Claudia Salerno is perhaps best known for her dramatic action at the Copenhagen climate talks where she lifted a bloodied hand to the UN and Danish hosts. This year, Venezuela have set up what they called a social pre-COP, a four-day meeting attempting to rejuvenate “boring” UN talks this July, and a follow-up ministerial meeting in the winter. As Salerno told RTCC, they have hired two anthropologists to translate the UN’s complex jargon to help the general public to engage more effectively with the process, as well as focus on the social aspects of climate change. Their clear decision to focus on civil society – which walked out of the UN talks in Warsaw last winter – might well be seen as a deliberate response to the more corporate-friendly New York UN summit being organised for September. If you read Spanish, she is @cscaldera on Twitter, or watch a video of Salerno being interviewed by Democracy Now at the Warsaw talks.