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.