in Paris now for COP21 and the following is my account for today, the 29th of November 2015,one day before the official launch of COP21. If you want live updates from me do follow me on twitter @amalen_fs

Its 3.30pm and its badge collection time for us. Arriving at Le Bourget, closest train station to COP21 venue, was pretty standard but once we made our way to the shuttle centre it was intense. So many people waiting for the shuttle busses to the convention centre. I’m sitting in the bus and I’m hearing all sorts of language around, French English, Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and others I didn’t recognise. Everyone’s excited. And it’s just giving me a whole lot of energy. Our story begins NOW. And I can’t wait to see how things will unfold.
Collect badges – done
Familiarise self with areas within cop21 – done
How I feel right now – overwhelmed. Simply overwhelmed
This place is huge. It’s intense. There is just so much going on and this is a day before cop21 officially starts. There are a total of 6 halls and two plenary halls. And these places are immense. Each Hall has its designated allocations of spaces such as parties meeting rooms, exhibition areas, eating areas, media centre, etc.
Seeing everything and trying to take it in is perplexing me right now. I’m trying to get my bearings and head on proper but still I feel very ‘jakun’. But we’ll there’s 14 days left. Let’s hope things get better.
It’s already 5.05pm and the Opening plenary for the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action (ADP) is yet to begin. The hall is already crowded with tons of people and more are flooding in. Later on we find out that they had to shut the door after the plenary began and a number of negotiators were stuck outside which created some drama of its own.

5.08pm and the first plenary for ADP has begun!

It begins with a moment of silence to honour those that have lost their lives in the Paris attacks and for those that have contributed to the continuing COP process that are not with us anymore.
The outgoing President of Cop from last year (COP20, Lima) gave an opening statement to talk about the cop process to thank those involved and to give motivations for the process ahead.
This was followed by the incoming President of Cop who gave a speech in French about the things that he has in mind for the next 2 weeks as well as encouraging ambitiousness. He then went on to talk about the text and his optimism for it as well as the challenges that he expects. He mainly stressed on transparency.
A second co-president of the ADP followed up about the ADP text and what has been done and what needs to be done for this process. He continued to inform the hall about working group meeting times as well as deadlines and reasoning’s behind them. Something I found interesting was that he addressed observers and where they may be so they can observe the sessions going on properly. And a lot of these meetings will be publicly displayed as well.
After giving all his clarifications, he went on to commence that work would begin today itself and this was not met with any objections.
The other co-president then followed with a lot of fluff about keeping promises and meeting deadlines and the importance of them.
The Tuvalu Delegation brought up an important point of transparency, stating that they had a lack of information about the previous ADP sessions that went on in the past week. The Co-president of the ADP then assured him of the transparency process through the pledges they’ve taken before to ensure this. Ending the plenary, he made an interesting statement about how ‘If we save Tuvalu we save the world.’ Something rather interesting to say, and I wonder why. Something to read later I guess.
That’s all for now. Till next time.
Amalen
Malaysian Youth Delegation
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