D*talk*time/Y = The negotiation formula

Posted on 04. Oct, 2010 by Ole Seidenberg in Germany

From time to time, I have wondered: If the whole world is - as many say it does - waiting for these couple hundreds of negotiators to come up with a solution for their problems and they are paid to do that job, then WHY does it take them so long to come up with a proper decision?

Well, as most good ideas come to you in the strangest and often most unsuitable moments, it was during the opening ceremony today that I thought: Are all those words said and messages conveyed in this Plenary Hall in this Opening Session ever really heard? I mean: Understood, not just accustically perceived.

Let’s be honest here: Even me as a tracker that has been part of this for only about one year, is soon not able to concentrate and rather reading the “ECO” newspaper or the CAN intelligence briefing paper than listening to statement after statement of which at least 30% are general “Thank yous” and flowery phrases.

Given our expectation that these delegates shall come up with a solution based on a democratic decision, we can legitimately expect 190 delegations to talk to all the other 189 delegations at least once - lets say for a mere average of 10 minutes each. You might say: Hey, there is more than one delegate per delegation. Correct. But since they are mostly specialists and only talk to their respective counterpart, I only count the 10 minutes once per inter-delegational conversation, hoping, they will talk to each other parallely.

Okay, now what does that mean for the duration of Climate Talks (if and only if everything goes well and 10 minutes each are enough to find a decision :-)

That’s 190 Delegations * 189 Delegations * 10 Minutes = 359100 Minutes = 5985 hours = 500 workdays (including some average diplomat’s toilet and coffee breaks and about 11-12 working hours).

Considering the fact that we have an average of 2.5 intercessionals a year counting an average of 9 negotiation days each and 1 COP counting another 12 days, we only have about 35 days of pure negotiation time every year.

So, what’s my conclusion? It’s as simple as this: For making those 190 delegations actually TALK to each other, it will take us 500 days/35 days = 14.28 years of UNFCCC negotiations.

Now guess what: The Kyoto Protocoll was adopted on December 11th, 1997.

Make that + 14 years and we will have what we need at: COP 17, South Africa, 2011.

Joke aside. Let’s keep fingers crossed, they are not just talking, but finding common ground. I will hopefully talk to my delegate this afternoon (so deduct some tracker time from that formula up there) and let you know asap whatever I can find about the actual progress made.

Tags: Fun, Tianjin