Back to Bonn (for some)
Posted on 06. Aug, 2009 by annac in Adopt a Negotiator, Uncategorized, United Kingdom
Next week I'll be tracking from afar!
So on Monday the whole UNFCCC circus will be up and moving back to Bonn. From Monday to Friday there will be informal meetings between the negotiators. In these they will try and get somewhere with digesting the massive text that came out of the Bonn meeting in June (the one that will form the basis for what we see come out of Copenhagen), into something more than 3 people on the planet can actually make sense of!
Unfortunately due to a looming Masters dissertation deadline I am unable to go to Bonn. But fear not over the coming week I will be putting my well honed skills to use with a bit of remote tracking! Jonathon our Swedish tracker will be right there on the ground in Bonn, along with several others from our network, and they will be keeping me up date with everything that is going on.
But as a start what can we expect to see during this next round of meetings?
Well, lets not get carried away! Mostly it will be a continuation of the painfully slow process that if you are following this blog will be familiar to you now.
For those of you who don’t follow the blog, that’s a lot of talking and not a lot of action!
The main task they have is this one of reducing the text they currently have in front of them to something more manageable. This means they will be loosing some things and keeping others in.
So as they get lost in the pages and pages of legal text we need to use this coming week to remind our negotiators what we want to see come out of Copenhagen in December, what we want this text to eventually look like.
We want to see a treaty that is ambitious, fair and binding!
The two most important aspects of this are that developed countries commit to ambitious emission reduction targets and that we get commitment to a finance mechanism that will provide predictable funds to help developing countries adapt to the impacts of climate change.
So as the week goes on I will be using the opportunity to again remind Jan and the rest of the team of something I said before.
That each line of text they work on this week is not just a line of text…
…but a moment in my life that will change because of the decisions they make.
As time ticks away and the text gets closer to being finalised it’s time for our negotiators, for our governments, to decide whether they will commit to these things.
Whether they will choose to safeguard my future on this planet.
And this choice is too important to happen behind closed doors, so please take a minute to follow the blogs this week and let us know what you think about what is going on.
Because this isn’t just about my future.
It’s about your future and your children’s future too!
The Adopter - Anna Collins
Anna Collins Born and bred in Warrington in the *sunny* North of England, Anna was brought up by parents with a deep sense of justice and taught to always fight for what she believed is right. "I guess you could say it was in the blood, my gran went to Greenham Common in the 80s"... read more»
The Adopted - Meet Jan & the UK Delegation
Jan Thompson (otherwise known to Anna simply as Jan!) is the lead climate change negotiator for the United Kingdom. The UK has a large negotiating team who each cover different sections of the negotiations, however Jan takes the lead and brings everything together. read more»