Day two

Today, I got to go to the actual negotiations! To many MUN-people the formalities might be familiar, but it was all new to me. An Australian was chairing the first meeting of the SBI (Subsidiary Body on Implementation), which took place between 10am and 1pm. As we decided, we (UNfairplay) should try to cover all the main streams at all times to keep our delegations posted, and so I tried to take notes from what the delegates were saying. My favorite delegates were African delegates, not necessarily for the content, but because they tend to speak much slower and more considerate than their counterparts, which often rattled at a speed that made it impossible to type! If I imagine someone from a small delegation with even less English skills than mine, I would not know how they cope.

Did I tell you about ECO yet? It’s a daily news bulletin here written by a network of NGOs. Its quite funny and witty, almost everybody reads it here. Every day it announces the “fossil of the day”, the country that was the least productive. Yesterday it was Canada on all 3 places! I’ll see wether I can find a copy to post it up on the blog. ECO is also good to have a view behind what actually is being said by delegations as “diplo-speak” can be quite confusing.

Oh, a girl sat behind the US delegate who had their main strategy up on his screen while busily chatting on his telephone, and I heard she’ll blog about it! Not sure she’s allowed to, but I’ll send the link to you anyway should she put it up ;)

We’ve got good news from Kiribati, too! We finally managed to meet up. Kiribati has 8 delegates in Cancun at the moment, but they haven’t managed to meet each other yet (!). They could not afford to stay in the same hotel and are all only communicating via email. At the moment, they are preparing the arrival of their president (his speech) and their interventions at the main negotiations (I heard them intervening twice :)). Today, we covered the side events (events that are organized by NGOs or other organizations besides the main negotiations) for them and we’ll send them an email tonight with a summary of things that are crucial for them.

They also agreed to give us delegation status! This means that as official delegates of Kiribati, we can access many of the events which are closed to NGOs and the press. Exciting! :D

The first day

Actually, it's already the second day now, but I was just too tired to blog yesterday.

The logistics here definitively have room for improvement. We took the bus at 8 am and arrived 2 (!) hours later at the actual conference centre, which is hosted in a posh hotel. The internet was really bad all day as well, and with us relying on email and blogging to communicate, this was disastrous. Charlie and Sam spend the whole day working on the report, which will hopefully be finished today midday. 

As for us, I am still trying to wrap my head around how things run here. We went to the opening speeches and it was quite interesting to hear how the tone has changed compared to Copenhagen! In Copenhagen, everyone delegates, NGOs and the Media) pressured to reach a final agreement. Here, nobody really expects a final agreement, and the speeches all focus more on "finding common ground", sorting out the finance details etc. It would be easy to dismiss it as "the UNFCCC isn't working anymore", we're not getting anywhere etc, but actually, this can be seen as a positive development as well. Quite a lot of the NGOs here believe that getting back to the roots and negotiating properly without the immense pressure of having to reach an agreement could be more productive. Many see this as the decisions to be made so that in South Africa next year, we can have a legally binding agreement.

The day itself was very long, we stayed around until 7 and until we actually got home it was 10 o'clock. As we assign work for the evening, too, the nights could get quite short soon. I am keen on my sleep though, and as you see, i postponed by blogging to today ;) Being tired the whole day after just isn't worth it, I think.

An interesting first day!

I'm getting there...

UNFCCC, IPCC, UNEP, WMO, KP, GHG, COY, ETS, CDM, JI, LULUCF, CCS, COP, CMP, SBI, SBSTA, GEF, MOP, SBSTA, JLG, REDD, AGF, AWG-LCA, JUSCANNZ, LDC, OPEC, AOSIS, SIDS, WTO, CAN, ECO, WMO, AOSIS, INC, MRV, ...............

Who are we?

So far, I've met 4 other students from UWCs that take part in UNfairplay. 

Charlie - Graduate from Atlantic College; has lots of experience in climate negotiations.

Benas - Red Cross Nordic UWC

Lindsay - from Atlantic College and Laurence from Pearson

Also, there is Lena, a fellow German (yay!) whose been involved in surveying the delegations last year and writing up the report this year. As I understand, Sam and Isabel, who were really involved in Copenhagen last year, are also going to work on the report, but I haven't met them yet.

Then, we also had 4 girl scouts who said they'd like to help which is awesome!

Sunday - Information and Planning

We got our accreditation badges today! This gives us access both to the NGO-Sector and the negotiations, which will take place in a Hotel nearby.

Although I am still a bit confused with the acronyms, things start to clear up a bit. For this COP, we have three main objectives:

1. Support any delegation* that needs support. Especially Kiribati, since we've been working with them last year. But also Ghana, Gambia and the Marshall Islands signalled interest. We also had some other youths signing up to help, so we've got a backup of manpower to meet whatever need there is. Mainly we'll be helping with translations and providing minutes and reports.

* Well, those delegations that have less than 15 members and that are not considered unfree by the Freedom In the World Report.

2. We set up a blog that is supposed to collect minutes from the meetings, were we'll upload our minutes and inform delegations that they can access them from there. We try to connect as many NGOs as possibly to send us their minutes, but before we put them on our blog, we need to check for bias. Bias is quite a big problem when delegations have to rely to external source's reporting --> point 3.

3. Publish a Report to the UNFCCC that outlines the problems small delegations face. 

The fact that there are no official transcripts for the meetings is outrageous and very un-UN-style. Most people we've spoken to could not believe that there are no transcripts made. So delegations that cannot afford to go to all the meetings (which often take place at the same time) have to rely on external source's minutes, if there are any. Obviously, it's impossible to know how much bias those minutes contain.

The UNFCCC does make videos of the meetings and posts them online. The problem with the videos, however, is that many developing countries are lacking the bandwidth to watch them, besides the unpracticalities of not being able to download them, or to jump between sections, and many just simply lack the time that is consumed listening vs. reading a transcript. Producing transcripts and making them publicly available, would be a simple way to increase small countries' possibility to participate.

Secondly, only the main negotiations have translators. For many countries, the language barrier is an issue. In a survey undertaken by UNfairplay last year, some francophone African countries, for example, have expressed that they feel they can participate less than their anglophone fellow African countries.

There are some other issues that the report covers. We hope we can present it to the UNFCCC this week (before all the crazyness in the 2nd week when the global leaders arrive) and we'll try to get as much Media coverage as possible. This is our long-term goal so that hopefully, in a couple of years, we are not needed anymore.

Arrival

Just arrived in Cancun, and I can officially confirm that JFK Airport in New York has replaced Beijing Airport for No. 1 on my favourite Hate-Airports List. GRR

Cancun is awesome though. I met Benas, a Lithuanian from Nordic UWC at the airport (after a long search, we both didn't know how the other looked like) and we took a collectivo to the flat of the people we will be staying with.

Charlie, a graduate from Atlantic College, who is one of the main organisers of this year's initiative, greeted us and told us to stay in tomorrow (we've got a workshop to run) to acclimatise and to rest. I think he's really concerned about us overworking, based on his experiences from last year ;)

Ok, I'm off to bed for now, update tomorrow!

Prelude

It's exactly 7.26 in the morning and I am sitting at Hong Kong Airport waiting for my flight to Cancun (with stopover in Beijing and New York). I am very (tired), excited, curious and a little bit nervous about the coming two weeks.

What exactly am I going to do? I will part of initiative called UNfairplay (http://unfairplay.info/, don't try .com! ;)), our aim can be summarised to support the voice of underrepresented delegations. 

There is a big discrepancy between the presence different delegations are able to show at the Climate negotiations. Some big industry nations, like my own country Germany, send hundreds of negotiators and advisors; they are well-connected, informed and hence well-positioned to have their opinion heard.

Most developing nations, especially the smallest and economically poorest amongst them, do not have this luxury. Ironically, the nations that are most affected by climate change (small island nations that will soon loose their land if current sea level rises continue) are the least well positioned. If they can afford to send any delegates, it most probably will be a comparatively tiny delegation. Not surprisingly, keeping the overview over the masses of informations and showing presence at all meetings is close to impossible for a delegation with only 2-3 delegates.

That's unfair! Every country should have the chance to have their voice heard. 

This is why a group of United World College Students travelled to COP 15 in Copenhagen last year and assisted underrepresented government delegations, mainly the delegation of the small island state Kiribati. The support included taking minutes at meetings and side events and attending some events as Kiribatis representatives. Out of the positive outcomes (they got invited to dinner by Kiribati's president and mentioned in his address to the nation after his return!) grew the idea to continue this initiative in Cancun this year.

Oh, my boarding time is going to be up soon, I better finish. Our immediate plans after my arrival is to host a workshop on UNfairplay on Sunday and to collect our badges.

I'll keep you posted!! :)