ClimateDebate

 Writing this the Danish PM Lars Loekke is trying to open the High Level Plenary, but Brazil, India, China, Ecuador and Sudan/G77 do not wish to proceed before the text from the AWG-LCA is on the table, and are very concerned about the planned tabling of a new Danish text.

 UN SG Ban Ki-Moon is also facing trouble in the corridors:

 Financial Times quoted by BBC:

“UN chief Ban Ki-moon suggests a climate change deal might not include a figure on financial aid for developing countries.”

 While in speech at COP15 Tuesday

“Financing will be key, particularly in helping the poorest countries. That is why we can welcome the emerging consensus among developed countries to provide approximately $10 billion dollars annually for the next three years to The Copenhagen Launch Fund. With this money, we can deliver real results: strengthen climate resilience; limit deforestation; jump-start; low emissions growth. But a fast start is just that, a start. $10 billion annually will not solve all our problems. Here in Copenhagen we must also address medium and long-term financing scaled up to needs. We cannot leave here without an understanding of how we will proceed on this vital question.”

 A text w.o. long-term financial aid is not an option.

All is not just meetings, unless you are in the specific text-negotiations. Might sound contradictory as the reason to meet at COP15 is to negotiate text. But COP15 is just so much more.

At the core you have the negotiators, who need to have prepared texts for the Ministers coming in during the weekend, who needs to have text ready for the Heads of States coming in Wednesday, who needs to have decisions ready for the World next Friday.

Surrounding them you have “the professional Civil Society” closely following the negotiations, knowing the subjects, the positions and the discussions, being ready with suggestions for solutions, and putting on pressure when things are about to go wrong. Also acting is the business and industry having their interests.

The next layer is the media observing and reporting – when there is no breaking news in the negotiations they’ll report on anything moving or dying, as long as they consider it being of public interest.

Then you find the “outsider” NGOs acting outside to the Bella Center, working with and involving greater constituencies, educating and interacting more closely with the general public, staging events and mobilising for action.

Whether being insider or outsider NGO you do also use the COP as an opportunity and a venue to network, establishing new or strengthening old contacts and networks, to share your knowledge and expertise, to participate in side-events learning things you maybe didn’t know, planning for the future where decisions taken and not taken in the Bella Center needs to be implemented.

And then there are the events and cultural stuff. Copenhagen is not only filled with activities closely related to the climate negotiations (like “Klimaforun‘09” in the DGI-byen, “Klima for Dummies” in Borups Højskole, “The Bottom Meeting” at Christiania). The COP is also utilised as an opportunity to frame or stage more general cultural activities, like “Hopenhagen” at the Town Hall Square. Tuesday afternoon I attended an event at the beautiful museum “Thorvaldsens”, where my youngest daughter and her choir presented Songs for the Earth. It is a big choir so the parents and relatives did create a crowd but apart from that not many ordinary people or COP-participants were present. I think too many things are getting the “climate-label” so people get tired of it all or stop noticing – or if they are in the process they don’t have time to attend.

The same evening we had our “get-together” reception at the UNA-office for participants from or friends of UNAs. A nice group turned up and we had a good opportunity to interact and get familiarised.

Wednesday some of the reception-participants had the opportunity to present their work in a side-event organised at the “Klimaforum’09” titled “Making marginalised voices heard in the UN climate process”. It was interesting to learn about the experiences of India, Brazil, Tanzania and Finland. Being a political scientist and keen observer of overall civil society involvement, I particularly appreciated the Finnish observations on the issue of participating not being the same as influencing (“Civil servants use these sometimes as synonyms; CSO participation is not an objective in itself (at least not for the NGOs); Representatives of NGOs see that it is not desirable to legitimate administration procedures with non-effective participation; Especially Sámi people are fed up with quasi-participation” Jenni Kauppila). Amongst the other interesting points raised was Tanzania quoting a local fisherman “What do I care about [abstract threats, i.e. Aids and Climate] when I can die tonight fishing?”.

The genie is out of the bottle and something hit the fan. It is only 10 hours ago we asked the Danish negotiators about the Danish non-paper that had been circulated. We couldn’t get it because 1) it was confidential 2) it didn’t exist anymore. The paper seemed to be an attempt to table one coherent package but seeing the futility of this attempt, the Climate Ministry’s piecemeal approach took over, i.e. working on many issue-papers. One hour later The Guardian leaked the old paper resulting in strong reactions. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/dec/08/copenhagen-climate-summit-disarray-danish-text

What seemed to be a dull Wednesday now will become a day of damage control.

Well, it got off to a good start – or so the general feeling of the opening is. Especially the President of the conference, Ms Connie Hedegaard, did give an upbeat opening speech where she emphasised that now is the time to act. No pointing finger at that. But it was a bit peculiar to see and listen to the Danish Prime Minister, his comments on “we are all commited to take action” and his reference to the civil society: “…the involvement of the Civil Society is of paramount importance”.

Nice words, but not really based on reality. For one thing, there are no NGOs on the Danish delegation, being thrown out more than a year ago (and meaning that the next reporting on the Aarhus Convention can no longer contain the paragraph on Denmark involving NGOs on delegation in international environmental negotiations). This policy fully in line with the Governments policy of the last 8 years of disengaging with experts and people who know what they are talking about (“smagsdommere” in new-speech), replacing independent panels with groups loyal to Government policy or removing funding to inconvenient truth. One consequence for Danish UNA is that we no longer are able to participate in the UNs General Assembly on a regular basis.

Later in the day PM Lars Løkke Rasmussen hosted an event on “Delivering the message” to allow civil society present conclusions and recommendations to the COP-presidency. Funny thing was that the State Ministry did neither consult nor inform the Danish NGO-coalition most closely following the negotiations and facilitating NGO-involvement in the COP-process, the Danish ’92 Group. They/we had to read about it in the side-event schedule. Not to criticise Mr Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace International, who was directly asked by the State Ministry to attend, but it seems a bit strange, after the PM have cancelled two prior meetings with us.

Green NGOs in the USA are today referring to the Danish Government and PM under the heading “Scandal! Bullying!” Just hosting a climate conference does not automatically make you green.

The clock at unfccc.int is not counting the days anymore; we are down to 11 hours! About time, as we have waited for this event since 2007. On this last day before the COP starts the mood amongst people could be described as anxious anticipation.

At “Øksnehallen” the Climate Exchange ended 4 days of exhibits, lectures and discussions, and I just managed to catch a glimpse of what had been going on out there. Met Jeffrey, a friend from the CSD and WSSD-processes I haven’t seen since 2003, but only for a brief moment before he was dragged away to finalise a joint statement of participating organisations.

Prior to that Lars Myrthue had happily invited me to the reception Monday on Øko-nets latest CD-release with the artists Sara Grabow, Thomas Buttenschøn, Povl Dissing & Rasmus Lyberth, Mikael K & Klondyke, Henrik Strube, Juncker & Jonas Breum + Jøden, Mike Sheridan & Kenneth Thordal, Kinski, Mouritz/Hørslev Projektet, Donna Cadogan, Bænken Inc. and Tamra Rosanes. If you are not doing anything else, it takes place Monday December 7^th, 15.00-18.00 in RÅHUSET, Onkel Dannys Plads 7, 1711 København V.

I managed to be in time for the opening at Borups Højskole of the Danish Folk High Schools Come2gether-project “Climate for Dummies”, that will end Saturday the 12^th – to be a relaxed place with adult edutainment. Problem was that the opening was not in time for me. That is, Kim Nguyen (Ride Planet Earth) who set out from Brisbane on bike August 10^th 2008 to reach Borups Højskole December 6^th at 14.00 was slightly delayed. Had a nice talk with his parents about non-formal education, one of Kim’s Austrian hosts, and Anders whom I spent memorable moments in Johannesburg with during WSSD. Line and Berit and their team have worked wonders and I am sure Borups will be a natural meeting point for people the next week.

Had planned to get some papers at the Bella Center but as I was approaching I first noticed a fairly large queue in front of the East entrance, then the even larger queue waiting to cross the street and show ID’s to the police – and decided to just bike on home. Turned out to be a wise decision as Anni, the SG of the Danish UNA, later called to tell about Anne Marie, our media-coordinator, who after 1½ hour in line had been turned away by the police at 17.30 because they claimed they would not be able to make it in time for the closure of the registration. Funny thing is, had it been any other day the police would have been right, but Sunday the registration was to be open ‘till 21.00. Somebody should have told the police. Anni also referred to the registration people when telling about the Monday opening, and the limit of only 500 NGOs in the Bella Center. That must be in the plenary, as it is not big enough for the many registered participants. We’ll be wiser tomorrow!