*Insert back to Bonn/no progress/mind the gap related pun here*
Posted on 03. Aug, 2010 by annac in Adopt a Negotiator, United Kingdom | View Comments
Trying to blog about the same thing over and over again has left me stumped for puns!
I’m stumped, completely stumped, I can’t think of a single back to Bonn related pun that I haven’t already used. This is our 3rd time here this year, 4th in total and the 6th week the tracker team have spent in the lovely (yet it has to be said slightly dull…) city of Bonn.
I have literally been at the negotiations for just a few hours yet it feels like we were never away. I can only imagine how delegates who have been doing this for years must feel.
But with the tracker team consisting of only me and Florent for this session there is a lot to get up to speed on from my first missed day. And with such a small team we’re both also going to have to master the art of hardcore multi tasking to keep up to speed with the blogs, twitter, youth stuff and of course actually following the negotiations this week.
If only the negotiators could get on with some hard core multi tasking too…
Because though there’s a lot for me to get up to speed on here, it has to be said, I didn’t exactly miss much progress in the negotiations in the last 36 hours. ‘What!’ I hear you cry ‘the UNFCCC didn’t make any progress in the last 36 hours of negotiations. We can’t believe it…!!!’ (sorry I shall try keep my sarcasm to a minimal but the UNFCCC does bring it out in me…). But yes, once again we are sat in Bonn discussing the same things we have been discussing for years. And I can’t think of a new pun about the lack of progress either.
Today however one thing has changed, there is a new murmur in the corridors. There’s a new paper on the block and it’s causing a bit of a stir. This paper is the so-called document /10 (sounds thrilling doesn’t it…).
But document /10 is rather important. Because it is in document /10 that the UNFCCC has finally said (with slight anna paraphrasing),
“Guys we need to discuss something. We seem to have a problem…
We seem to have run out of time!”
Yes the UNFCCC have finally admitted something that to the rest of us has been rather obvious for a while. We do not have time between now and the end of the Kyoto Protocol first commitment period (in 2012) to agree on what happens next.
‘What!’ I hear you cry again, ‘but that still gives us 2 years of negotiations how can we have run out of time????’
Well perhaps it becomes clearer when you realise that even after the first commitment period of the KP had been negotiated and agreed on, it still took 7 years to get enough countries to ratify it for it to come into force…
And we haven’t even negotiated, let alone agreed what happens post 2012! So we can’t even begin to try and ratify it.
Put simply, we have a problem. Another gap, here at the UNFCCC (they seem to be springing up all over the place…). And because we have so many of them I can’t think of a new pun for this either, please mind the gap had definitely been rather overdone.
But pun or no pun, document /10 deals with this new gap. In document /10 the secretariat have set out ideas for what we do from a legal point of view if we cannot agree a new commitment period and are faced with this gap between the first and second commitment periods (or the gap between the first period and whatever we get instead of another commitment period).
This gap begins on Jan 1st 2013.
Pun or not, this is no laughing matter. We are currently looking at having no decision on action to tackle climate change from the 1st of Jan 2013.
Some might say we need to start working this out, and we need to start getting somewhere in these negotiations fast!
If me and Florent can do it this week why not the negotiators too? Let the hardcore multi tasking begin.
And I guess one of my many tasks, in the spirit of this blog, is while they all discuss the options in document /10 I should find some way to make it a pun.
The UNFCCC don’t make this blogging business easy do they! Answers on a postcard please…
Back to reality
Posted on 10. Jun, 2010 by annac in United Kingdom | View Comments
How often do you think about the realities of climate change?
Today I am not at the UNFCCC in Bonn, today I am back in London. I have left the UNFCCC behind, left the rest of the trackers still tracking away and have returned back to my normal life.
Back to reality.
However yesterday while I was still in Bonn a different type of reality hit me.
The reality of what this is really all about.
Yesterday I had the opportunity to chat to an African negotiator in these talks. We talked about the African position here and what the outcomes of these talks really mean for Africa. While we were talking it reminded me of my Kenyan friends and of new friends I made in Bonn, from Nigeria and from Zambia. It reminded me of hearing them talk about the realities of climate change in their lives. It reminded me of being in Kenya last year, of seeing the wildebeest migration come so early, of talking to people about how the climate is changing everyday, and how much harder it is making their lives.
So often at the UNFCCC we end up in a bubble. A crazy bubble of acronyms, interventions and endless hunts for free food. But it is a bubble where even though we are at climate negotiations the reality of climate change doesn’t seem…well….real.
But yesterday the reality hit me hard again and it took me out for a while. I realised sitting on the Wednesday of the second week of talks, with only 2 more weeks of talks until the next cop in Cancun, that things were not looking great. One of the main things we hoped to see achieved in Bonn was a new text to work off…we do not have it. Yet again we are behind where we need to be if we want to achieve what we need to at the COP.
Talking to the African delegate, him talking of the need for us not to talk about what we think can be done, but to talk about what HAS to be done to stop us condemning millions to an uncertain future, made me think.
His story is the reality.
Droughts in Africa is the reality.
People dying is the reality.
Reality is not about politics, reality is about science.
We can’t change the science but we can change the politics.
And the reality of the situation we are in means we must!
It would seem I am not the only one trying to get back to reality though. Today following the talks from afar (it’s weird being on the other end of the social media!) I was watching the chaos that erupted in the SBSTA (Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice). The talks ground to a halt over AOSIS putting forward the proposal for a technical paper on the science of scenarios for going above 1.5 degrees temperature rise. The paper would collate what is known and what is not known about what happens to our planet as we go above 1.5 degrees.
They want the UNFCCC to confront the reality of this in the paper, THEN make their decisions about action to tackle climate change.
However for some this reality would not be welcomed. The proposal was strongly blocked by many of the oil producing countries. Because another reality is that these talks are dominated by oil. From the oil producing countries blocking concensus, to the oil lobbyists working behind the scenes at every step. Because for them a reality of this process is that if it really confronts climate change it will hit the way they make their money. So they are doing everything they can to stop this happening.
But this is another reality we can change.
We have to get these talks back on track to talking about the reality of the situation we are in.
As I sit back in my life in London the reality of the task in hand is starting to sink in again.
And with it the reality that this is it for us.
This is our fight. This is what we must do.
Being brought back to reality seems to have stoked my internal fire again.
Guided tour of the Bonn Climate Change Talks
Posted on 09. Jun, 2010 by Joshua Wiese in United Kingdom | View Comments
Our UK negotiator tracker Anna Collins linked up with the One Climate crew to give a guided tour of the Bonn Climate Change Talks at Hotel Maritim.
