UK EU G77 SDG GDP OMG LOLZ

Just look at all those acronyms. A day in UN negotiations can sometimes feel like you’re having to learn the alphabet all over again. Sometimes you just have to ROFL about it.

Today was my first day at Prep Com, and it was as intense as I was expecting. I had only a couple of hours notice to attend my first meeting with the UK delegation, which meant that I had to go along in the dungarees I was (still am) wearing. I don’t want to talk about it.

Anyway, to give you a good picture of where I think the UK stand as they enter these negotiations, I need to give you a quick rundown of some acronyms. Because learning is fun!

EU - European Union (The UK negotiates as part of the EU bloc)
G77 - Confusingly, this is a group of 132 developing countries, who also negotiate as a bloc
SDGs - This stands for Sustainable Development Goals. You may have heard of Millenium Development Goals. It’s same same, but different.
GDP - Gross Domestic Product. This is how we currently measure the wealth of nations.

Ok. So, from my meeting with the delegation and with others, this is where I think the UK’s priorities lie:

• SDGs - the Millennium Development Goals come to an end in 2015. Colombia had a nifty idea to point this out, and so it’s looking like the potential major outcome from this summit is to agree a strategy to either replace or merge the MDGs with new, Sustainable Development Goals. The UK seem keen for this to be an outcome, and are advocating for a strong process and a particular focus on food, water, and energy.
• GDP+ is also a big story here. This is the idea that we should be measuring nations’ wealth using more than just GDP. That means levering in lots of mentions of ‘wellbeing’ into the text. The New Economics just released a report called the Happiness Index, which gives you a good idea of how we’d rank countries if we took wellbeing into account.
• Corporate sustainability reporting - to, like, get business involved, innit.
• They also seem to be putting a lot of effort into governance issues.

But what does this all meeeeeeaaaan, you ask. Good question. Negotiations are really slow. It is doubtful that we will have a final draft text by tomorrow night, which was the aim before the actual summit starts next week. But it isn’t without drama. Today, negotiations in the green economy session were stalled for hours by G77, because they want to have an agreement in place on financing and technology transfer before they continue with any other negotiations. It seems very tactical, and I’m not sure it will pay off. On the other hand, when the US is flagranting deleting text left, right and centre, which includes references to biodiversity, strong and urgent action, and rights, you can understand why the G77 cling on to their bargaining chips.

It is hard to predict where these next few days will take us, but you can be sure we’ll keep you posted.