The hopes and fears of all the years..
Posted on 05. Oct, 2009 by annac in United Kingdom
Sometimes in these negotiations it's hard to remain hopeful!
As I sit in an afternoon negotiating session on mitigation action, I can’t quite believe we are already on week two of negotiations here in Bangkok.
Every week that passes I seem to be saying the same thing; this is it, this is the week that must change things!
Then I follow up at the end of the week with a disappointed post.
I’m wary of saying it again…but….this week we really need to see change!
Over the weekend we had the pleasure to have a meeting between the tracker team and Yvo de Boer (the executive secretary of the UNFCCC, previously refered to as our chief negotiator tracker!). One thing he told us was, that in this second week of negotiations it was time to stop talking about how we are going to do things and start talking about what we are going to do.
In fact from the outset of these whole two weeks in Bangkok that has been the aim. This week we were finally supposed to stop talking about process, and start talking about the actual substance of what countries are going to do.
Already nearly a whole day of the second week has gone. So have we?
Well in this session I’m in we are most definitely still talking about process. All I have heard discussed is what we are going to discuss, and in what order.
It’s hard to believe it. How long have we been at this for now?
And we have left ourselves just 4 negotiating weeks to actually discuss what we are going to do!
4 weeks, of which one day has already gone.
Is there any hope left of us getting to actual negotiating of issues by Copenhagen? Or will we still just be discussing how we are going to discuss things!
If that’s the case we have no hope of a deal! And that makes me already scared about going to Copenhagen!.
But back in the present, on the tracking front a slightly better outlook. After a hectic morning where the tracker team joined with nearly 4000 people from across Asia on a march to demand action, I was in the lunch que getting a much needed cold drink, when a friendly voice behind me said hello. Harry from our negotiating team (one of the negotiators we met recently at DECC) has seemingly also discovered the secret canteen where you can get really good papaya salad!
A quick catch up with her didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know. Her overriding feeling…things are going slowly.
But Harry does think we’ll get there. More than hope, she has faith! And Harry is one of the negotiators I know cares about this process, cares about getting action and solving the climate crisis. That she really does believe we will get there. Maybe that gave me a little glimmer of hope…..
When hope is in the balance though, you know it’s time for change!
So I want to finish this post with another story from our field trip the other day, where we learnt how the changing climate was impacting upon Thai farmers.
One of the farmers we spoke to was in large amounts of debt due to year after year of bad or failed harvests. With so much debt, and little prospect of a good year coming up, one of the journalists asked him whether he thought he would ever be debt free- listening to his story it had seemed unlikely.
But the farmer replied…”Of course. I hope to be.”
“Because without hope, life is meaningless.”
If he can do it, so can we!
As screwed up as these negotiations seem, as slow as the progress is we’re making, as much as it already seems like they’ve failed, we have to carry on.
We have to continue to take action.
We have to believe we can get a deal in Copenhagen.
We have to have hope.
Otherwise the Thai farmer is right, life is meaningless.
Without hope, we have nothing.