Daily log: Clive's voyage through CBD COP 10 in Nagoya, Japan

21 October - Clive Hawigen is a 25 year old now interning with the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP). He was born and raised in a village in the highlands of Papua New Guinea in Goroka. For Clive, traveling is a new experience - he had never left Goroka until he ventured to Samoa to start working for SPREP.

This is a daily journal of Clive's voyage during the CBD COP 10 in Nagoya, Japan. He will share with us his adventure as it's his very first time to leave the Pacific region and travel far across the World.

Read on!

Apart from the negotiations and interventions, lobbying for financial assistance and all the works of CBD COP10 at the Nagoya Conference Centre, it is also a place where useful information is obtained.

Sitting in on some of the side events since the conference started, I was amazed at some of the ideas and ingenuity of advocating for environment conservation and in this case saving biodiversity loss.  In the events that I’ve mostly been to, discussed the aspect of using the media and advertising in ways that is not only boring but is entertaining, funny and at the same time brings the message across to the people.

Take for instance the idea of branding. Now we are all too familiar with some of the brands such as Coca cola, Nike, Puma, Addidas, Microsoft, MacDonalds and KFC but how do you brand an issue such as biodiversity or how do you put a brand on biodiversity? How do you create a brand that would become an overnight hit worldwide? I like the question in one of the pamphlets on branding biodiversity; what if the word biodiversity represented not just a set of scientific concepts, but emotions of awe and wonder? Then we would have people worldwide interested in saving biodiversity and it would be exciting.

So after this very interesting event and my young journalistic mind thinking about the concepts of branding and new ways of communication, I left early for the hotel all on my own.

I wanted to find my own way back to the hotel.

Determined not to get lost, the previous night while searching these jungles of bricks for MacDonalds I got lost for almost 2 hours, decided to take the subway home. Again I got lost, ended up in a restaurant that charged me over 2 000 yen for something that looked like uncooked prawns and salad with noodles (cold). Although it was nice I must say I didn’t enjoy it, even their kind efforts by giving me a fork and spoon didn’t work.

Next time I’m following the experts to the restaurant.