Greetings from Copenhagen.
This is the first in what we hope will be a series of informal updates from the Australian Government’s delegation in Copenhagen. We can’t promise to update you daily – but we will update you as regularly as possible. As it is, we’re trying to squeeze this in between plenary sessions, contact groups, informal negotiations, multilaterals, bilaterals, preparations for high level negotiations, … we’re sure you get the idea.
There are over 30,000 people here – the Danish Government tell us it is the biggest intergovernmental meeting in history. In addition to the negotiations, it seems there is every possible interest group here making sure their voice is heard.
As we’re on the other side of the world, we realise the different time zones can make it tricky to keep up with what is happening here in Copenhagen, so we thought our website would be a fairly simple way of updating you as quickly as possible. You can subscribe online if you’d like us to email these updates directly to you.
We realise that there are a number of Australian journalists, bloggers, and stakeholder groups here covering the negotiations and the broader conference, but in this age of instant media, we thought we’d join in and give you our take on what is happening.
The story so far…
We were greeted by a cold, wet, and dark-by-3pm European winter. It’s not quite snowing, but it’s a long way from an Australian summer.
Despite the cold, a quick scan of media headlines suggested the climate debate was still a hot topic back in Australia. And things soon got warmer here too. On just the second day of formal negotiations, the World Meteorological Organisation released a report declaring that the current decade was shaping up to be the hottest on record and that globally 2009 was shaping up as being the 5th hottest year on record. For Australia – the 3rd hottest year on record.
All this just reinforces the need for an effective global agreement on climate change. We’re doing all we can to ensure that by the end of this fortnight we’ll have some form of breakthrough international political agreement that can then be turned into a treaty – or formal international instrument – as soon as possible next year.
If you’ve been reading the papers, you would have seen that this was quickly followed by the release in a UK newspaper of an apparently leaked version of a so-called ‘Danish text’. However, the Danish Government, as president of the Conference, quickly dismissed the report:
“Under no circumstances is this a “Secret Danish draft” for a new climate change agreement. Such a text does not exist. In this kind of process, many different working papers are circulated amongst many different parties with their hands on the process. These papers are the basis for informal consultations that contribute with input used for testing various positions. Therefore, many papers exist. That is quite normal.” – Denmark.
There were then a series of discussions about who should do what, how much they should do, and when they should do it. All of these issues are important and negotiators from different countries have been working into the night to work through each other’s concerns.
Some people characterise the process as a battle, with some people digging into some entrenched positions and firing off opening shots – whether in the negotiations themselves or through the media writing about them. But it’s really not that simple.
What can look like a battle from the outside is actually countries working through some difficult and complex issues that affect individual countries in very real, but different, ways. Understandably, emotion is sometimes involved – whether it’s frustration, defiance, anger, desperation, or earnestness… and we’ll probably see plenty more before an agreement is reached.
Overall, countries aren’t here to fight each other. We’re here to solve a global problem.
One of the greatest challenges is the fact different countries have different circumstances (eg different geographies, economies, and populations). This means there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to solving climate change.
That’s why a range of proposals were put forward in the first few days. At one stage different opinions over how to work through these proposals led to the ‘plenary sessions’ being temporarily postponed.
But this doesn’t mean negotiations stop.
The ‘plenary sessions’ are essentially ‘all-in’ sessions comprising representatives from about 190 countries in a room working through issues at a high level. Running in conjunction with these are a series of smaller groups put together to work through specific detailed issues. In addition, countries will often meet outside the formal negotiations on a one-on-one, or small group basis to discuss important issues.
If one of the formal groups is postponed, the other forums often keep going.
For our part, we’ll keep doing all we can to work through countries’ differences because we want to get a good environmental outcome.
What is clear is that globally we’re all in this together.
Australian Delegation.
