Just for a change…

Posted on 07. Apr, 2011 by annac in E.U., Feature, United Kingdom

As the seemingly endless squabbles over the agenda continue in Bangkok my mind starts to wander and I start to wonder. And as it wanders it always seems to head towards the age old question, are we going to get there? Am I ever going to get to live the future that at the moment I’m fighting so desperately for?

I want to believe we can, that I will, and I want to believe that the unfccc is part of getting us there. But to believe that, to not get disillusioned or overwhelmed by the whole thing, I think I have to take a step back from the infuriating processes that so characterise unfccc sessions, and think practically about what needs to happen for us to start us on the way.

And I think the best place I can start is with me.

But what can I do, one person among billions, how do I affect this process (leaving aside storming into plenary, locking the doors and allowing no one to leave until they’ve sorted it out…)? Well I am sitting at home in the UK, I am a citizen of an EU country, therefore a power I can wield at the UN is through the negotiators who are sitting in plenary behind the my nameplate.

But what of the EU? I’ve complained in the past that as the UK and an EU tracker I’m rather missing out on all the excitement. My fellow trackers from Canada, USA, China and many more have a constant stream of exciting things to write about. Granted I think I’d rather live in a country who aren’t deliberately trying to completely screw over my future, but as a tracker and writer I would like a little excitement, just now and again….

And up until now the EU really haven’t been giving me anything to play with. Neither leading or screwing things up, we generally keep quiet and our statements in plenary go something along the lines of, “well we’re happy to go with what everyone else thinks” (read: we’re happy to do what the usa say).

But it doesn’t have to be this way!

For one we have the potential to start pushing and be somewhat of a leader when it comes to emission reductions. I’m bored myself by how long the EU seems to have been discussing this for, but someday soon I can only hope I open the paper (read: click onto the news front page..) and see that the EU have upped their 2020 emission reduction target to 30%.

As a UK citizen I have pushed hard for this to happen and I am led to believe that our government is also pushing for this to happen within the EU. An interesting fact (well to unfccc geeks…), is that the EU is the only bloc at the negotiations who actually truly negotiate as a bloc with fixed positions. Though other countries may take to the floor and speak on behalf of a grouping, such as G77 and China (most of the developing countries) or AOSIS (the small island states), they do not have one fixed position but each country within them has their own. In the EU even though each country has its own domestic targets, we all agree on one target as a bloc as well and then bring that to the negotiations. And that’s where at the minute we are being held up. Internal arguments and political wrangling (sound familiar…) are dragging out the process and stopping us being more ambitious, and they have been for the last year. If we could make this happen, if we could get the EU to 30%, even though it’s not enough to safeguard our future on this planet, it would open up room for everyone else to follow suit. For some ambition to be put back in these talks and for the process to start moving forward again. So as an EU citizen campaigning, lobbying and pushing for this to happen asap is the biggest thing I as one person can do.

Second the EU are in an interesting position when it comes to the future of the Kyoto Protocol. The last year has seen many intense and often heated arguments about how we move forward on this section of the negotiations and these are being brought back up this week in Bangkok. We are now less than 1 year away from the first commitment period of the KP coming to an end and as yet we have nothing to follow it up with. At Cancun in December this was a pivotal issue, Japan came out on the first day saying they would not be signing up to any continuation of it and the wrangling continued all negotiating session. The UK and Brazil were sent away with a mandate to facilitate discussion on what happens now, which they did, but they returned with the outcome of lets all agree to basically put the discussion off…(ok, ok I simplify but for this means that’s really all you need to know). So in effect the discussion is still ongoing, still a minefield of issues, and we’re still no closer to agreeing how we are going to reduce our emissions in the coming years.

But what does this all have to do with the EU in particular?

Well this actually is one discussion where the EU are rather out on a limb by themselves. Well actually it’s less of a case of being out on a limb and more of a case of not quite being sure which limb we want to be on so clinging madly to the trunk while everyone else swings about in the branches. If I stop waffling about with extended tree metaphors, what I’m trying to explain is that the EU are left as the only developed county willing to say they will sign up to the KP again. The developing countries want this continuation, the rest of the big developed don’t and have pretty much already jumped ship and we’re all rather stuck in a unfccc quagmire.

But in this respect maybe clinging to the trunk isn’t the worst place to be. Having alienated no one maybe the EU could play a pivotal position here. How about we encourage everyone back down from their limbs and lead them all up to a different branch, one that we can all sit on together?

What happens when the first commitment period of the KP runs out, how we move forward and crucially how we agree to reduce our emissions and by how much cannot be ignored any longer.

But what can I sitting here in the UK do to affect this?

Well…I’m not sure there’s much I can do. This is definitely an issue where we are all looking to the skill of the negotiators, the facilitators and the political wranglers to find us a way forward, It’s a complex and loaded issue with many nuances, but what we need is a compromise, going back to my metaphor, that different branch to move to.

And as a person sitting at home that’s not really something I can help with.

But I’m not one just to sit and do nothing…So as I wander and wonder I know that what I can do is make sure our leaders know we want this. And for that to happen, I have to keep fighting. The intricacies, the boringness, the frustration at the seemingly endless discussions on process, on minute details or worst of all on nothing, can’t blind us to the task at hand.

The unfccc can change things.

The EU can change things.

I can change things.

Let’s change things.

Tags: 30%, Bangkok, climate, COP16, EU, featured, KP, UK, UNFCCC