The current situation is as follows. A minute ago, the UN climate boss
Yvo de Boer announced publicly he cannot inform delegations about the
status of negotiations among heads of state. He said maybe (maybe) the
Danish prime minister could - and postponed Plenary for another hour.
Most of us are in the dark - even chief negotiators seem to be.
Minimum two private meetings of world leaders in the last 20 hours
failed to resolve issues. Pens in hand, heads of states were actually
drafting text themselves - imagine the odds! They walked out of the
second one visibly frustrated. Brazilian, Bolivian and Chinese leaders
were very sharp in their speeches to Plenary. They must have had a
bitter fight inside. This morning, the US, UK and Australia tried to
push an agreement text but were rejected. Obama decided to stay longer
in Copenhagen, and promised the Danes to call the Chinese president
directly.
According to the rules, in the absence of consensus, the conference
may decide the outcome by 3/4 majority vote. This is last resort for
emergency in the UN system. There was open talk of a vote in plenary
this afternoon.
Work is under way on a 3-page political declaration - the weakest
political outcome short of no-text-whatsoever. An early draft of the
declaration contains no numbers on emission reduction either in
developed or developing countries, no temperature limits, no carbon
concentration limits. One head of delegation here told me "we'd better
be frank and simply tell the world the conference failed" instead of
scrambling to manufacture a text. We may stay here for a long time -
some say over the weekend. Some Secretariat people have already
changed their tickets. Some world leaders have postponed their
departure and delegations are looking for extra hotel rooms in the
city. Despite reasons for pessimism, I hear from several negotiators
something is going to come out. Everyone is trying to save the
conference. It is still early to tell.
Rado
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: [email protected]
