Kyoto

Having bundled up in a futile attempt to avoid the wind, I am still disentangling myself when a colleague greets me with a barrage of questions, “did you see the news this morning? How can they do that? What does an international treaty mean anyway?” I have barely managed to divest myself of hat and scarf when a fellow Canadian walks past, “ah, great news from home, eh?” he asks sarcastically. I finally make it up the stairs and turn on my computer. My first email is from an American colleague, “did you see this” she writes, “Canada has pulled out of Kyoto”.

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We are milling about waiting for a bus and Ushama, a Nigerian woman also staying at the university residence, has just described the NGO she has set up to address climate change impacts in her community. She is trying to understand why countries like Canada and the United States are refusing to do anything, “How can they not see this”, she asks. “We are already facing the impacts of climate change. This isn’t tomorrow, it’s today. How can they not see what they are doing to us?” The bus arrives and she starts walking towards it. Before she gets in she pauses and turns to me, “We must have faith”, she says, “we must have faith that eventually they will see us.”

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I feel like the only person in the UK unsurprised by Canada’s withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. Facing unrelenting growth in emissions fuelled by massive expansions of the fossil fuel industry and heavy transportation, Canada publicly declared that it was abandoning its Kyoto targets four years ago. Canada’s Kyoto target was 6% below 1990 levels. Its current emissions are roughly 30% higher than its 1990 levels. In the absence of any consolidated federal policy, the only way Canada could become compliant with Kyoto would be to purchase emission reduction credits, politically and economically an impossible feat for the federal government.

While debriefing about Durban over a cup of tea an extremely knowledgeable European colleague asks me in complete befuddlement, “but doesn’t Canada have any idea what this is doing to its reputation?” The issue that seems most shocking to many people, especially those in Africa and Europe, is not that Canada did not meet its Kyoto target, but that it is pulling out of an international legally binding treaty. It is turning its back on the global community.

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I am sitting on the floor, leaning against the temporary wall at the back of the Baobob plenary room. At first the security guards didn’t let people do this, but already, at the end of only the second day, they are resigned. There are too many people taking notes, tweeting, and typing on their laptops to chase away, and not enough official observer seats to lure them off the floor. One enterprising young man has figured out where to lift the carpet to find a plug for his laptop.

Gambia has the floor on behalf of all Least Developed Countries. They are making a desperate plea for the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol. They have taken up the rallying cry for the Africa group, “The Kyoto Protocol must not be buried on African soil”. These countries need the funds the Clean Development Mechanism provides. They need the adaptation money that institutions like the Green Climate Fund promise. They need a global stage on which to openly discuss their relationship with climate change, including climate impacts. The Kyoto Protocol is more than a piece of paper from this perspective – it is a formalization of a global community based on recognition of obligations stemming from industrial development and fossil fuel use that cross national boundaries.

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Canada, of course, is not the only country to have turned its back on Kyoto. The US signed Kyoto, but the senate refused to ratify it because of fears about American competitiveness. The long-standing Canadian federal government position has been that it will not move “unilaterally” on climate change in the absence of comparable American efforts, regardless of the efforts being undertaken by other countries. This position is understandable. The US is Canada’s largest trading partner and the two share many industries. Just as fear stopped the US from signing Kyoto, fear has prevented Canada from taking any action on climate change. By declaring any actions taken without the US “unilateral”, Canada renders the rest of the globe, and actions that are being taken in many places, invisible. Canada and the United States are like a pair of teenagers, so engrossed in each other they are completely blind to what is going on around them.

I don’t have the heart to tell this to Ushama, but no Canada does not see her. She is invisible. Her people are invisible. Because from Canada’s perspective, there is no such thing as a global community, there is only America.

Forecast: Plate-throwing and temper tantrums until 2015

I can’t help feeling like the kid who had to leave before the party ended. Due to a pre-booked plane ticket and the expectation that the COP would finish on time, I am snuggled in my own bed halfway around the world when I finally hear the news I have been waiting for – COP 17 is over and has successfully given birth to a new acronym, which I believe I am one of the first to be using. The Ad-hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action came into life an hour ago this morning at about 6 am South Africa time. Since this may be one of the only times it is ever referred to in its full title, let me use its acronym right away, the AWG – DPEA.

Already the news calls this a ‘landmark deal’, and in some ways it is. The AWG-DPEA does not contain targets for countries to reduce their emissions. Nor is the AWG-DPEA a legal binding instrument. The AWG-DPEA is exactly what it says it is, a working group. And does it ever have its work cut out for it. Paragraph 5 of the AWG-DPEA lays it out,

“the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action shall plan its work in the first half of 2012, including, inter alia, on mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology development and transfer, transparency of action, and support and capacity-building, drawing upon submissions from Parties and relevant technical, social and economic information and expertise.”

Now you might be scratching your heads, trying to figure out why this one and half page document that does not contain targets, doesn’t yet have a clear work plan, and is not legally binding is a landmark deal. The AWG-DPEA is important because it creates a forum for countries to keep talking and because it promises to “explore options for a range of actions that can close the ambition gap with a view to ensuring the highest possible mitigation efforts by all Parties”.

Think of the UNFCCC as a disfunctional family. The underlying tension at Durban was whether it was worth trying to be a family any longer, or if it was time to throw in the towel and divorce each other. The AWG-DPEA makes the claim that climate change is global – we are actually stuck on one planet together – which means divorce isn’t really an option. For those who read my last post, you will note the inclusion of “all parties” in this. Unlike the Kyoto Protocol, whatever comes out of the AWG-DPEA will demand emission reductions from developing countries. There is no guarantee that the divisions between China, the USA, Japan, the US, Canada, India and the rest of the developing countries will not continue to stymie actual emission reductions, but there is now a place to continue having these arguments. The AWG-DPEA is supposed to reach a final agreement by 2015. Expect plate-throwing and temper tantrums in the interrim.

All this sounds positive, in a tension laced kind of way. And it sort of is. However. However, don’t forget that the current pledges of emission reductions are tiny compared to where they need to be if there is any hope of maintaining emission levels below those scientistis suggest would be prudent. There may be a global agreement to keep talking, but there is not a global agreement that mandates emission reductions and frankly, there never will be. The UNFCCC does not and can not reduce emissions inside soverign states. Countries reduce emissions. Provinces and states reduce emissions. City planners reduce emissions. People reduce emissions.

This issue is far too important to let countries have free rein in the international sphere – I am unconvinced that they are adequate guardians of the global good. Instead, if the AWG-DPEA and its seed of hope for global cooperation is the child of the UNFCCC, let us be the village that raises it.

P.S. Twitter feeds tell me that an extension of the Kyoto Protocol and an agreement on the $100 billion Green Climate Fund were also reached, but I can’t yet find the actual texts. Following the sage advice to get rid of one thing each time you bring something new into your home, there is also agreement to retire the AWG-LCA in a year. Everybody in Durban has probably collapsed in heap, and we won’t have any clarity about the details for a little while. Meanwhile, the UK dawn has finally arrived and it is time for a cup of tea.

What happened up there?

It is 9:30pm, pitch-dark and pouring rain. I have been awake for 35 hours, crossed two continents, and am standing in front of a security booth in an otherwise entirely deserted university campus. It is my first night in Durban, and there has been a miscomunication about my accommodation. I sent payment to the university for the full two weeks of COP17, but they neglected to tell me that they were not open until the second day. Robert, a security guard with a fondness for Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, commiserates with me when he finds out I am Canadian. “Ha” he chortles, “you are Canadian and that is one of the worst countries, it must be very hard to be a Canadian here right now”. Finally the phone in his security booth rings. Someone has located the sub-warden of one of the dorms and after much negotiation they are willing to open a room for me. Still chuckling at my unfortunate nationality, Robert leads me off down a broken sidewalk lit only sporadically by dim, flickering lamps.

Two weeks later I am standing in the Johannesburg airport on my way home. I turn around and see a leading American academic and policy expert. “How was your COP”, he asks? “Well”, I say frankly, “it was somewhat frustrating considering I'm Canadian ”. He throws his head back and laughs so hard his eyes squint shut, “I forgot you were Canadian, but I don't think frustrating is really the word for it”. We are on the same flight so we make our way through the airport together. “What happened up there?”, he asks. “Canada used to have a stellar reputation, a stellar reputation based on fact. It was the country that helped the WTO disputes, it sent peacekeepers to places that needed it, it helped countries talk. And now, now you are worse than the United States”.

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Being Canadian, I can’t leave COP 17 without thinking about our role in these negotiations. Reputation is a difficult thing to measure, but neither Robert nor the US expert were exaggerating. The majority of the world’s countries are furious with Canada for not meeting its Kyoto commitments, and for being unwilling to sign onto a second commitment period. Perhaps even worse, Canada's lack of clarity about whether it will or will not completely withdraw from Kyoto has eroded any lingering trust others have in it. The charge is that Canada is negotiating in bad faith, as well as having entirely failed to meet any of the promises it made. As a delegate from Benin says, “How can we trust them? They didn’t even try, and we are the ones facing the impacts of climate change.”

Once again Guy Saint-Jacques, Canada’s chief negotiator lowers his voice slightly and slows down, signalling how reasonable he is being in the face of hysteria. “We are here to cooperate”, he says, “climate change is a global problem and we want a collective agreement”. This sounds innocuous, even honourable, but is the central issue preventing a deal in Durban.

For years people have used “CBD” as a short-hand description of the UNFCCC’s founding principle. CBD refers to “common but differentiated responsibilities” which has been interpreted to mean that developed countries have more obligations to reduce emissions than developing countries. The Kyoto protocol did not require any emission reductions from developing countries. This was based on the logic that developed countries produced most of the greenhouse gases causing climate change and have the greatest financial resources available to reduce emissions. In contrast, developing countries have not, until very recently, contributed to the problem, are often most vulnerable to climate change impacts, and have the fewest resources. Let us not forget that 1 billion people, a seventh of the world’s population, live in absolute poverty without access to sufficient food, water or shelter; reducing GHG emissions is hardly going to be high on their priority list.

Throughout COP17 a new acronym has appeared, “CBDR + RC”. This acronym refers to the longer text of Article 3 of the UNFCCC and stresses the second part of it, “respective capabilities”. Canada, the United States, and Japan apear particularly enamoured with this extended acronym, and are insisting that no global deal can be reached which does not include large emitting developing countries. The argument is that developing countries such as India or China, have sufficient “RC” to allow them to start reducing their emissions. In return these countries, in particular India and China, point out that their per capita emissions are a fraction of those in the developed world, and that they still have millions of citizens living in poverty. When Canada calls for a “collective global agreement”, India and China hear something along the lines of, “we caused the problem but you fix it”. Until someone decides to show some leadership we can give up the idea of global cooperation, regardless of M. Saint-Jacques smooth protestations to the contrary.

Together, the United States, Japan, India, China and yes, Canada, have locked the world into a global game of ‘chicken’. Global emissions are soaring, scientists are warning us that soon it will be too late to avoid a greater than 2 degree rise in global temperature, but nobody will move first. Canada could take a leadership role. It could start investing in low-carbon technologies. It could start dismantling fossil fuel subsidies. It could start putting a price on carbon, so that atmospheric space was no longer free. It could do all of these things but this would require leadership. I don’t know where the Canada with leadership went, but it certainly didn’t bother showing up in Durban.

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It is my last day. I have only one hour left at COP17 and I decide to check my flight on-line before I go. I find a free computer, sit down, open Firefox and break up with laughter. Someone has changed the settings so that computer’s homepage is www.bitumenswear.org. Two models show off the latest line of clothing designed especially for the Canadian negotiators by the Canadian Youth Delegation. Their blacks suits are emblazoned with logos from oil companies, and tag-lines appear beneath them to elucidate the features of each outfit as the full line of apparel is modeled. “Lie-cra”, reads one, “an external layer that reduces drag from environmental regulations and respecting Indigenous rights”.

Yesterday 6 members of the CYD were thrown out of the conference for standing silently with their backs turned to Minister Kent while he extolled Canada’s ambitious role in climate negotiations. This morning the remaining youth delegates stormed out of the Canadian stakeholder briefing en-masse in response to depty minister Booth’s claim that he was negotiating in good faith for the next generation. And now, here I am, there is not a youth to be seen but they have left their mark for every person using the computer centre to see. We may not be able to be proud of our country, but we should certainly be proud of our youth.

Indaba

It is the third to last day. Ministers have arrived and the high-level segments have begun.

I stand dithering outside the doors to the Baobob plenary room. Do I go in? Do I attend one of the many side events? Do I do to the alternative conference altogether? I decide its time I paid some attention to the formal COP and walk past the security guards and through the two sets of double doors into the plenary room.

Unlike in Copenhagen, the high-level sessions are open to observers. The reason for this is simple. Few heads of state have bothered coming to this meeting and no-one expects much to come from them anyway. The plenary room holds roughly 1000 people, most of which is dedicated to country delegations. Less than a quarter of the countries have delegates present, and the observers are crowded together behind rows of empty seats. One by one ministers, deputy ministers and the occasional head of state arrive at the podium, give an impassioned three minute speech to the almost empty room and rush off. There are no questions. There are no responses. This is not a forum for negotiation.

Observers may watch the ministerial speeches, but they are excluded from most negotiations and now the Indabas. One of the roles of the host country of the COP is to supply the COP president. Most of the negotiation process follows long-established rules but the president has the mandate to assist the negotiations however she or he feels will be most productive. In Copenhagen (COP15) the Danish presidency decided to hold closed door meetings with a very small sub-set of countries. This resulted in the Copenhagen Accord but the deeply non-participatory aspect of it wrecked havoc – afterall, in theory the UNFCCC is a consensus based institution. In Cancun (COP16), the Mexican presidency paired developing and developed countries, and assigned each pair a key issue on which they were to consult with others and facilitate agreement.

When COP17 president Maite Nkoana-Mashabane introduced the Indaba, she explained that it is a venue designed to “establish a common mind or a common story that all participants can take with them. In successful Indabas, participants come with open minds motivated by the spirit of the common good, listening to each other to find compromises that will benefit the community as a whole”

In this spirit the initial Indabas were entirely open, but after the first two they disappeared off-site and became off-limits to everyone except the head and deputy negotiator from each delegation. For some, the relocation and closure of the Indabas was contrary to the spirit of open negotiation within a community, and failed to recognize the contributions of civil society. “WTF”, my friend sputters, as we discover we can't even see when the Indabas are to be held, “whatever happened to transparency?”.

For others, establishing boundaries of place and participants was necessary to facilitate honest conversation among parties in a situation characterized by little trust and no movement. The UNFCCC is ultimately a UN body, and while observers are allowed entry, decisions ultimately rest with the parties – who are by definition countries.

The problem is of course, that countries do not seem to be able to see themselves as a global community capable of undertaking actions for the common good. After listening to minister, after minister, after minister establish the reasons why their country is not to blame, and why they are not the ones preventing successful negotiation I give up. I walk out of the plenary, out of the ICC, across the leafy cafe, through the gate and into the DEC where I find myself in a side event.

The youth associations of China and the United States have decided to meet. This is the third time they have done this, and the goal is to build bridges now so that long-term cooperation will be easier. As I watch these young people organize themselves, I think of the stalled negotiations in the building across the way. Perhaps countries can't think of the common good or the global community but people can, and these young people didn't need a closed Indaba to help them do so.

Orbits and Expertise

Protected by heavy wooden double doors, the conference room is tucked away on the second floor of the beach front hotel. An assistant asks for my business card to register me, locates my name badge, and offers me a heavy black plastic binder. I pull one of the brass door handles and the door silently swings open. 8 pendulous chandeliers hang from a curved cream ceiling geometrically patterned with tasteful cream molding. Long dark tables are set up with water glasses, candy dishes and pre-cut lemon slices which I presume are for our water.

A young man in a black suit-jacket and striped tie is at the podium. His blond hair is clipped just so, and he has the air of one who is entirely comfortable speaking in front of a well-heeled audience. He is telling us how to protect Africa from climate change, and is outlining the major barriers to doing so. Information is a problem, “but this ignorance can be addressed”. Lower crop yields are expected due to changes in rainfall, but this can be fixed “by reducing Africa's reliance on agriculture”.

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The rural women's assembly is in full swing. The white tent in the parking lot is a little more worn, and the paper schedule taped to the tent-wall is rumpled from falling off repeatedly. These women travelled from across Africa to be together. They have discussed climate change, the problems of large-scale agriculture and the challenges of access to land. The fundamental assumption on which their assembly rests is that women provide much of Africa's food and are the centre of their communities. As one woman from Botswana simply states, “No women, no food. No food, no future”.

All of these rural women are involved in food production in some way, and are not unaware of the difficulties facing the agricultural sector. They are now tackling strategies to deal with climate change. The woman in the centre of the tent has full control of the microphone. “Stand up”, she yells, “stand up and say, 'I am an expertise', I have knowledge that nobody else has, not the government, not the corporations, say it, say 'I am an expertise'”. Tentatively at first, but then vibrantly and full of direction the women join in, each pointing to themselves and affirming their expertise.

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The official COP17 mini-bus is late, so the delegate from Swaziland and I jump into one of the regular mini-van taxis. Our conversation is interrupted regularly as the van repeatedly backfires, sending us lurching across the seats. We are talking about the difficulties of trying to reach an agreement in Durban. The differences among developed and developing countries seem monumental, and the ideas about what is possible or desirable are in no way converging.

As we come to the end of our journey she tells me a story. She comes from a mixed heritage, “and when I was growing up I used to ask my father, 'how can these people think like this, how can some people treat others like this'? And my father used tot ell me, 'we are all like planets, we cannot ever truly understand the world from someone else's eyes. We each have our own centre and orbit. However, as we move we are pushed and pulled by the forces of others, and this changes how we move through life'”.

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The young man at the front has moved on from agriculture, and is now discussing the need for industrialization across Africa. The economy needs to be diversified, and heavy industry is the way to do it. More mineral development is needed, and by reducing trade barriers and using a regional liberalized approach, “South Africa could spread dirty industries to other countries to spread development around a little bit”. I sit there and think that the Rural Women's Assembly might have something to say about this, as would anyone who has read a critical development text written since 1970.

There are indeed many planets floating through COP17. Some of them have direct collisions, and some can co-ordinate their orbits for a little while. Others collide directly but don't even realize it, so intent on their final goal that they are unaware that their own fate, their own course, has been altered as they bounced off the others they did not see.

At least we can produce paper

Time is starting to run short. It is Saturday morning. Ministers, and the few heads of state deigning to attend, will start arriving on Tuesday or Wednesday so the basic negotiations must be completed by then. Sunday is officially a day off, although many activities will continue.

The document distribution desk is barely visible behind the crush of people trying to reach mounds of paper. I stand politely in line until I realize that there isn't a line and that I'm never going to make it to the front if I am not more aggressive. I exchange rueful looks with a Norwegian delegate, “well, if we cannot produce a decision, at least we can produce paper”, he says.

I catch the eyes of one of the young men behind the desk. He sees my smile, nods and holds up one finger. A few moments later he reappears and hands me a giant package of papers still warm from the copier. I hug them to my chest, pick up my earphones and translation receiver, and head to the plenary. The stack of paper is so thick that I can still feel its warmth seeping into my tired body 10 minutes later. Its the UNFCCC version of a hot water bottle.

The 76 page document is an attempt to summarize the current state of play in each of the 19 sub-issues under negotiation in just one of the two negotiation tracks, the AWG-LCA. The chair explains that the purpose of this plenary is to introduce this document so that everyone can figure out where negotiations stand on each of the sub-issues. He spends the next 45 minutes explaining the source of each section. We go through finance, REDD, special sectors, mitigation obligations, adaptation governance, technology sharing, capacity building and the list goes on. Some sections have text that negotiators have written and are in the process of finalizing. In other areas, like shared vision for the future, there is so little convergence in parties' positions that the facilitators have chosen to write a summary instead.

The instant he stops country placards start flying up. Bolivia does not think their view was captured in the long term vision section. The United States would like to state that the text in paragraph 9 was not what was captured in the negotiations. Saudi Arabia would like to formally note that it does not think that any text that does not solely emerge through negotiation should have been included in this document.

The chair listens to all these comments and addresses a few specific questions. Acknowledging that there is a mix of negotiator and facilitator text in the document, he eventually calls the conversation to to a halt. “Colleagues”, he calls out, “I've known that we had 19 issues to deal with and that we have had 19 groups and 19 facilitators to try to do this, but it is really important to see this text in one place to see just how huge this task is”. With that he abruptly adjourns the meeting, leaving us all with a barely cooled-down 76 page single-spaced document that meticulously outlines one undecided issue after another, after another, after another.....

So What is Climate Change Anyway?

“I don't understand, I asked them straight out, what about AIDS? And they looked like they didn't understand my question. It is World Aids Day, how can they not understand my question?”

We're standing in front of the daily schedule for the C17 People's Space Assembly. I am speaking with a South African independent media journalist who has accreditation both with COP17 and the C17. The bathrooms in the university residence where I am staying do not supply toilet paper – you have to provide your own. In contrast, bulk boxes of condoms free for the taking sit on the back of each toilet. In a continent so marked by AIDS the issues of health, poverty, environmental vulnerability and community resilience are inextricably linked. Any discussion of a response to climate change must acknowledge the toll that AIDS has, and continues to, take here.

I am not surprised that the journalist was met with blank stares. Climate change means many different things to many different people. The key issue for one person is often seen as irrelevant or inconsequential by another. In addition to the discussion about AIDS, climate change has been central to the following conversations I have had during the last 24 hours:

• We are standing in the cool marble hall of the Memorial Tower of the UKZN. I am speaking with a dynamic young woman who self-describes herself as being fascinated by issues of race and class. She feels that South Africans have not yet fully realized that climate change is the next big issue that inherently ties these power struggles together.

• My colleague stops and does a double-take. He has just recognized two people he met at an Occupy Wall Street event in the United States. They explain to us that they are here to run a workshop on unions. Climate change is about employment, workers rights and the necessity of finding a new way of doing business.

• “No, no, its not like that, you are not listening to her, she is against her government”. I am being defended by one journalist to another. The issue is the development of Canada's tar sands. I have just been asked why I am being so difficult, and why my country does not care about what happens to the rest of the world. We talk for almost an hour. At the end of it they ask if they can take my picture as an illustration of ordinary Canadians who want to do something about climate change.

• There are rarely free tables at lunchtime. You are doing well if you find a free chair. I look around and spot one under a tree. Its a small table, just space for two, and there is already someone there. I go over and introduce myself. He is an executive from the main utility company in a relatively large developing country. For years they have relied on hydroelectricity supplemented by small oil installations but they just built their first coal power plant. They are concerned about the volatility of the oil price, and are under pressure not to build additional coal plants, but have already maxed out their hydroelectricity reserves. The United States is discussing “symmetrical obligations” for developing countries to reduce emissions; what does this mean for countries like this?

• I have a feeling they are academics even before we introduce ourselves. I am right. They are human geographers. Both of them specialize in adaptation and community adaptive capacity. Within three sentences our conversation has moved to the ins and outs of political ecology, development theory and conservation. They have come to COP17 because they are trying to build a central hub for development and climate change research.

• Some days stairs look longer than others and this is one of those days. I am trudging up the stairs to a plenary session and am joined by a former negotiator for a large developed country. He has lived, breathed and watched the development of climate change policy at the UN level for many years. He looks tired.

• I try not to stare but the triangle of silver metal swinging over his forehead is distracting, and each time he turns his head I am slightly worried I will get poked by the long white sticks that protrude perpendicular from his head, just above his ears. The two of us are jammed together in the far back corner of the mini-bus. He and several other Maasai have been sent to the COP by their community to learn more about the possible changes they can expect on their land, and to network with other groups about adaptation strategies. If your community has always relied on livestock, but are facing long-term droughts, what exactly are you going to do?

• The main presentations are over and it is time for question period. It is almost 10 pm but people are still animated – what kind of new market mechanisms might be appropriate in the post-2012 regime, and what role might credited sectoral NAMAs play in this? Acronyms are flying fast and furious. This is a conversation by experts, for experts. Beneath this all is a simple question, what needs to happen so that private investors will invest in developing country industries so that they can afford to lower their emissions? And how are we going to do this once the Kyoto Protocol runs out in 2012? Large-scale industrial changes are extremely expensive, and neither the governments of developing nor developed countries can afford to fund these through public funds. At the same time, if one country implements tough regulations and another does not, there is a risk that the industry will just leave. This does not reduce overall emissions, it just means that one country has lost employment. If we cannot find ways of using private money to make these industrial changes, how are we going to reduce the emissions of industries such as steel or cement?

So what is climate change? It is all these things and more. Afterall, this was just one day, and I am just one person.

Lots of Waves, but No Wake

For once I think he has it right. Guy Saint-Jacques, Canada's chief negotiator, looks care-worn and weary this morning, although it could be the combination of the flourescent lights and his pale yellow shirt. He is leafing through pages of notes, mentally sorting through what he can tell us and what he can't. Each topic warrants one sentence started with an acronym, “LULUCF, some good progress made yesterday. SBSTA, this was one of the areas where our negotiators were working until 10:30 last night. REDD, they finished at 10, we see some movement there”. He barely glances up as he continues his list. Finally he gets to the end, “Shared vision, um”, he pauses and runs his blue fountain pen down the page, “zero energy in the room so no progress there”.

Its 11 pm and I am cutting across the University of KwaZulu Natal campus on my way to my residence room. As I enter the main gates I run into a man wearing rainbow pants, a colurful shirt with “the People's Power” emblazoned across his chest, and a purple pillbox hat. I recognize him from earlier in the day, when I had noticed him at the ICC. I ask him if he is coming from the “People's Space”, the alternative conference that is going to be hosted by UKZN but which has not yet started. “Absolutely” he beams. I tell him I am planning to attend the next morning, once it really gets going, and we talk about COP17. “I had to get out of there”, he tells me, “its just flat, there is no energy”.

These two men are unlikely to meet, and if they did I expect they would have little in common except for this observation – there is no energy at COP17. From the outside it appears a hub of activity. People are running around. Negotiators are meeting until 10:30 at night. Developing country representatives are making impassioned pleas for action. But there is no movement. People might be paddling but they are paddling in all directions. There are lots of waves, but no wake. It's exhausting.

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Stage presence is one thing, but stage presence in the absence of a stage is another thing entirely. White plastic lawn chairs have been pulled into a series of concentric ovals underneath a large white tent in the UKZN parking lot. Several hundred women have assembled here, and a short round woman standing in the centre dominates the group – she is the chair, if this is what you could call it, and she vibrates with energy. This is the Rural African Women's Assembly on Climate Change and it is an electric gathering. One by one women come up and speak on behalf of their delegation. They have come from Botswana, South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Zambia ..... the list goes on.

“I have come today to tell you that climate change is affecting us. It is affecting us in Zambia because our gardens are not growing and we cannot feed our children”. Myriam from Zambia sits down and the room erupts into song before the next woman in line can get up to say her piece. The chair of the meeting calls into the microphone, “respect, sisters, respect”, but then gives up and joins in.

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I get there early to make sure I have a seat but I needn't have worried. It is quarter past the starting time but delegates are filtering in. Long tables equipped with microphones fill the room, but no seats are assigned. A woman with a cardboard box is sitting at the entrance of the room. As the delegates enters she rummages around and hands out white paper laminated country name plates. The meeting finally begins and the chair welcomes us. This is the first informal on long-term cooperative vision. A draft text has been circulated and the chair opens the floor for comments.

Nothing happens.

Argentina arrives late and casually wanders around until he finds a place to perch between China and Afghanistan.

We sit silently and nobody says a thing.

Finally, the US representative raises his white placard. “The United States has the floor”, the chair announces, relief running through her voice. “Thank you madame chair, the United States would like to say that this is a comprehensive document and will be difficult to discuss in the time allotted”

The chair thanks the representative and looks around the room expectantly.

But there is only more silence.

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A tall woman in a red shirt and white sunhat is given the microphone, but before she can speak a group of 15 women dressed in matching red T shirts rush to the centre of the room. They are met halfway by a close-cropped woman in a black T shirt and jeans who starts to sing. The tent explodes with sound. As she sings they respond, singing and dancing their way through the tent until they fill the oval in the middle of the chairs. I cannot understand the words, but America, Obama and climate change feature heavily.

The chair of the meeting is singing too but finally convinces them to stop, and sternly tells the woman that she can “only speak for 3 minutes, since your people took 5 minutes for dancing. We must do our work and then we will have time for singing and dancing”. The woman talks about the unpredictable rains her people have experienced and how this is making food production more difficult. At the end of her talk she yells into the microphone, “One Africa, One Voice, One Africa, One Voice”. Everyone jumps to their feet to join in and the chair loses the battle. The women have spoken and they will sing and dance now.

.............................................

The sign on the inside of the mini-bus taxi says “this vehicle is registered for a maximum of 13 people”. Squashed in the backseat between three university students and a woman doing her shopping, I count 17 people plus bags, a suitcase, and a wicker basket. The ticket is 6 rand and we hand the coins up to the driver, person to person as though we were passing notes in class. Thanks to the students I get off at the right stop and walk through a market on my way to the ICC.

I get through security, walk into the cool air conditioned space muffled by carpeted floors and head to the plenary. On my way I run into a former chief negotiator of a European country. He recognizes me from a previous meeting and we exchange pleasantries. “I'm about tired out, and I'm not sure what to go to next”, he admits, and then asks me the common greeting question within the COP culture, “what were you at this morning?”

I tell him about the alternative conference at UKZN and encourage him to go visit it. “So we should be doing more singing, is this what you are saying?” he asks slightly sarcastically. I nod emphatically. He looks at me strangely for a moment, then half-shrugs, “well, maybe you're right.”

Team Sport

I felt some sympathy for the United States press officer. A colleague and I decided to attend the American stakeholder briefings, except that neither of us knew if such a thing existed. We descended into the parking garage and walked into the US press office. Unfortunately the press officer had absolutely no idea if there were stakeholder meetings, and asked why we didn't just come to the press conferences. “Uh, because we're not allowed”, my colleague answered, “only media can attend those”. The woman blushed, “Oh right, I'm so sorry, this is my first COP and I still don't understand how this all works, its so weird”.

A COP has spoken rules, unspoken rules, and whole families of rules that fall somewhere in between. Technically the COPs (Conference of the Parties) are formal negotiating sessions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (the UNFCCC). In reality they are some combination of industrial lobbying, media scrums, reunions among friends, networking opportunities, training events, trade-shows and school room politics. Some negotiations do occur.

Navigating a COP is strictly a team sport. People stake out meeting places in every possible location. A youth group sits on the floor under the stairs, talking earnestly in a sea of backpacks. Four men in black suits and blue ties sit around a table covered in papers. A cluster of journalists balance coffee cups amidst a tangle of wires, a tripod and an enormous camera. As the youthful Swazi delegate I chat with over tea says, “its no fun being a lone ranger here at a COP. I was on my own for two hours and that was enough!”.

Even entire organizations find it impossible to go it alone at COP, so there are organizations of organizations. There are the ENGOs, the YOUNGOs, the TUNGOs, the BINGOs, the RINGOs. There are those who are too dignified for rhyming acronyms, the IPOs, LGMAs, COMIFAC. And then there are the most dignified of all who spurn acronyms altogether - the Farmers and the Women and Gender non-governmental organizations. But countries need friends too, and so there are the BRICs and BASIC, the Umbrella Group, the LDCs, AOSIS, OPEC, Africa Group, G77, ALBA, the Coalition of Rainforest Nations – should I go on?

The COP is complicated by the fact that negotiations for multiple inter-related issues occur simultaneously. When it became apparent that the Kyoto Protocol was nearing the end of its life, the UNFCCC decided to break negotiations in two. There are currently two official streams of negotiation – the Ad-hoc working group on the Kyoto Protocol (the AWG-KP in UN speak), and the Ad-Hoc working group on Long Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA). In theory the AWG-KP focuses on the Kyoto Protocol, while the AWG-LCA works on creating a framework that could continue after the Kyoto Protocol ends. In reality countries play with the boundaries between the two, and contentious issues get bounced from one, to the other, and back again.

But climate negotiations are not only about how many GHG emissions a country should emit, or how much money should move from one government to another. GHGs are hard to measure. Trading systems have to have rules. Governance structures for funding mechanisms have to be designed. All these topics have to be negotiated, and for this you end up with technical groups, working groups, informals, workshops and a plethora of “closed” strategic and technical meetings.

The negotiator for Tuvalu holds up his white laminated card about halfway through an intense discussion about the future of the UNFCCC. The president gives him the floor. He first points out that the survival of his country, like many other island states, depends on the prevention of significant sea-level rise. Compared to basic survival, the next issue appears trivial – meeting time. The timing of this session conflicts with the daily Least Developed Countries meeting.

Many countries do not have enough representatives even to have a presence in all simultaneous meetings, to say nothing about experience or expertise. Even the best negotiator cannot be an expert in every policy debate as it has evolved day to day for 17 years. Very few developing countries have the luxury of having a team of full-time, year-round staff to tackle the intricacies of climate policy. Meeting time conflicts are not trivial.

In theory the UNFCCC works by consensus amongst nations. One country, one voice. But in a system in which negotiations are this complicated, not all voices are created equal. COPs may be a team sport, but when it comes to team size anything goes.