Colleagues, What follows is a repost of Radoslav's 16 December 2009 posting to the list, without the original photos. I'm sending it again without the photos in order to get it into the list archives (photos apparently prompt the archiver to reject the message -- who knew?)
Yours, Michael Maniates ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Radoslav Dimitrov <radoslav.dimit...@uwo.ca> Date: Wed, Dec 16, 2009 at 9:31 AM Subject: Copenhagen update Dec. 16 15:30 pm To: Global Environmental Politics Education ListServe < gep-ed@listserve1.allegheny.edu> UPDATE EXCLUDES POLITICALLY SENSITIVE INFORMATION PLEASE DO NOT "REPLY TO ALL" Dear colleagues, Starting today, access to the global conference is severely restricted. Only 4 people from each government delegation is allowed in the high-level segment with special silver passes. The Brazilian delegation is 900 people! Only 90 (ninety) of the thousands from civil society are allowed. Protests and clashes with police are raging outside, and public transportation to the Bella center was cancelled – due to “crowd control”. I walked on foot but even government delegates were not allowed in the Bella Center for two hours – at least 300 of us were waiting in the cold before police let us in. Attached photos I took within last 12 hours. As royalty and heads of states are making speeches, negotiations have ground to a halt. This morning, the conference president Connie Hedegaard resigned. Formal expert negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol finished late last night. The group failed to resolve differences and many delegations said the text is not suitable to give to ministers. Disagreements include baseline year, length of Kyoto II, and approach to fixing country obligations (top-down versus bottom-up approach). This morning they asked the Plenary for one extra day. Everyone is frantic to give heads of state something to adopt. The second negotiations track, on global long-term cooperation, is even worse. After two years of work, they had no text to present to COP this morning. During the night there was a 6-hour delay with everyone waiting around, developing countries huddled in the corner for consultations (see my photos attached). Major differences on level of ambition and division of labor. Among the many conflicts are whether to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 or 2 degrees; cut emissions by 50 or 80-95% by 2050; and whether to demand developing countries to report all their voluntary actions in a registry - or only those funded internationally. One South American country proposed 100% cuts by developed countries by 2040. At night, the US rejected the draft text. Reasons: they object to aggregate emission cuts from industrialized countries (broadly supported 25-40%) and prefer individual national targets. the US also insists on common elements on reporting actions to apply uniformly to both developing and developed countries. On finance, Mexico and Norway who tabled the main proposals for international climate finance, objected that the text does not fully reflect their proposals. The meeting resumed at 4:45 am – and concluded the entire text is “unfinished business.” Last night, Saudi Arabia described Copenhagen as already a success - a telling reflection on the state of affairs. Best, Radoslav S. Dimitrov, Ph.D. Associate Professor Department of Political Science University of Western Ontario Social Science Centre London, Ontario Canada N6A 5C2 Tel. +1(519) 661-2111 ext. 85023 Fax +1(519) 661-3904 Email: rdimi...@uwo.ca
