During a briefing last week for Congressional staff, we were told by the negotiating team to expect a roller coaster during the negotiations. Apparently, it is a fairly regular occurrence for talks to come almost to the point of breaking down, only to be brought back from the brink to salvage some progress. It happened at the interim meetings in Bangkok and Barcelona earlier this year - the developing nations were in an uproar in Bangkok, and the African nations briefly walked out of the talks in Barcelona.
Well, it's happened again. This time, the spark was proposal from the island nation of Tuvalu, who proposed that the COP produce two legally binding treaties - a tightened and extended Kyoto Protocol and a new, "Copenhagen Protocol" to encompass the US and other major emitters. Other countries from the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) quickly lined up behind them. China and India immediately opposed, as they would like to continue the Kyoto Protocol, with tightened targets for the period following 2012, when Kyoto is scheduled to expire.
The US and Japan have their own proposals as well. The US proposal would start with a political (non-binding) agreement, but over time, merge the dual-track negotiations currently ongoing (one track for Kyoto Protocol (KP)parties, and one track for a long-term cooperative agreement (LCA) that includes non-KP nations like the US) into one process for negotiating a binding agreement in the near future.
Tuvalu requested a formal "contact group" on their proposal, where terms are negotiated in open forum. Several nations opposed this idea, preferring a more informal consultation where issues can be discussed free from procedural and protocol constraints. Connie Hedegaard, acting as President of the COP, opted for the informal option. Tuvalu insisted on a formal contact group, and demanded that the session be suspended until resolution could be achieved on the contact group. News reports I've seen say the consultations could be concluded today.
This event exposed some of the tensions with in the G77+China group, as it pitted China, who seems to see itself as the leader of the developing world, and India against the rest of the developing nations. The ultimate implication of this is unclear at the moment.
Outside the meeting room, a group of people from NGOs gathered outside, chanting "A-O-SIS! A-O-SIS!" and "Climate Justice!" This, of course, was not appreciated by the organizers, who then restricted access to the plenary room to Party delegates only. At this point, as far as I know, NGO personnel are now banned from entering the plenary room.
As I said earlier, we were told to expect something like this. The sentiments of AOSIS countries are quite important - these are countries that will simply disappear underwater if climate change continues unchecked - and their requests mirror closely those of other developing countries. The UNFCCC process requires consensus to move forward, so any significant opposition presents a problem that must be resolved. How this issue is resolved is unclear to me at this moment, but if we are to have a deal here, resolution will need to be found. It is surely the case that negotiators were working late into the night on this. We will simply have to wait to learn the results.
Posted By: Thomas Lee @ 2:03 AM |