Tense Negotiations

Elizabeth May

The intensity of negotiations ramped up as the available hours to negotiate draw to a close. The youth activists here have a powerful message on their t-shirts.  It is a quote from a young woman from the Solomon Islands at last year’s COP, Christina Ora.  “You have been negotiating all my life. You cannot tell me you need more time.”

Time is running out in every way you can measure it.  The most unforgiving time line is the one in the atmosphere as greenhouse gases build up.  Negotiating deadlines may seem moveable, but delegations and governments around the world are (for the most part) keenly aware of the threat of ever-escalating climate damage.  Twenty years ago, negotiators used to talk about climate in terms of protecting the environment.  Now they talk about human lives.

Tonight the President of the COP, Patricia Espinosa, Mexico’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, convened the plenary in an informal reporting session. Minister Espinosa has been doing a fabulous job.  She is clearly wholly committed to never repeating any of the back room approaches that created such bad faith in Copenhagen.  She has been diplomatic, skilful and relentless in steering the negotiations.  On Sunday, at the informal plenary session, she assigned a pairing of governments (one North and one South) to handle consultations on all outstanding issues.  The mood tonight, as she called on each pair in turn, was cautiously optimistic.      

Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD) was handed off to Ecuador and Norway.  First the Ecuadorian minister reported that they were very close to an agreement.  She turned to the Norwegian Ambassador for additional comments.  He thanked her as a “dear friend” and said she had covered everything, only that he wanted to thank everyone in their contact group for a “spirit of compromise”: “If you want to pick fights in this room, it is easy to do so. There are many ways to pick an issue and start a fight. I think the word compromise is the most beautiful word in the language.  I know some people think compromise makes you weak.  But no family can survive without compromise.  No nation can survive without compromise, and the international community cannot survive without compromise.  So I hope all parties will compromise so tomorrow there will be no losers and no winners, but we will all succeed.”  There was strong applause.

All groups reported with “cautious optimism” except for the UK and Brazil, working on the most critical and sensitive issues of Long-term Cooperation and the Kyoto Protocol.  They were still negotiating and asked to be able to continue to do so rather than report back to plenary.

President of COP, Patricia Espinosa thanked everyone, exhorted all ministers to stay fully involved all night and sent them back to contact groups. She promised that new texts from the existing work would be circulated as they were prepared through the night.  The plenary will resume at 8:30 tomorrow morning.

While I shared a sense of cautious optimism in leaving the room, the rumour mill was less optimistic in the corridors.  So much is up in the air and the balance to get any progress from COP16 is excruciatingly delicate.

I will be surprised if the COP ends on time tomorrow at 6 pm.  Unless we have a very smooth morning plenary with no nasty surprises (and a few are rumoured) we are likely to see all night negotiations into the weekend.