Negotiation Breakdown: U.S. hangs back while others duke it out

Posted on 09. Dec, 2009 by Ben Jervey in U.S.A.

There was a ruckus outside of the plenary in support of Tuvalu's position.

Update: Consultations are running into the night. COP President Hedegard “hopes” she has good news for us in the morning. The world waits with baited breath.

Big news today out of the COP plenary. Tuvalu technically “suspended” the COP this morning over a procedural point, but essentially over what the final legal form of the deal would be.  Pretty tense at the time, everyone’s waiting to hear what comes of it.  Obviously any more delay in official COP meetings really threaten this whole process.

Laurie Beyranevand (full disclosure, we go way back) has a good take on the Vermont Law School blog:

After some discussion about the logo and how certain parties felt it represented the end of Kyoto, the COP plenary commenced with the Tuvalu delegation proposing a contact group to review its protocol, which was proposed and tabled six months ago.  As proposed, the Tuvalu protocol is a legally binding agreement meant to complement Kyoto through amendments, as well as the creation of a new protocol entitled the Copenhagen Protocol.  In no uncertain terms, Tuvalu stated it was here to “seal the deal” and wanted nothing less than a legally binding document.In response to the request for a contact group, many of the AOSIS countries expressed great enthusiasm noting they are the states most impacted by the effects of climate change.  As Cape Verde stated, “we will be the first to diasappear…in this climate crisis.”  Other countries strongly opposed the creation of a contact group, most notably, China, India, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.  The opposition was clear in expressing their feeling that the parties’ focus should not be on new texts.   The United States was unsurprisingly quiet.  Most alarmingly, however, countries within the G77 that had formerly been aligned were clearly divided.

After it was clear the parties would not reach consensus on just the issue of creating a contact group, the President announced the need to hold informal meetings with the interested parties regarding the request.  In response, Tuvalu stated it would not accept the President’s ruling and asked for a suspension of the COP!  The room went silent for several minutes as the President engaged in discussions with other members of the Secretariat.  She then announced that the COP would be suspended until 3 p.m.

I’d add only that the air really did suck out of the room when Tuvalu stood firm and it was clear that the COP would be put on hold.  Now a couple of important points:  this does NOT mean that all negotations here are on hold. There are a couple different tracks, and the COP is one of them.  Of course, the COP is the track that most folks in the regular world think of when they think of these Copenhagen talks.  But right now I’m sitting listening to more interventions about the future of the Kyoto Protocol. (Specifically, whether CCS should be part of the CDM. For real.) Anyways, the COP suspension is huge news, but this can’t be thought of or reported as the talks shutting down. At least not yet. Parties are meeting informally right now with Danish lead negotiator Steffen Smidt to try to come to some agreement. We were supposed to hear something new at 3pm, but it’s already 5pm and still no update. The room is pretty tense, it seems, despite the best efforts of parties in the room to bore the hell out of everyone with this endless CDM discussion. Most lead negotiators (including Jonathan Pershing) are at their, meaning that something “big” is going on.

The U.S., for its part, seemed content sitting back and letting some other countries–namely China, India, Saudi Arabia, and Venezuela–take the heat (or be the “bad guys”).

It could be the start of a breakdown, or it could be yet another time-wasting hiccup.  At some point, though, we’re gonna see AOSIS and African group take a big stand, and this might be it.