Bolivia at the UN climate talks: “We need to stop going in circles”
September 6, 2012

 

In the Bangkok session this week, developing countries expressed frustration at the slow progress of the UN ‘informal’ talks on climate change.

In Monday’s LCA (Long-term Cooperative Action) talks, Columbia asked the delegates to discuss the concerns of developing countries.  United States, however, said that discussion of these concerns this would “pre-empt” the discussions next week by the Adaptation Committee.  They then proceeded to read out the agenda.

The proliferation of bodies under the UNFCCC seems to have led to delays and disruption.

Bolivia thanked the US for their extensive reading of next week’s agenda, but told countries: “we need to stop going in circles”… “we need to discuss substance and make progress”.

The extensive reading by the US of the following week’s Committee agenda actually reminded me of something – the ‘filibuster’ tactic used in the Senate of the US itself.

Developing country voices are not being heard:

The fact that the UN sessions are informal has meant that proposals to the Chair were not being discussed. Bolivia said they had submitted a paper to the Chair of the LCA on 30 August, on behalf of the G77 group.

On Monday, Bolivia asked the Chair – why was it not there?

A delegate later told me that since the session was “informal”, the Chair had no obligation to put it on the table.

That means that the views of G77 countries were not being heard properly:  yet this Group of 77 countries represent some 80% of the world’s population!

These Bangkok talks are ‘informal’ since countries claimed that they could not afford to pay for the translation services required for a ‘formal session’.

Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, announced before the session that: “Due to the…financial constraints, work during the additional session will be of an informal nature, hence there will be no formal plenary meetings, no interpretation or webcast services and no official documents”.

Why do countries have so little commitment to the process?  Observers argue this is a deliberate tactic.

Once again, attempts to push discussions into informal sessions and closed meetings (where civil society cannot observe the discussions) mean the talks become even less transparent.

Naura, on behalf of the island states, requested an informal note or “Chair’s summary” of the adaptation discussions so far. United States, however, once again blocked this request: “we cannot agree to and oppose any draft decision.”

“We cannot accept a written statement.” (United States)

In fact, the Chair was not even present at this meeting, but had been replaced by a stand-in. The multitude of meetings seemed to have reduced the capacity of the Chair.

Meanwhile, the world continues to hurtle towards 3 degrees of warming.

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A slice of the broader narrow picture
June 17, 2011

Last night was UNfairplay’s first ever side event!

Side event = boring, dry, uninspiring? Not necessarily, I know I have been surprised at how engaging issues of participation have been for those involved in UNfairplay, and to those who we try to convey our findings too. Our aim was to draw attention to the report but also to highlight other schemes created to plug participation gaps at the UNFCCC. I think the reason our arguments are gaining traction and interest from all sides is very simply because they are issues of justice, and plain unfairness. My parents always hated my “its not fair” phase at the age of 7, well it’s back.

UNfairplay presented on the findings of our report (‘Levelling the Playing Field’) and updated on some of the updates and ways forward that we’ve been blogging about at Bonn.

We also had speakers from The Legal Response Initiative, the video for which you can see below, if you’re feeling that geeky. I promise we did not pay him to drop our name that many times!

UNDP were up next (United Nations Development Programme) to talk about how they build capacity before and during negotiations by doing in country training sessions, explaining publications in the native language etc. It was really really good to hear a UN programme that was already aware of the deficiences inherent in the process, showing that awareness is certainly not the problem of the Secretariat. In our experience, since the Secretariat (of the UNFCCC) can only do what the parties tell it to do, and with money they are given by the parties, it is more likely that they just dont have the funding at the moment. The mandate is also lacking, but we know for instance that Bolivia have publicly condemned their issues of interpretation and translation, stating last week that the 6million that went into Bangkok should have gone into translation.

We then had the video presence of Nick from Earth Negotiations Bulletin (ENB) who produce summaries of the negotiations every day, in a variety of languages, and for free. This service is very valuable to delegates and civil society alike, although in our view we would say that whilst they are perfect to maintain current knowledge, it is not sufficient information to negotiate with or form a position from. That is, unless you are an under represented delegation with very little time and therefore choice as to how much, rather than what, they read.

Last but not least was Achala from Eurocapacity. This is an amazing NGO initiative which trains up new delegates from the Least Developed Countries (LDC’s) giving them access to specialists and NGO’s that work within the negotiations. Valuable institutional knowledge is passed on by retired and experienced negotiators. All these trained negotiators take up offers on the basis that they contribute to a delegation and focus on one stream of the negotiations. Why?

Because there is no way that delegates can have enough knowledge to be useful in negotiations unless they have some focus. One stream, I can assure you, is more than plenty to deal with.

Then this morning (friday) Jamie, from Scotland, another YOUNGO (the Youth Consistutency) delivered an intervention in this morning’s SBI, the drafting of which UNfairplay had contributed to because we wanted to emphasise that interpretation and translation facilities are simply not sufficient. Although there are interpretators in main plenaries, the fact that most plenaries now get moved into contact groups and closed meetings, where interpretation is never provided, this situation is getting worse, and only like to get worse in future. See Jamie in action by clicking here.

So that’s it from UNfairplay in Bonn 2011, we hope you’ve enjoyed hearing about our efforts. If you fancy joining the group (in any capacity) and if you would like to join our info e-list to hear up-coming opportunities, drop us an email: unfairplay.fig@gmail.com. We also have some useful guidance on how to support delegations if you want to give it a go, downloadable at the bottom of the website: www.unfairplay.info

We know our work isn’t sexy, and doesn’t necessarily make for a brilliant read, but issues of fairness are so fundamental to international co-operation and respect for cultural integrity that we are making it our priority (in the quest for climate safety at least) So the truth is that the nitty gritty, in such a complex and dry process, will never be anything more than frumpy!

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Money, money, money
June 14, 2011

You may or may not know, I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t, but the Subsidiary Body on Implementation (SBI), which is a stream of the talks, currently has on its agenda a number of important ideas for improving civil society participation in this process.

These ideas include setting up an online consultation system for every major agenda item that is being discussed. This would act as a means of gauging support, recieiving alernatives before they are discussed, and possibly during negotiations, but online so the proposer does not need to be in attendance of meeting (potentially); also for a larger number of meetings to be webcast (although this probably still excludes closed meetings); a voluntary trust fund to aid participation of observers from certain developing countries.

Whilst all of these are to be welcomed, by UNfairplay and by anyone in an observer organisation/civil society (all UN labels for people who are not media or party delegates), the submissions are still not quite strong enough. Submissions asking this, and endorsements by the Chairs of the negotiations, have still resulted in a block on this issue by the US and Canada….as you might well expect.

That is only one indicator of many, but one massively inescapable stumbling block remains, that is, funding.

Without funding from the parties (it is a party driven process as we keep being told) the Secretariat does not have the means to carry out the things it is mandated by the parties to do. e.g set up an online consultation system, provide transcripts, improve webcasts, organise a meeting etc.

The outcome of the budget meeting has been positive; as the SBI chair predicted, a 15% (maybe 22% increase if some additional roles are added to the Secretariats mandate) increase in the Secretariats budget for the coming year has been put forward, and just requires consensus to be adopted, we’ll update you in the coming days. Bernaditas, the famous negotiator here speaking for the Philippines, reminds us that the increase in budget reflects the rise in obligations placed on developing countries under the Cancun Agreement, including resources for bi-annual reporting.

UNfairplay might suggest that some of the money go into translation as priority no.1.

Then maybe the UNFCCC could consider funding its own website improvements aspriority no.2, instead of waiting on a donor for phase 2 of the website development which could just never come…phase 2 could be the beginning of increased global participation by observer organisations around the world, and, delegates who cannot afford to come but need information on the Adaptation Fund side events, and would like to ask Q’s etc, as well as offering their position via an online forum. I am not a techie, or a geek, but I am sure there are ways to supplement the current system (but not necessarily replace it), to aid participation and capacity to contribute to the UNFCCC.

Priority no.3 should of course be transcripts. We go on and on, but that’s because they could be so useful!

Even within the Youth Constituency I could not make all the meetings, but I know some of them are of interest to me, or I feel I should go, so what do I do? I look to the minutes and notes taken from the meetings….then I can catch up and contribute in full updated knowledge. If I don’t read the minutes, or none are produced, I immediately feel like I don’t know enough to be able to contribute in the meeting, or offer any constructive comments etc. This applies equally to delegates as part of a much much bigger process.

Why does the UN not provide transcripts of negotiations already? Because it is politically unsavoury. Countries like to be able to evade being pinned down on previous statements, and the details of their position. This ignorance (which would come from not attending, or not having time to watch the webcasts afterwards) is particularly helpful in confusing delegates whose first language is not English, who are inexperienced in the process, who are part of an under represented delegation, or just happened to zone out for a minute in plenary. Importantly, a lot of those delegates will be from countries who are already feeling the effects of climate change, and so the perpetual suppression of the affected voices goes on.

Transcripts don’t need lots of bandwidth like the webcasts (which are available to everyone), they are word-searchable so it should take less time to catch up than webcasts, they would eliminate misunderstandings arising from strong accents or bad english, and they are easily translatable. It has to be said though, our proposal of transcripts could never be implemented without a party mandate, so we’re working on that one.

You may be asking yourself why wouldn’t we put funding of delegates from under represented countries as priority no.1…well, Helena is busy number crunching, and so unless we are mistaken, we could have some interesting news for you tomorrow.

[for more info on some of UNfairplay's proposals find our report here]

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Passionate Pragmatism
June 11, 2011

Hello from Bonn, I’m Sophie and I’m new to Unfairplay.

Coming along to Bonn as my first involvement in the UNFCCC process has been a steep learning curve.

So what has my experience so far been?

This is a world of acronyms. At time it feels almost like learning a new language. It can be rather confusing, but as with learning a new language, it comes with a buzz as you realise you are slowly starting to get your head around it.

One that note, here’s an update from Unfairplay and an insight into some of what the team have been up to this week.

Over the first week of the UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn the Secretariat have engaged with civil society groups in various settings. Unfairplay have been at these sessions and have both contributed directly, and also heard many of the issues around improving participation that Unfairplay work on raised by other groups.

Sessions included a civil society consultation workshop with the Secretariat that spanned the day on Wednesday. Also meetings with Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary to the Secretariat, firstly with YOUNGO (the youth constituency: http://www.youthclimate.org), and then civil society groups (including YOUNGO), which provided another arena to communicate on key issues. Unfairplay has taken part in these sessions and others, asking questions directly to Christiana, as well as handing her a copy of the report.

A great example of  the team’s  input came at a side event on Thursday, in a consultation on the redesign of the UNFCCC website, when a proposal from Unfairplay to improve participation in the process was met with positive response. The suggestion was to use ‘tagging’ within webcasts from the Plenary so people can watch sessions remotely, but specifically have the ability to skip to the part of the video they’d like to see, rather than having to watch the video all the way through. UNfairplay got some great feedback and support from Andrew Ure of the Australian delegation who was very keen on this idea, having a sort of revelation moment as he realised how much easier it would make his job! So, exciting news for that proposal.

This is now being taken forward into a half hour interview with the Secretariat. There is also a survey available, which if you have experience of using the UNFCCC website, please please fill in: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/G82Q538

As mentioned, the exciting (in this context!) consultation workshop hosted by the Secretariat on Wednesday resulted in a consolidated list of proposals, with a report to follow, on the ideas from civil society in their engagement now being fed back to the UNFCCC process. The hope is of having the ideas fully considered by the parties with the request to adopt the suggestions. Issues raised include language barriers with all meeting being conducted in English and closed meetings where security on the doors at many sessions prevent entry. These, along with proposals, are being passed onto the parties and Unfairplay will continue to follow and participate in this process under YOUNGO.

On a broader note, throughout the negotiations the issues of slow progress and stalling are rife. But wise words came out of a Global Campaign for Climate Action daily briefing with YOUNGO this week; that there are two options in the face of this:

One is to adopt a sense of lethargy.

The other is to continue to work passionately on the solutions, with the hope the process will catch up.

Lets continue with the second option!

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Christiana gets it…
June 10, 2011

Dear readers,

I hope we haven’t left you waiting for an update from Bonn for too long. The lack of reporting fortunately does not mean we have been inactive, in fact, the opposite is the case. Conny has been in Bonn since Monday, and Isobel, Isabel , Lena and Sophie have joined her tuesday night.

We used the opportunity of a side-event organised by the University of Zurich and LEAD International about “Building capacity of developing country leaders and negotiators to influence international talks.” to learn more about their research, which closely relates to our field of interest. The CIS-centre of the ETH Zurich researched in particular about the negotiating habits of small delegations and had a discussion about how to help small delegations. Interested? (Here is a link to their presentation)

Excitingly, we finally got a chance to formally hand over our report “Levelling the Playing Field” to Christiana Figueres, the secretary general of the UNFCCC. This is her giving it the once over:


YOUNGO, the youth constituency here, had a 30 minute-long meeting with Christiana, where they made some time for us (thanks!). Additionally, we got a chance to ask Christiana of how the UNFCCC secretariat is planning to address the issue of imbalanced negotiation capacity. Her answer: Unfortunately, it comes down to the limited funds of the secretariat. If there is money available, she will send more delegates to the conferences. Secondly, there are other UN-agencies (like UNEP) that have a larger physical presence in many developing countries as well as a longstanding cooperation with the local governments. Hence Christiana hopes that those agencies could be the ones training new delegates for the negotiations.

Also, we’re working quite closely with with YOUNGO and other youth organizations. For example, Conny moderated the YOUNGO meeting yesterday and helped out with the fossil of the day. Isobel moderated the YOUNGO meeting today, and most of us are involved in the campaign planning for the youth campaign here in Bonn. Together with PushEurope, YOUNGO will encourage the EU to move their emissions reduction target to 30 % as well as to lobby all delegations to raise their ambitions.

One last head’s up: Next week, we are organizing the very first UNfairplay Side-event! We’ll keep you posted.

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The key policy issues here at Bonn 2011
June 10, 2011

Just to give you a quick update on what the main issues at stake are here in Bonn, the UN climate talks 2011.

1. The extension of the Kyoto Protocol to a second commitment period after 2012.

Developing countries (LDC’s, AOSIS etc) are definitely in favour of a second commitment period, as they see the alternative being voluntary pledges with no legally binding obligations. This would mean we have no hope of reducing maximum temperature rise to 2 degrees C (or 1.5 degrees if we are being very hopeful). Unfortunately, some countries like Russia, Canada or Japan have said they would block a decision to renew the Kyoto Protocol. If we don’t renew KP, which took about 18 years to negotiate (despite it being very weak in commitments anyway), then we’re back to square one without any legally binding agreement. We cannot let this happen! The other alternative, suggested by the U.S, is ‘pledge and review’, a voluntary system of countries pledging emission reduction targets, set by individual countries, with no reference to whether the global reduction is sufficient to achieve maximum temperature rise of 2 degrees. The problem with pledge&review is that it is NOT legally binding, and there is no enforcement mechanism when a country fails to meet their targets.

2. There is no money for another intercessional meeting between now and COP17 in Durban. Countries aren’t keen to fund it because the last intercessional in Bankok consisted entirely of agenda discussions (!) and, until yesterday, so did Bonn…. Maybe next week the EU will commit the money. Christiana Figueres (the secretary general of the UNFCCC) urges countries to make a decision and said that unless money is being put forward by the 17th June, there will not be another meeting. After that date, the secretariat would not have enough time to prepare another meeting.

3. Current emissions reductions pledges are not good enough to ensure a maximum temperature rise of 2 degrees, never mind the 1.5 degrees threshold necessary to ensure the survival of all countries and all peoples. For example, Canada’s new emission reduction targets that they presented here are actually LESS than their previous ones (very poor ones anyway) from the Kyoto Protocol. According to a new report by the UNEP, even if all the pledges are met as promised (quite unlikely in itself), we are still emitting around 5 gigatonnes of more CO2 than allowed to stick to 2 degrees.

Overall, the atmosphere is indeed not very productive. Many of the discussions go on behind closed doors and some big blocking countries (like Saudi Arabia, which wants to be reimbursed for any losses in oil sales or Canada, which got three fossils yesterday) are holding things up. On the other site, all tracks now have finally opened and are meeting and we youth are fully involved in planning a campaign to call on countries to change the mood and raise the ambition!

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from under the firewall
October 7, 2010

The atmosphere at the UNFCCC conference in China seems to be quiet and subdued, compared to the chaos at Copenhagen. Delegates comment that the negotiations are “slow”. One Kenyan delegate commented with frustration that the room full of lawyers had spent 45 minutes arguing about the definition of one word. He said that there were too many lawyers, and not enough scientists in the negotiations.

In addition, the Great Chinese Firewall has blocked access to many NGO websites (including this one!) which may hinder the access to information. Although the UN conference is supposed to be international and independent, even the UN conference computer room is subject to the firewall!Initial results from the ‘Filling Information Gaps’ Survey have found that some country delegates did not know that the ‘webcasts’ of meetings were provided on the UNFCCC website. It seems that access to information is clearly unequal.All delegates interviewed so far have been extremely interested in this project. Some different suggestions have been made for making the UN fairer; one suggested that there should be a limit to the number of delegates that are allowed, and a few suggested there needs to be more translations in the smaller meetings.

Transparency is still an issue, too. Most of the meetings are closed to observers. That means that only government delegates and the observer states are allowed in. Actually, there seems to be more meetings labelled with ‘CLOSED’ than there was at the previous talks in Bonn in June. I do hope this is not a growing trend. Unfortunately, at this crucial stage in the talks, with so many closed meetings it is still difficult to work out exactly what is going on.

 

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CALL OUT FOR CANCUN
September 10, 2010

If you would like to attend the negotiations in Cancun solely as a volunteer for UNfairplay, from 29th November – 10th December 2010, and need accreditation, please email us at: unfairplay.fig@gmail.com

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STOP PRESS: the guide is ready!
July 21, 2010

UNfairplay’s guide to supporting delegations at the UN Climate Negotiations is now available to download from the toolbar at the bottom of the website underneath the comments on each page.

It offers guidance on getting accredatation, media coverage, places to stay, travelling and stories of our experiences that you can learn from.

Feel free to download and share as much as you like

UNfairplay Love

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United we stand
June 10, 2010

By now you will probably know the importance of the numbers 1.5C and 350ppm. (If not, check Sam’s blog post below.) As a session of negotiations was about to begin, the youth here staged a silent protest at the entrance. We wore t-shirts saying ‘how old will you be in 2050?‘ and held signs simply saying 1.5c. Sam and I whiled away the minutes trying to make eye contact with all delegates who walked past. Only the good guys could look us in the eye, those being African nations and small island states. A plethora of old, Caucasian , and Asian men and women couldn’t.

One of the 2 delegates from Barbados looked me straight in the eye and said “united we stand”, and member of the Secretariat breezed past saying “thank you. we need you.” and then a traditionally dressed African female delegate made the effort to say thank you to each one of us there.

Sadly, in the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice, Saudi Arabia killed off a feasibility report on the science of 1.5C to be presented at Cancun, essentially silencing the scientific argument that 1.5 is the necessary target.

They had the cheek to suggest that the LDC’s (Less Developed Countries) consult Google to find out the science on why they think they are going underwater! All just a tactic to kill the motion, and kill time-in more ways than one.

Other countries made no effort to block the feasability report because they knew the Saudi’s would block it so they need not tar their image by saying what they really think. As far as negotiations are concerned this is classic Saudi Arabia who always try to put a spanner in the works. So far at Bonn they have blocked talks on the taxation of aircraft and shipping fuels (currently untaxed) and now this, although is it any wonder when every delegate they send has come from the Ministry for Petroleum?!

A bad day for the negotiations for sure.

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