A culture of mistrust

Posted on 06. Oct, 2009 by annac in E.U., United Kingdom

There are many reasons why this process is not getting us where we need to be.

So many, that if I started listing them all, I may never make it to bed tonight (it’s looking pretty dicy on that front anyway!).

But the overriding one, in my opinion, is the culture of mistrust that permeates through these halls.

Permeates through every meeting, through everybody here.

No one trusts anyone else in this process.

The big scandal of the negotiations so far (well ok scandal might be going too far but seriously I have to sex these negotiations up in some way!) has been over whether or not we will be keeping the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto protocol is the method by which we currently have commitments for developed countries (excluding the USA) to reduce emissions.

If we kept it, anything that came out of Copenhagen would be in two parts. Or a form of Kyoto plus.

Now the developed countries have been advocating recently for this not to be the case, and for anything we get out of Copenhagen to be in the form of one treaty. The EU have come out very strongly in favour of this. One of the main reasons for this is to bring the USA into the same treaty as everyone else.

But the developing countries have come out against this one treaty idea, they see it as a way for developed countries to wriggle out of their pre-standing commitments.

It’s all very, very complicated and I don’t think you actually need to know the details (if you want to know more our Australian tracker does a good job of explaining it). But just even with this little info, you can start to understand how the problem we have is one of mistrust.

There are many, many different opinions floating around on what is best in this situation. But with the culture of mistrust finding the right one becomes exceedingly difficult. To me it would seem that one treaty including the USA and keeping the good bits of Kyoto would be ideal. But I can completely see the developing countries point. After all what have we ever done to create trust?

And maybe that is the crux of the issue. The developed countries have never done anything to build trust. In fact quite the opposite!

Developed countries have continually let developing countries down, and not just on climate change. Think about those 0.7% overseas development aid commitments, not many of them have ever materialised!

And within the negotiations think about climate finance, we still have no numbers on the table. Holding cards close to your chest and using them as bargining chips does not create a culture of trust.

But with a culture of mistrust comes a culture of looking out only for yourself, of thinking that no one else would ever do anything for you, of constantly looking out for how other people are going to screw you over, instead of for the best deal.

With this culture of mistrust the chances of us getting the best result are little to none.

Because the best result requires everyone to play their part safe in the knowledge we are doing this together.

If we want to get the best deal we can in December it’s time to start building the trust.

And quickly.

Tags: EU, Finance, Kyoto Protocol, trust