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Day 9 - Making sausage, international style
The original attribution is a matter of some debate, but I must admit, whomever came up with the line about law and sausage was a genius. Having experienced the lawmaking process on the national level, and now in an international context, I must say that it is absolutely true. (I also enjoy sausage, and have seen it being made, but that's not why I choose to eat it sparingly.)
The high-level ministerial discussion started this evening, and, to be honest, I was too worn out to watch them for very long. I feel a sense of urgency in the air - people do not feel they are as far along as they wanted to be, and need to catch up. Connie Hedegaard essentially said as much in her opening statement; people had spent too much time reiterating known positions rather than trying to find common ground. I had heard that some good progress was made, but I don't have any details.
Back to this idea of making sausage. In Congress, the official process of changing and developing a bill in a committee is called a "markup." It has rules and procedures for submitting and debating amendments, and a voting process for agreeing to or disagreeing to amendments. If you've ever seen one on C-SPAN or in person, you know that they're (generally) orderly, but can get a bit animated at times. The content of the amendments, of course, is often a different story, and the bill that comes out of a committee can often be much different from the one that went in (for better or for worse...) I'd call the Congressional process like watching the sausage being "made" at the stage where the filling is being put into the casing. A bit nauseating to the most squeamish, but generally tolerable.
The UNFCCC process is like watching the sausage made from...well, let's not get too graphic here. At a UNFCCC meeting, text is negotiated in "drafting sessions" which are generally held in smaller groups, with smaller rooms, and closed to all but Party Delegates. I was able to sit in on one of them last week. I won't talk about the details of the discussion, but let's just say that "tedious" barely begins to describe the process. Actually, a UNFCCC drafting session makes a Congressional markup look like a techno dance party.
The UNFCCC is a consensus-based body. Nothing can be agreed to unless everyone agrees (or, at least, no one objects.) There is no voting. (Actually, there aren't any official rules of procedure in the UNFCCC. They have been using "draft" rules for the last 15+ years, without rules for voting, because they cannot come to consensus on what those rules should be!) So, if you want to add, remove, or change something, you have to get everyone else to go along with you. There are certainly philosophical reasons why one would want to do this in a UN context. For one, it gives small countries more power, which could be argued is a good thing since larger countries generally dominate the world stage. On the other hand, it makes it incredibly easy for one country to hold up an entire meeting for almost any reason under the sun.
But I digress. So, rather than have a formal document with a specified procedure for amendments, the process at the COP (at least in the draft session I observed) is to project the starting text, in a word processor, on a screen and turn on "Track Changes." The only strict procedure I observed was the orderly process of recognizing countries to address the room and offer comments or new text. When changes are suggested, they are simply made in "track changes" and discussed, sometimes ad nauseum. If the parties cannot come to agreement, disputed text is [put in brackets][with multiple options side-by-side] and they move on. Longer changes with multiple choices for text are often enumerated "option 1", "option 2", etc.
Here's where the consensus part gets tricky - anyone can object at almost any time. In the room I observed, the room had come to a consensus that a particular clause was redundant and could be deleted. (They were trying to shorten the document.) A few hours later, after other amendments had been considered and adopted, another country insisted that it be put back in. That's when I left. Well, actually, that's when the chair called a recess for dinner. For the sake of leaving what hair I had left firmly planted in my scalp, I had already decided not to go back.
Despite all this madness, things do manage to get done. (Just like in Congress...) They never come out the way you want, or expect (just like in Congress...) but good things do happen at these meetings. One just needs to have the patience and endurance to wait for them. I'm impressed that the negotiators can handle schedules like they have been this week - pre-8am starts and post-midnight endings - especially when you have to go through experiences like these. It gives me a new appreciation for the service they provide for their countries and the world, and the commitment that they bring to their work.
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Posted By: Thomas Lee @ 12:49 AM |