We took your voices to COP26!

Climate Cymru spent two busy weeks in the Blue Zone, the COP26 central negotiation space, connecting with Members of the Senedd, the media, other coalition organisations and a huge range of Welsh events to make sure your voice was heard!

Climate Cymru was featured on all the major Welsh TV and radio stations throughout the conference, as well as digital and printed press, so we hope you managed to catch some of that.

We brought you daily updates to connect to the conference and gave you suggestions about how you could make a difference to negotiations, right up until the last moment, and hundreds of you contributed to the collective pressure. Whilst thousands of you attended the protests in Wales on 6th November, we marched in Glasgow!

We were there for the enormous youth strikes too in solidarity with the youth movement and alongside the amazing Youth Climate Ambassadors.

We also recreated our beautiful Senedd ice sculpture stunt with our Scottish and English sister campaigns outside the main COP26 venue; a 2 metre tall, one-tonne ice heart sculpture, which was covered in the UK media, including Guardian, BBC and ITV.

On 9th November, we were delighted to organise a panel event alongside Climate Scotland to a packed out live and online audience, all about your voices. Keep an eye on this page for a recording of that session, where we played our video message to our leaders to Lee Waters, Deputy Climate Minister.

We also made sure anyone who came to our stand in the Green Zone could watch an extended version of the message to our leaders video, including former first minister Carwyn Jones. Throughout we attended events, and met politicians, civil society representatives and activists and did our best to make sure that they all know the people of Wales care deeply about climate change.

On 11th November, Climate Cymru presented from COP26 to the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee. This was an hour long webinar outlining the Climate Cymru voices (viewable here), described by a long time viewer of those committee sessions as the most engaging evidence session they’d ever seen. Grateful thanks to partners Keep Wales Tidy and Brighter Futures for hosting Llyr Gruffydd MS that morning in Rhyl, as part of that event.

On 10th November, Climate Cymru ‘message to our leaders’ video was played again at the Youth Climate Ambassador event.

Throughout COP26 Climate Cymru featured heavily in Welsh media, including a number of television segments on each of BBC Wales, ITV Cymru and S4C, as well as radio, print and online.

Finally, on the last day of COP26, at the future generations office held an emotive event. The stunning centerpiece (above) an oaken throne, was inspired by the Climate Cymru voices, and has quotes inscribed all over it. The throne will sit in Mark Drakeford’s cabinet office, as a reminder for decisions to consider the voices of future generations and the people of Wales.

What’s next for Climate Cymru? 

Climate Cymru started as a COP26 campaign but it’s become so much more. We now have a powerful network through which we can drive change and we have created a central space for Welsh organisations and individuals to come together

It’s clear from your questions and feedback that Climate Cymru has an even bigger role to play. We are interested to hear feedback on how you think we can collectively speed up the transition to net-zero, create a nature-positive Wales, and make sure that the transition is done fairly, with consideration to the people of Wales.

In the meantime, we are continuing to sign up new partners, ambassadors and businesses, we are still engaging with the Welsh Government, covering issues on social media and doing community engagement work…