Mayor of St. Cloud

                The morning of the 3rd we were able to meet with the mayor of St. Cloud outside of the official proceedings of COP21/UNFCCC. He has traveled to Paris for COP21 as a representative of the Mississippi River Basin Association, which consists of some 60 mayors or so representing their cities along the river.  This association was formed by a collection of cities to improve water quality of the river. Since 20m people rely directly on it for fresh water, it is imperative that there is collaboration between towns all along the river to keep the river water clean. The association also focuses on food transportation along the river, since by 2030, with a world population of 9.6b people, 25% off all the world’s food will be grown along the ten major river basins of the world.

               The mayor, along with three other mayors from the Mississippi River Basin Association are attending COP21 to connect with other officials who represent people living along the major river basins around the world. While meeting with the other officials, they hope to learn best practices for water quality upkeep and food transportation along river basins. They also wish to pursue further, and stronger, collaboration with other forms of governments representing other river basins.

                The city of St. Cloud, MN, has a state of the ark water treatment facility and two hydroelectric dams, so it does not deal with transportation of food and other goods along the Mississippi River. IT instead, focuses more on the water quality, since it is a city that takes many gallons out of the river and puts many back in daily. Also, because St. Cloud is the first major city along the Mississippi river, it is crucial that it, of all cities along the river, does no irresponsibly use the water.

                The Mayor advocates strongly for the bipartisan power of cities to just get up and start pursuing sustainable development practices without laws or regulations being passed at the state or federal level. All these things have been done by the City of St. Could simply because that is what the community wants, clean drinking water, clean food, and fresh air. Because of this, I personally am very skeptical of what the mayor is doing at COP21 in the first place, since he expresses little interest to take anything away from the convention except publicity for himself and the city of St. Cloud.

                St. Cloud also has a 101 class (online at St. Cloud website) to inform citizens of their management practices so that the citizens can become more involved in the planning and decision making process. So younger citizens in particular can be more involved in making their voices heard for things such as more trials and sidewalks in their city.