The art of negotiations

After a whole Sunday spent waiting around the UN and wishing I was on the beach, in the early evening, about an hour before the day was scheduled to finish, things finally started!

Things finally got exciting!

We had been sat in plenary for what seemed like hours (in fact I believe Andread HAD been sat on the same seat for 10 hours!). When eventually, someone came in with a new copy of the text and they all got down to business. What followed was one of the most interesting and compelling negotiating sessions I have ever sat in on.

Now don’t get too enthusiastic because, as per the other day, what they were actually negotiating on was a one and a half page document which lays out how they will work for the next year, not how to solve climate change. However this did mean they really HAD to agree on it by the end of the session.

But I think for the first time I really realised both the art of what was going on, and also the fact that everyone sat in the room is still a human.

As the negotiations went on we had comedy comments from Australia about threesomes and cocktails, toing and froing between USA and Sudan over UN principles, (which led to Sudan responding to USA’s challenge to whether they actually knew what the principles were by getting a copy of them out and reading them!). We had Russia getting very upset and we had Saudi being the unlikely joker, who in the end got many laughs and a round of applause by suggesting we just delete paragraph 5. Which we then did!

One of my favourite moments was when literally everyone in the room negotiators and civil society alike went noooooooo to Papa New Guinea’s suggestion that “we just put it in brackets for the time being”.

Oh and the Nigerian negotiator was wearing a cowboy hat which kept the trackers at least, entertained for quite some time!

The negotiations went on till well past midnight and at one point seemed to be yet another example of the UNFCCC following the principle of, last one in the room left awake and alert gets their way! But in the end they did agree on a text.

So we come away from this weekend knowing how they are going to talk about our future this year…

As the session was closing though something happened which made me smile more than anything else I heard all night.

Granada on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States made their closing statement in the form of a poem!

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

It was refreshing and exciting to see some humanity in this process and much appreciated by all after such an intense session.

We should all make art not policy, and if we can’t do that lets at least make policy as art!

After the long night we left and on Monday all travelled home, another UNFCCC session over.

There are still so many things to be decided, but one thing we know is sure. The UNFCCC will all be back here, still negotiating over our future, come June. Consensus does not come easily!

We can only hope for some more creative constructability next time we meet.

But as I sat on the train home I had some time to reflect. Over and over I wonder what brings me back to the UN, to this place which causes me to go through such an emotional roller coaster.

It wasn’t just Grenada who got poetic this weekend!

Sitting, listening, to grown men squabble
Over life, love and laughter of the highest kind
My soul hurts thinking
About why we’re really here
Listening to indigenous people, cry foul in fear

Dead, dull, strained and stagnant
Is this where my future is being decided?
Is this where we will heal?
Where we will find the way to live?
I don’t know how much more I have left to give

Take, take me dancing, music rings in my ears
To dance to a beat, love the moment, feel alive
This is what my soul
Cries out to do! so why
am I here? Am I living a lie?

Take, Take me dancing, Let me find the space
to know myself, Remind myself
of why
why we’re really here
Why we too cry out in fear

But this weekend I finally realised I come back here because it matters, because this process can and must get somewhere, because it is an important part of building our amazing and beautiful future.

As I have said in the past, this process is not about politics and money it’s about our amazing world and the people who live here.

But many of these people are not all allowed to be here.

So as the UNFCCC goes on, those of us who are must too.

We must go on for those, like the indigenous people, who have the most to loose if the UNFCCC does not deliver.

But we must go on it in the way we know how. We must not loose the emotions, because they ultimately are what make us feel alive.

And that’s what this process is about!

I’m glad this weekend I saw some of the negotiators express that too.

And I’m glad I finally saw the art of negotiations.