Dominic Rowland
I'm planning on doing a 12 day fast during the COP itself in Parliament Square, UK.
I'm brought up in Cambridge UK and graduated last summer from Oxford University in biology. It was there that I I first got serious about climate change, having studied both the science and the environmental impacts. I also became heavily involved in the student campaigning and charity scene with both local environmental projects and organising international development events including OxFID, a student run international development conference. I have also spent 6 months working in Indonesian Borneo on various conservation projects including my undergrad dissertation on optimum habitat requirements for orang-utans which hopefully will help conservation efforts in the area. I am now studying for a masters at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine where I hope to carry out research on the effect of climate change on infectious disease transmission due to environmental refugees and increased numbers of refugee camps (a major emitter of diseases and disease vectors that aren't taken into account when estimating deaths from climate change) .
As I say, my campaigning experience is limited, being mostly involved in university campaigns and a couple of climate camp actions in non- arrestable roles (although this may change this weekend with the swoop). However, by coincidence, this summer I read a couple of books on Gandhi and couldn't help thinking that, rather than plan an action at Copenhagen, how much more powerful it would be, and what higher level of moral authority we could achieve by fasting. And the CJF came into my inbox via climate camp, and that was that.
