Russia & Antigua and Barbuda shamed by enviro groups on last day of UN Climate Talks

Environmental groups weighed the efforts of countries negotiating at the UN CLimate Talks today, and gave awards to mark the best and worst actors. Here is an except from the CAN’s Fossil of the Day award media release:

Russia earns the 2nd place Fossil. This morning, in the contact group on shared-vision and in the LCA plenary, Russia did not accept that the Facilitator’s note becomes a INF document. By blocking this note from becoming an INF document, Russia stopped the negotiations on Shared-Vision from moving forward whereas an agreement on Shared Vision is a key-element of a future legally binding instrument on climate change.

Today’s first place fossil award goes to Antigua and Barbuda for standing up, yet again, against increased transparency and engagement of civil society.

In last night’s SBI plenary, Antigua and Barbuda continued to raise concerns about a number of suggested improvements to transparency. At one point, they even claimed that because they once couldn’t find a seat in a meeting room, they couldn’t support increased openness in this process. Perhaps they should listen to their colleagues in AOSIS, many of whom stood up to show strong support for NGO participation in their own statements. Should any delegates from Antigua and Barbuday have difficulty finding somewhere to sit, any CAN member would gladly give up their seat and stand in the room, so long as the doors are open.

For Antigua and Barbuda’s very confusing and extremely disappointing stance against transparency and civil society participation, we award them the first place fossil.

The Ray of the Day goes to Cook Islands, Tonga, EU, Australia, Norway, Suriname, Switzerland, Colombia, Tuvalu, Mexico, St. Lucia, USA, Singapore, New Zealand, Barbados, Bolivia, Japan, & The Gambia for jointly and strongly rejecting the demand by Saudi Arabia, supported by Qatar, to have response measures included in the SBI conclusions on loss and damage. As per the Bali Action Plan and the Cancún agreements, response measures has its place under mitigation and should not be dealt with when it comes to adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change.