The r-e-a-l-l-y slow finish
Posted on 13. Apr, 2010 by Joshua Wiese in U.S.A.
first of all, apologies for the delay on this post. I didn’t finish before having to catch an 11 hour flight back to San Francisco. Home know - hope it was worth the wait:
MY TAKE
Chair of the Ad hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action on Sunday night. photo: ENB
From my perspective, the last day of talks began r-e-a-l-l-y slowly. If day one and two were about country’s delegations airing their views on Copenhagen and how to move forward over the course of this year, Sunday was about bringing it all together into clear mandates to plan and act upon.
I woke up early, made my way to the conference center, grabbed the daily program and started to wait.
Morning was filled with closed meetings of various negotiating blocks, each working to align positions internally in order to give them more clout the formal sessions. This UNFCCC process creeps forward by consensus only, and all 175 countries who came to Bonn had to agree on some key procedural decisions before the end of the day. With so many different cultures, different states of development and different political and economic interests - consensus can be really hard.
Well apparently, that consensus was escaping this group, so the big formal deciding meeting was postponed. Then it was postponed again.
Finally, at 5PM - same time the Bonn Climate Change Talks were scheduled to end - we gathered in the large plenary hall and began. The Secretariat staff handed out a 2-page text for a basis to talk through and negotiate the procedural points in question. Countries then proceeded to argued about obscure differences in wording for the next 6+ hours.
I won’t say it wasn’t interesting or even entertaining at times - it was, but I’ll spare you the play to play. Catch the re-run here if you’re as big a dork as I am. Instead, I want to share just a few highlights:
Papua New Guinea seemed to own the mic. Led by a striking and articulate woman with an Italian accent and red pants (fashionably breaking from the rest of the group, I might be a bit smitten), she gave a valiant effort and made some progress in her push for PNG’s positions. Louis Hand, the Aussie’s lead lady (also known for her occasional fashionable breaks), drew analogies to a threesome and cocktails in an effort to draw interest for one of her proposals …Saudi’s shut her down on the basis that their culture frowns on both. The Saudi’s, often suspected of trying to slow the talks from progress generally, offered to help the chair move things along. The whole room laughed, they’re negotiator said “No, I’m serious”, and proceeded to give the breakthrough suggestion. Also notable, the Chair of the session accidentally and repeatedly insulted Russia, who perhaps offered some of the most hopeful suggestions for compromise throughout the night - needless to say, they weren’t pleased.
The US wasn’t particularly notable in our interventions. Jonathan Pershing showed his frustration only once, angered by agreements apparently made informally that fell apart on the floor. Our delegation shared potato chips with the Brits… possibly feeding Venezuela’s neo-colonial suspicions. Generally, Pershing was eloquent and efficient, steering clear of the more creative forms of delivery and the drama occasionally introduced by other negotiators over the course of the night.
The lack of creativity and drama seems almost un-American compared to the culture I know and love; but as we continue to wait for serious solutions to climate change and as the talks stalled into their 6th and 7th hours, (or 16th year, for that matter), I have no complaint. That said, Grenada was the highlight of the night when they reminded all of us that what we’re trying to save in this process - our environment, our security, our hope of living & maybe even thriving together on this planet, our humanity - is indeed something beautiful. Thanking the Chair for her efforts and wishing well everyone present, she closed with a poem on behalf of the small island states most vulnerable to climate change.
Next time Dr. Pershing, perhaps you too could close with a poem.
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GRENADA’S CLOSING STATEMENT
Madame chair
Among our serious work here comes some levity
Aosis thanks all for having shown flexibility
Particularly revealing compromise and sensibility
For without flexibility what is the real possibility
That there would have been the necessary credibility
Among 192 in this perennially deliberating assembly
In pursuit of climate equitability viability and sustainability
So we bid you all safety with your chosen method of transportability
As you return to families and national diversity
Only to again be released for 2010 climate change conferring productivity
I said levity
But I am not showing creativity
mainly because I am not pursuing mental agility
or fruitility
But I am just avoiding none creative destructability
Thank You
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THE OFFICIAL UNFCCC TAKE / PRESS RELEASE ON OUTCOMES OF THE WEEKEND (PDF):
Climate change negotiators agree on intensified UNFCCC negotiating schedule for 2010
(Bonn, 11 April 2010) The first round of UN climate change talks since the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen at the end of 2009 concluded Sunday in Bonn with agreement to intensify the negotiating schedule in order to achieve a strong outcome in Mexico at the end of the year.
In addition to the negotiating sessions already scheduled for 2010, governments decided at the Bonn April meeting to hold two additional sessions of at least one week each.
The additional sessions will take place between the 32nd session of the UNFCCC Convention subsidiary bodies from 31 May to 11 June 2010 and the UN Climate Change Conference in Mexico from 29 November to 10 December 2010.
The Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) invited its Chair to prepare, under her own responsibility, a text to facilitate negotiations among Parties, in time for the May/June sessions in Bonn.
“At this meeting in Bonn, I have generally seen a strong desire to make progress,” said UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer. “However, whilst more meeting time is important, it is itself not a recipe for success,” he cautioned.
The UN’s top climate change official called on governments to overcome differences, and work for greater clarity on what can be decided in the course of 2010 in the UN Climate Change negotiations.
“We need to decide what can be agreed at the end of this year in Cancún and what can be put off until later,” he said.
According to Mr. de Boer, negotiators must tackle three categories of issues in the course of this year: issues which were close to completion in Copenhagen and can be finalized at the UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún at the end of the year; issues where there are still considerable differences, but on which the Copenhagen Accord can provide important political guidance; and issues where governments are still far from agreement.
“The UN Climate Change Conference in Cancún must do what Copenhagen did not achieve: It must finalize a functioning architecture for implementation that launches global climate action, across the board, especially in developing nations,” said Yvo de Boer.
“Specifically, negotiations this year need to conclude on mitigation targets and action, a package on adaptation, a new technology mechanism, financial arrangements, ways to deal with deforestation, and a capacity-building framework,” he said.
Yvo de Boer also referred to the necessity for high level political guidance at the appropriate time: “We must seek political guidance where and when needed,” he said.
The first round of UN Climate Change Talks in Bonn in 2010 (9-11 April) was attended by more than 1700 delegates from 175 countries
My favourite fashionable break was the Nigerian negotiator wearing the cowboy hat.
That was amazing.