The "high level segment" started today. With their ministers and presidents arriving, many small delegations are pre-occupied making sure that they arrive well, are looked after etc. and actually can't negotiate properly anymore. Just to name a few prominencies: The president of Nauru, Guatemala, Palau, Switzerland, Kiribati, Ecuador, Georgia, South Africa, Costa Rica and Bolivia; The prime minister of Grenada, Ethiopia, Kenya, Norway, Swaziland, Bangladesh and the vice-president of Iran.
Most other countries send their minister of environment (with slight differences in title). Interestingly, Saudi Arabia is sending their "Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources" and Libya is sending their "Secretary of National Oil Corporation"! Actions speak for themselves, no?
Ban Ki-Moon also is here, I saw him twice today, he is usually ushered around with a large amount of people in white clothes around him.
Not to be distracted from the real negotiations, though. I am actually quite optimistic! The negotiations were rather slow until now, but there were some small breakthroughs (like on Article 6 as I mentioned where negotiators put their national interests aside) and the 1.5 degree target is part of the drafting text again (it was taken out for some time, causing quite a big worrying). Russia and Canada have hidden behind Japan's stand not to support a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, which is really upsetting. Especially Canada is messing up quite badly here. The UK actually is being quite progressive! Look at the recent ECO articles.
But: In many key points (saving the forests, climate financing etc) the negotiations are open and if delegates are making a right choice now, we can really consider Cancun a success!! Hopefully I will be able to report back positively tomorrow and at the end of the session.
One key thing that I really like here is the transparency of the negotiations. Not so much to civil society, but the Mexican government has refrained from doing copenhagening, were only few parties met behind closed doors and destroyed a lot of trust in the process. The key message, given out by many NGO's is: It's not the process, it's the politics. The UN is, however slow and complicated, the only fair option we have so far.
Good night from Cancun!
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Monday, December 6, 2010
Weekend&Monday
Wow, sorry for not having written for so long. By friday night I just felt burned out, and desperately needed to catch up on some sleep and relaxation. So I stayed at home Saturday, and while finally having some time to browse through my emails, I also had a look in the junk email folder. Shock. Oxford had written and offered me an interview for friday (previous day!) morning. I missed my Oxford interview!!!!
(luckily, I called them last night and they said that they'd give me a rescheduled time. phew but the weekend was agony!!!)
On saturday evening, we were invited for dinner by the Kiribati delegation. It was very relaxed and interesting to learn about their islands and their lifestyle! Apparently their capital is the most densely populated city in the world. It takes them 2 weeks to travel from one end of their territory to the other. Their islands span over the date line, which causes many communication problems, for example if there is an emergency in one island on a Monday, the other islands won't receive the call, because it still is Sunday. Their main economy is the revenue of fishing licences given to (foreign) fisher boats, given the huge territory that spans between their islands. I mentioned the United World Colleges to the head of their delegation, in the hope that maybe we'll have a Kiribati student one day? She seemed quite interested.
After the dinner, there was an NGO party, which was good to finally leave some steam off.
I then spend the whole sunday sleeping and finishing off some work for UNfairplay.
Today, when we returned, there were some seeds of hope! The negotiators met on their (supposedly meeting-free) Sunday and Saturday and the first decision regarding Article 6 of the UNFCCC convention (it's about education and public awareness to climate change, quite a hot topic for the youth movement) got passed - including all the proposals the youth movement was pushing for! Success!
If you want some more updates about what is going on at the negotiations, I would refer you to ECO, an NGO newsletter that is published daily and is able to explain the negotiations much better than I can.
http://climatenetwork.org/eco-newsletters
Some key issues here are the establishment of one, fair climate fund, and even if it might not be legally binding this year (most expect the next COP to establish a legally binding agreement, and here to lay the foundations to it), there are some key issues to sort out: How much? To whom will the money go? Loans or grands? How do we ensure that governments don't just "relabel" money they would have given anyway and claim the credit for it? How can we make sure LDCs, women and indigenous communities are represented fairly? What role should the worldbank play? How can we make sure that 50% of the money will actually go to adaptation (so far 90% of the money that is located in many small funds goes to mitigation in only a handful of countries).
Another issue is how to save the forests. A new, very controversial program has been developed, REDD and REDD+. The scope of these programs is gigantic, and with so much money involved, governments are fighting hard for or against it. Basically, it is putting a price on the rainforest, allows nations that emit too much to offset their emissions by buying rainforest and makes it too expensive for countries to continue deforestation, instead they get paid for looking after the forest.
With a proper agreement on how to save the forests (the deforestation makes up around 20% of our CO2 emissions at the moment) and a proper, fair climate fund, we might actually be well underway! See ECO for more details! :)
Also, I got worldmapper to plot the number of delegates here in Cancun for me. Interesting, right? A huge thanks to Benjamin Henning from the University of Sheffield for his patience and willingness to help us!
I'll keep you posted!
(luckily, I called them last night and they said that they'd give me a rescheduled time. phew but the weekend was agony!!!)
On saturday evening, we were invited for dinner by the Kiribati delegation. It was very relaxed and interesting to learn about their islands and their lifestyle! Apparently their capital is the most densely populated city in the world. It takes them 2 weeks to travel from one end of their territory to the other. Their islands span over the date line, which causes many communication problems, for example if there is an emergency in one island on a Monday, the other islands won't receive the call, because it still is Sunday. Their main economy is the revenue of fishing licences given to (foreign) fisher boats, given the huge territory that spans between their islands. I mentioned the United World Colleges to the head of their delegation, in the hope that maybe we'll have a Kiribati student one day? She seemed quite interested.
After the dinner, there was an NGO party, which was good to finally leave some steam off.
I then spend the whole sunday sleeping and finishing off some work for UNfairplay.
Today, when we returned, there were some seeds of hope! The negotiators met on their (supposedly meeting-free) Sunday and Saturday and the first decision regarding Article 6 of the UNFCCC convention (it's about education and public awareness to climate change, quite a hot topic for the youth movement) got passed - including all the proposals the youth movement was pushing for! Success!
If you want some more updates about what is going on at the negotiations, I would refer you to ECO, an NGO newsletter that is published daily and is able to explain the negotiations much better than I can.
http://climatenetwork.org/eco-newsletters
Some key issues here are the establishment of one, fair climate fund, and even if it might not be legally binding this year (most expect the next COP to establish a legally binding agreement, and here to lay the foundations to it), there are some key issues to sort out: How much? To whom will the money go? Loans or grands? How do we ensure that governments don't just "relabel" money they would have given anyway and claim the credit for it? How can we make sure LDCs, women and indigenous communities are represented fairly? What role should the worldbank play? How can we make sure that 50% of the money will actually go to adaptation (so far 90% of the money that is located in many small funds goes to mitigation in only a handful of countries).
Another issue is how to save the forests. A new, very controversial program has been developed, REDD and REDD+. The scope of these programs is gigantic, and with so much money involved, governments are fighting hard for or against it. Basically, it is putting a price on the rainforest, allows nations that emit too much to offset their emissions by buying rainforest and makes it too expensive for countries to continue deforestation, instead they get paid for looking after the forest.
With a proper agreement on how to save the forests (the deforestation makes up around 20% of our CO2 emissions at the moment) and a proper, fair climate fund, we might actually be well underway! See ECO for more details! :)
Also, I got worldmapper to plot the number of delegates here in Cancun for me. Interesting, right? A huge thanks to Benjamin Henning from the University of Sheffield for his patience and willingness to help us!
I'll keep you posted!
Friday, December 3, 2010
We're in the guardian!
New Report available (download from unfairplay.info), no press picked up on the old one and YOUNGO (the alliance of all youth at COP meetings) expressed strong support when I presented the (latest) report to them this morning. PEWW things seem to have gone well after all.
Plus: John Vidal wrote about us! :D http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/03/cancun-climate-change-summit-zapatistas
I'm going to take minutes now at a meeting about the adaptation fund for LDCs (least developed countries). Relevant for Kiribati!
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Too good to be true?
The day started off with awesome news. Our Report kicked off as we published it this morning (Charlie and Sam were working on it until 5 am), an we got massively positive feedback. A lot of people thought our report could have a great impact on the UNFCCC process and that we might actually change things for the better. I got to talk to John Vidal (the guardian reporter, who asked for some details for his article). I got a map for our figures from worldmapper- they were so helpful! During the day, we send out the report to all press in the UK, with a possibility of getting published in the independent etc. We started a massive media campaign and send emails out the whole day.
Kiribati send us to a whole bunch of meetings to take notes for them. I went to the one meeting where the IPCC was giving an update on the scientific findings since their 4th report, which was very interesting because I knew exactly what they were talking about! (thanks to the climate change summer school, Milena and Ben, maybe you are interested in reading my notes, I uploaded them on our website www.delegationsupport.wordpress.com, under transcript archive)
Kiribati said they found our website was very helpful and their secretary said they’d email it around to all of AOSIS states (small island states block) as well as to the LDCs (Least developed countries). The African block also signaled interest. Awesome! :)
Then, just as we thought things couldn’t get better, a German journalist wrote us an email and asked us on what kind of data we’ve been basing our report on. We checked and it turns out that we - at the very beginning of research - had made a mistake and downloaded the list of delegates to COP 3 instead of COP 16! Instead of checking it, we just went along and used this list for a lot of our arguments. You cannot imagine the agony we felt when realizing this. The report, which had already been send out to EVERYBODY, maybe even worse: with many important people quoting it; was factually wrong.
A lot of our arguments were unaffected since they are based on surveys and not the number of delegates, but the discrepancy of the number of delegates was what really grabbed media attention, and of course it really damages our credibility and is a very big embarrassment.
It’s been 6 hours ago since we realized this and we immediately informed everybody to hold the report. We’ve been recounting the actual number of delegates (Brazil alone has 635 delegates, imagine counting all the UN countries, and this time the number HAD TO BE RIGHT!!!) and are going to rewrite the report tonight so everyone will have an updated version in their inbox by tomorrow morning and with a bit of luck, no major newspaper will have written about it yet. Crap :(
I’ll keep you posted on what’s happening!
We got a quote from Rajendra Pachauri, the Chair of the IPCC about our report!
"The IPCC is fully aware of the uneven capacity that exists in different countries... I have found this report [Levelling the Playing Field] extremely revealing and I certainly think it's very important to bring out these issues because it's only on the basis of awareness that collective action can be taken. So, I complement those involved in this effort for having brought out this interesting report."
And I just spoke to John Vidal, who definitively will write about us in the guardian online!
Now, I'm off sending out press releases to get coverage for the report. :)
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Day 3 - Things are kicking off!
Good news!
1. Our report about the inequality at the negotiations and the hardships for small delegations is almost done. I emailed worldmapper and they are looking into creating a map for us that represents the number of delegates per country! Should be a nice visualisation!
2. John Vidal, the lead environmental writer for the guardian will write about us and our report! Certainly online - possibly printed as well. Awesome!
3. Kiribati made us official delegates! That enables us to go to the meetings that are closed to the public and the press. Wohooo!
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