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feeling the heat, and the cold, at copenhagen |
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Wednesday, 16 December 2009While ìrather tenseî negotiations continue inside the conference hall, many NGOs find themselves frozen out of the Copenhagen climate debate.
ìShame on the UN!î The hundreds of journalists and members of non-governmental organisations still waiting outside the Bella Center, where the climate negotiations are being held, are furious and donít mind who knows it.
The Danish police have just announced that anyone who wants to get inside will have to come back and try again tomorrow. Those who have not yet managed to get the entry card to which their accreditation entitled them will just have to go away.
It is the end of the afternoon at the beginning of a crucial week for an agreement at the Copenhagen meeting, and some of those in the queue have been standing outside in the cold for up to eight hours.
It does not take long for the Bella Center ñ capacity 15,000 ñ to fill up. As the hours pass, and rumours about a problem with the accreditation system filter through, many simply gave up.
ìIíve covered dozens of UN conferences, and Iíve never seen anything like this,î a German journalist tells swissinfo.ch.
It is the NGOs, however, which bear the brunt of the ìoverbookingî at ìHopenhagenî. Their representatives account for nearly half the 46,000 people who have registered. In the face of the huge numbers, the organisers have announced that as of Thursday they will be limited to 1,000 accreditations, and only 90 on Friday, the key date, when the heads of state are there.
ìWe know that in these negotiations youíll never get rules made on climate change unless the leaders feel the pressure. Iím worried to see that pressure is being removed at the very moment when itís so badly needed,î Ricken Patel, the Canadian director of a large coalition of NGOs, told journalists.
But Rosmarie B‰r, a representative of Alliance Sud, the Swiss coalition of development organisations, there to bring the views of civil society and the developing countries, saw no sinister motive.
ìThere simply isnít enough room,î she conceded.
Counter summit
NGOs are present in large numbers in Copenhagen. Some completely reject the world government system and the UN negotiations, and have organised a counter summit far removed ñ in all senses - from the Bella Center.
Those NGOs which are at the Bella Center are not taking part in the negotiations as such. But they provide information, put forward arguments and act as pressure groups, establishing contacts as best they can with the delegates and the media.
The negotiations themselves are immensely complex. They are being held as part of the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC), and also of the Kyoto Protocol, which imposed legal restrictions obliging the industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of five per cent by 2012.
Technical negotiations have been going on for months, becoming even more intense at the beginning of the Copenhagen summit, in an attempt to reach agreement within different groups on a host of issues connected with deforestation, technology transfer, financing for developing countries and CO2 emissions.
The negotiating process consists of numerous closed-door official meetings, but also of informal discussions, in an attempt to achieve a breakthrough. The outcome of all these meetings then goes to the plenary session for further debate.
In the next few days the environment ministers are going to take over the reins of the negotiations, before the heads of state arrive to try to reach a final agreement on Friday or Saturday.
At this stage, ìnegotiations are pretty tense,î according to JosÈ Romero, deputy head of the Swiss negotiating team. It is just when they want to reach a conclusion that the number of conflicting interests of all the different countries becomes most clear.
ìWe stay until 2.30 or 3.30 in the morning, talking in groups, negotiating, writing down the terms of the agreement,î he told swissinfo.ch.
Everyone has their own bottom line. Money is part of it for the developing countries, who do not believe they are in a position to reduce greenhouse gas emissions without the financial and technical help of the industrialised countries.
The latter are ready to open their purse strings, as long as the way the money is used is transparent. And among the industrialised countries, one condition is that the United States ñ which did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol ñ should make the same efforts as those countries which did ratify the protocol are doing.
A political agreement?
At this stage, observers think the summit could reach political agreement on the main principles. But a legally binding package, which could be seen as a final stage, seems to be out of the question.
Romero thinks the best that can be hoped for in Copenhagen is an ìagreement on the need for action in the area of climate change to reduce emissions, and also for a financial commitmentî.
He believes it will also come up with ìa mandate to negotiate some binding treaties as quickly as possible ñ the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol [without the United States which does not want it] and a treaty on the Convention [alleviation and adaptation to climate change] which would include the United States and the emerging countriesî.
By Pierre-FranÁois Besson (Translated from French by Julia Slater) |
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
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