The Last Time I Was In Lima ...

That's me on the right, knocking on the door of the massive Cathedral of Lima , on May 10, 1997 

I've been telling this story many times this past week:

"The last time I was in Lima was about fifteen years ago (actually 17 years; in May 1997). I travelled there on my way to and from an international workshop regarding access to genetic resources and the protection of intellectual property rights.

"I was at the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy at the time. The Executive Director, Anne Mitchell, had arranged the project through her contacts in the world of international development.

"I really had no idea what was going on with the workshop. My contribution so far (which you can find here) had been to comb through the laws and statutes of the whole of Canada - including the traditional environmental knowledge of first nations - which had resulted in a resounding and definitive goose egg. So far as the laws of this land were concerned, accessing genetic resources and preserving intellectual property rights therein was not a thing at all. That is not to say that a creative reading of say, the Ontario Bees Act, could not find a right or entitlement to these things, but, you really would have to read beyond what the law intended. 

"At any rate, representatives from environmental law associations and environment ministries from the United States, Columbia, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Peru and a couple of other countries that I forget, all gathered first in Lima, and then Cusco and finally in a small settlement one hour out of Cusco called Urubamba.

"We spent three or four days at a little resort in Urubamba mulling over the weighty issue of protecting indigenous knowledge of the properties of plants from the privations of bioprospectors, and, as a day trip on our second last day, we went to Machu Picchu. 

That's me on the right. Anne's on my right.
Details about everyone else are as fuzzy as this photo.

We flew out of Cusco the following day, and had many hours to kill before our flight to Toronto, so we hung out in Lima. We visited the main square and toured the ossuary in the catacombs below the Franciscan monastery (not my favourite part of the trip). Because we were accompanied by Spanish-speaking Lima natives, we also fearlessly hopped into a taxi cab, drove to an utterly unknown part of the city and stopped in at a very local and authentic restaurant where I tasted the first and best ceviche ever in my life."

Subscribers may be wondering why I've been telling this particular story all week. That's because next week, on December 6, I will be flying to Lima again, this time as part of  the Canadian delegation to the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - or COP 20 as those familiar with these things call it.

The difference between my two trips (so far) to Lima will be that, on reflection, the 1997 trip was probably 75% down time and 25% work. This time, I'll be spending seven consecutive fifteen hour days in the climate change whirlwind. There will be main events, side events, receptions, panel discussions, briefings, protests, security checks, shuttle trips (our hotel is 9 kilometres from the COP pavilion - or about an hour in Lima traffic), announcements, gossip, rumour and media scrums. 

I may wax nostalgic for the peace and quiet of the catacombs.

Thanks for reading!

Have a great week!

Karen