SOLD: Beautiful Happyzine

By Sean Weaver

Potsdam, Germany, May 2008. A flash hotel and someone else is paying. This time it is the World Bank, and I have been asked to attend the third design meeting of the Climate Investment Fund – a new financing instrument to combat climate change. I have been sent by the Vanuatu government as a climate policy advisor to represent their best interests. But what do I know about anything? Why should I be here? How could I make any difference?

My hotel room is immaculate. I get into my suit, adjust my tie in the mirror and head off to the first session. The shiny hotel corridor passes beneath my strides. A mantra kicks in, from a new habit I am forming (especially when walking): “… I am good enough, just as I am, right here, right now…” It has taken on a life of its own and regularly informs my unconscious that I have a ground to stand upon, and that ground is legitimate. It is legitimate not because anything has been achieved, but legitimate because I am legitimate from the beginning. We all are of course. It is an interconnected world after all, and in such a world there is no boundary between this body and the mountain. And the mountain does not meekly wish it were bigger, or thinner, or better than it is. The mountain does not need a fat CV, a string of achievements or approvals from authority figures. It is just mountain, completely at ease.

As this mountain my views are my own. I own them. When I express them as: “in my experience…,” I am solid. If I express them as some kind of generalisation – like: “this is how it is,” or “this is how you should think,” then I fall into a legitimacy trap. When I try to win someone over to my view I am lost. But when I know that my own view is good enough already, then I can articulate it without fear.

Nice theory, but what about the practice? I feel a rush of anxious nausea rising from my stomach as I turn a corner and approach the plenary session room. But the mantra continues, I feel it seep through my body, and it calms me.

‘I am good enough’ walks over and takes a seat next to the United States in his vast room where I could fly a kite if there were any wind. The conference is arranged in alphabetical order in a huge oval so it comes as no surprise that Vanuatu should be wedged between Uncle Sam and Yemen. I came to like Yemen. He was friendly. He told me of their woes as an Arab nation without oil. The US was a cabal of uptight D.C. ubercrats on speed.

The meeting begins and various countries congratulate the Chair etc. But after a while we get down to business and a text is being drafted for this new global financial instrument for climate change. When I first started attending these kinds of intergovernmental meetings in 2006, I tended to routinely shit myself. Whenever I opened my mouth I would struggle to get the words out, imagining that everyone present was a power-dressed genius, glaring disapprovingly and thinking loudly “shut up you idiot.” I had limited impact at those meetings, gagging as I spoke half way down my throat in inarticulate rapid sentences that made the translators look at each other wondering what strange language needed rendering into English.

I don’t know about you but I tend to talk fast and somewhat incoherently in group settings when I am nervous.

But this meeting in Potsdam was different. This quiet sense of ‘I am good enough’ seemed to be having an effect because I did not feel so fearful. I had also come to realise that the majority of suits at these big negotiations also had shit-for-brains like me, and many were nervous too. The fact that I did not want to be at this World Bank meeting also helped me to relax. I decided that I needed to say something useful otherwise I would be wasting my own precious time.

“The Chair recognises Vanuatu,” I hear in response to my placement of my country name card vertically on the white conference tablecloth indicating a request to speak. But instead of a seizure creeping into my brain from my stomach as I push the ‘on’ button on the table microphone, I manage to just matter-of-factly share a Vanuatu perspective on a draft text displayed on the large screen. The secretariat then responds to an instruction from the Chair to modify the text as I requested.

Wow. So this is empowerment. I wasn’t even trying to influence the outcome but there it was. In between sharing jokes with the Foreign Minister of Yemen I continued to add my 50c worth through the course of the day. And bit-by-bit ‘I am good enough’ made a constructive contribution to the shape of the finance instrument.

During the afternoon break the director of Environment and Resource Division from the European Commission approached ‘good enough’ and asked whether he would join him for dinner to discuss a funding proposal he had. He spoke rather apologetically about a small bag of money he wanted to consider giving to Vanuatu in response to ‘good enough’s’ interventions at this meeting. The EC were hunting for pilot countries for a new climate change fund of theirs called the ‘Global Climate Change Alliance,’ and the Vanuatu perspective seemed to fit their eligibility criteria quite nicely.

Over white asparagus with cream sauce he asked me to come to Brussels and share the same pitch with his colleagues, which I did a week later. The outcome was a small bag of money for the Vanuatu climate change programme. This was 5 million euro, and for a little country like Vanuatu this was not such a small bag. In the weeks following, the Global Environment Facility learned of this EC funding for Vanuatu and proposed a co-financing package where they would add another US$3million.

Dandy. Vanuatu gets a non-trivial climate change funding package to implement their climate change adaptation programme, only because ‘good enough’ decided to calmly express itself at this Potsdam meeting. If the usual ‘not good enough’ had prevailed, I would have been sufficiently tongue-tied to prevent serendipity from having its way with me.

Self-confidence forms the core of Ekodo – environmentalism as a martial art. In our workshops we regularly practice being good enough, just as we are, right here, right now. Even with our flaws and mistakes we are good enough, because that is what it takes to be human. Why do we expect something different of ourselves?

An Ekodo practitioner regularly exercises the accepting (inclusive) sensation of ‘good enough’ and forms a habit that subdues and overwhelms the (divisive) self-critic that we have spent the majority of our lives cultivating. This critic gets in the way of effective compassionate action. On the other hand, our inner work to find the ground of our legitimacy – just as we are – enables us to transform ourselves into an authentic eco-warrior, sometimes disguised in a suit.

Sean Weaver is the founder and host of Ekodo – a professional development life-skills programme for compassionate ecowarriors. He lives in Wellington. See the Ekodo Facebook group here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=47683391767

Sean is also a climate change solutions consultant through his business Carbon Partnership.

Tags: ekodo