Where dreams gets tangled

I will let this document speak for itself. You are free to add or change the text and even add your name at the end, but please leave the original signatures at the end at least. This is a very important issue, help us spread the word to every single politician, governmental official that works with issues concerning this area or similar areas, even NGO’s and media people. At the end of the document you will find a link to a pdf file which is the invitation to the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen on 11 and 12 of December this year 2009.

Negotiating Conflict and Climate Change in Copenhagen: Include Conflict Prevention and Resolution Methods
During eleven days in December 2009 delegates from throughout the world will meet in Copenhagen for the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP 15) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The Denmark meeting is crucial for the international climate change negotiations. In December 2007 the parties to the UNFCCC agreed at Bali, Indonesia that negotiations on a future agreement have to be concluded at COP 15. The decision reflected the increased emphasis on the need for swift action made in the latest report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The Bali delegates also recognized that 2009 would be a critical opportunity for an agreement before the commitments set in the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.
The International Crisis Group, one of the world’s leading independent, non-partisan conflict analysis advisory organizations, stresses that “a key challenge today is to better understand the relationship between climate change, environmental degradation and conflict and to effectively manage associated risks through appropriate conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms.”  Conflict preventive measures and resolution mechanisms need to be part of the climate change negotiations, both in Copenhagen and beyond.
At the December 2007 United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Bali, Indonesia, the German Advisory Council on Climate Change presented a report, World in Transition – Climate Change as a Security Risk.  Based on research into environmental conflicts, the causes of war, and climate impacts, the report states that climate changes could “overstretch many societies’ adaptive capacities within the coming decades. This could result in destabilization and violence, jeopardizing national and international security to a new degree.”
Drawing on the work of international experts and organizations including the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), the report notes, though, that “climate change could also unite the international community, provided that it recognizes climate change as a threat to humankind” and adopts “a dynamic and globally coordinated climate policy.”  If the international community “fails to do so,” the report emphasizes, “climate change will draw ever-deeper lines of division and conflict in international relations, triggering numerous conflicts between and within countries over the distribution of resources, especially water and land, over the management of migration, or over compensation payments between the countries mainly responsible for climate change and those countries most affected by its destructive effects.”  In its introduction to the report, the UNEP website states that “combating climate change will be a central peace policy of the 21st century.”  Conflict preventive measures and resolution mechanisms should be part of the climate change negotiations, both in Copenhagen and beyond.
In addition, the scientific community recognizes that global climate change issues challenge our ability to deal with a changing environment containing huge potential for conflict.  In March 2009 over 2500 delegates from nearly 80 countries participated in the International Scientific Congress on Climate Change: Global Risks, Challenges & Decisions in Copenhagen, Denmark.  At the end of the conference the delegates presented a set of key messages that included cautions about conflict and climate change.  Key Message 2: Social Disruption stated that “recent observations show that societies are highly vulnerable to even modest levels of climate change, with poor nations and communities particularly at risk. Temperature rises above 2C will be very difficult for contemporary societies to cope with.”  Key Message 3: Long Term Strategy stressed that “rapid, sustained, and effective mitigation based on coordinated global and regional action is required to avoid ‘dangerous climate change’ regardless of how it is defined. Delay in initiating effective mitigation actions increases significantly the long-term social and economic costs of both adaptation and mitigation.” Key Message 4: Equity Dimensions emphasized that “climate change is having, and will have, strongly differential effects on people within and between countries and regions, on this generation and future generations, and on human societies and the natural world.”  The delegates recommended the use of tools and governance practices to address these fundamental concerns.  Conflict preventive measures, conflict transformation and resolution are essential to meet climate change challenges.  They should be addressed at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference and beyond.
The COP 15 Provisional Agenda, reviewed in Bonn, Germany in early June, lists a range of essential issues, from emission reduction to technology transfer.  Conflict prevention and resolution mechanisms are missing from the Agenda despite the fact that Article 14 of the 1992 UNFCCC (negotiated in New York and Rio de Janeiro and reaffirmed in Article 19 of the Kyoto Protocol) states that “in the event of a dispute between any two or more Parties concerning the interpretation or application of the Convention, the Parties concerned shall seek a settlement of the dispute through negotiation or any other peaceful means of their own choice.”  This article, though, is not sufficient to address the complex conflicts between nations and peoples likely to emerge as climate change impacts accelerate.  Conflict preventive measures and resolution mechanisms should be part of the talks in Bonn, Copenhagen, and beyond.
Beyond Rio and Kyoto, there is precedent for putting conflict resolution on the Climate Change Conference agenda.  A number of UN treaties and conventions that deal with environmental issues include conflict or dispute resolution mechanisms.  For example, the UN Convention on the Non-Navigational Uses of International Watercourses, adopted in 1997 by the UN General Assembly, specifies conflict resolution methods.  Agenda 21, the Environment and Development Agenda administered by the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) emphasizes conflict resolution.  Article 39.3 specifies the need:

g) To identify and prevent actual or potential conflicts, particularly between
environmental and social/economic agreements or instruments, with a view
to ensuring that such agreements or instruments are consistent. Where conflicts arise, they should be appropriately resolved;
h) To study and consider the broadening and strengthening of the capacity of mechanisms, inter alia in the United Nations system, to facilitate, where appropriate and agreed by the parties concerned, the identification, avoidance and settlement of international disputes in the field of sustainable development, duly taking into account existing bilateral and multilateral agreements for the settlement of such disputes.

Climate change negotiators and decision-makers should affirm the commitment that people, communities, and nations will not be in violent situations due to conflicts that arise as a consequence of climate change.   Politicians, diplomats, and specialists who attend the Climate Change meetings should consider conflict prevention measures and resolution mechanisms.

The climate change crisis challenges people throughout the world to invent and implement innovative ways to mitigate and thwart climate changing causes and effects.  The crisis calls for   new methods for nations and people to overcome differences and work together with the objective of preventing, minimising and resolving conflict arising because of limited resources and/or the effects of climate change.

In a Manifesto from 9th July 1955 issued in London, Albert Einstein and other leading scientists urged humanity to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters based on new ways of thinking. An important new way of thinking features the use of the collaborative, participatory, and pluralistic conflict resolution processes like mediation and facilitation.  Construction of a new global conflict prevention and resolution infrastructure is critical to a comprehensive international climate change policy.   Such construction can start with the Copenhagen conference, with discussions of conflict prevention and resolution along side the negotiations of technical issues of climate change.

Copenhagen, Corvallis, Santa Monica 18 May 2009

Gregg Walker, Tina Monberg, and Kenneth Cloke of Mediators Beyond Borders
Jens Emborg, Mie Marcussen, Lone Clausen, and Vibeke Vindelov of Nordic Mediators

Mediation_Seminar_in_Copenhagen_11th_and_12th_December_2009.pdf

The document that is quated in this post as a .doc document

I have been having a Sun Microsystem Student learning account for a while now through Helsinki University and I have been adding a lot of courses to my plan to study. Deliberately I have not been looking at them because of my masters thesis that has been taking way much longer then I thought it would… yes I am lazy and also afraid of finishing it. Afraid of finishing it because then I know that I have my certs left to study for and a part of me is still wondering if I can actually learn how to code for real, like my little bro is doing as a software engineer for HP.

Well, after many months of not even looking at the account I opened it up once again last week. I look at all the courses I could actually take and looked them then up through Sun Microsystems own homepages just to see if any of them where real big Certification courses…..boy was I in for a real surprise.

Sun Microsystems give you the chance to learn from a couple of different areas. One is as a system administrator and another one is java coder. I found out that there where courses for BOTH areas in my student account. On the Java coding side there is the java associate course ( kind of a beginners course and a IT Project manager course all in one), then there is the Certified Java programmer course ( next step), as if that is not enough I can take through my account a specialization course in java web components as well ( third step where you specialize yourself in different java coding areas).

With my masters thesis soon being done a Java associate certificate would not just look good in my CV but also give me that extra edge when searching for work within the IT sector. So I opened up that Java Associate course a week ago…..and I cant stop thinking of it now.

I went through two chapters in one day, read and listened to the audio teacher so intensely that everything around me faded away, there was only code in my head and I loved it!

When you have worked untill 20:30, then been driving for 35 minutes to get home to give your doggies some food, clean the catbox and make sure she has food and been taking all the girls out for a small walk, what do you then want to do?

Being myself, I take down the room divider to the computer room so the doggies can come and be with me and the kitsy mitsy while I sit down infront of my computer with a big cup of hot tea. A normal person would think twice before sitting untill 00:30 especially since I was going to go up at 06:30 to give the girls food and take them out before I go back to work again, well I guess I am not to normal then.

Normally I would sit and play a lott of WoW, but that has been dropping down a lott and very fast latly, a lott of other more interesting things have come to my interest instead….such as watching countless hours of supernaturals serie and enourmous amounts of anime series.

Somehow the gaming has slipped away from my interest, more then usual. My masters thesis that is starting to take shape more and mroe for each day has been more interesting….never thought I would ever say that, but that is the case, that and watching movies.

I will not claim nor do I hardly dare to mention that I sometimes wonder if the change in my life has to do with me realising that I am actually not any longer under 30, nope, turnign 30 did not made me panic, I dont care, but then again…well I guess that it might be possible that on a sublime level I feel that games and such are getting less interesting to me.

Or then again it can be same feeling I had just before the first expansion to WoW came out and I might be waiting for this new Northrend expansion to come out. Well I guess I will see when it hits the markets in just 4 days to come, I wont be waiting there for it though to buy it at midnight, I might even wait several weeks before I buy it, in the meentime, a lott of supernaturals and anime series will be watched.

This is to certify that
Boban Alempijevic
has completed the course
Sun Java(TM) System Application Server Platform Edition 9: Overview
(WMT-IAS-1499) – _sun_wmt_ias_1499
on
04/10/08

I was supposed to be finished with my certificate by yesterday, I still have 80 pages o read though. Managing to get my muscles stretched out in my right shoulder kind of took some energy out of me but I am back again reading hard and studying for that certificate of mine. It should be done in few days and after that I can start with full energy on my masters Thesis…finally. I have the thesis partly done already but there is a lot still to write and to analyze. My hope is to get it done before August is over..but we will see about that one.

During this week my cert will be done though, and that is making me more then just a little bit happy to be honest, have looked forward this for a very long time, finally getting a step closer to becoming a pro IT person.