Following up on my previous post, here’s some more about diplomat-speak.
What language to speak
Like the United Nations, COP17 participants may speak in plenary meetings (where the most are in attendance and the least gets done) in six official languages: Arabic, Mandarin Chinese, Russian, English, Spanish, and French. Headsets are made available to let delegates tune in to whichever one they please. In theory, a delegate could speak in another language, but would be required to provide for interpretation.
Delegates listen with headsets during the COP17 Opening Plenary ©UNFCCC
Some country delegations nearly always speak in their own language, while others only rarely, depending on a wide…
Since 1990, Latvia has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by almost 60%. However, among the many successes of different sectors in Latvia in becoming more energy efficient, transportation was left behind. In Latvia and throughout the world, car ownership has been consistently growing, and with it fuel consumption and ghg emissions. As the world is becoming rapidly and dominantly urbanized, sustainable transport solutions are in dire need if we want to reduce CO2 emissions, as well as other airborne pollutants. Reaction to concern over this sector came in the form of many side events by the international transport community at COP17. In an attempt to discover the latest in the field, I took upon myself to be what one of the speakers defined in a panel “that Yale student who comes to all the transportation events”. I try.
Time and timing is an ever-present actor in the climate negotiations. Should we discuss a long term cooperative agreement before we know what happens with Kyoto? How can we discuss Kyoto without knowing whether all member states are on board with a legally binding long term agreement? Should we reach an agreement by 2015 in order to have a chance to peak emissions by 2020 and thus avoid a two degrees warming (according to a recent UNEP report), or should we wait with any new regime until 2020 and concentrate on implementing what has been achieved in Cancun? And most importantly – how can we finish discussing this text in the hour and a half that was allocated to our working group by the secretariat?
In…
1. Pablo,
(a) Welcoming the arrival this week of additional [Yale][Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies][students][conference delegates];
(b) Having reviewed blog post contributions from CP.16;
(c) Recalling blog posts that have been submitted throughout this week, including those on Sage Magazine;
(d) Reiterating [our obligations to][our superiors’ expectations that we will] submit content to this blog forum;
(e) Acknowledging busy schedules, the long duration of work days, and the need to study for final exams and to submit final non-papers;
(f) Taking note of the departure of one or more [Yale][Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies][students][conference delegates] in coming days;
(g) Stressing our privilege to attend COP17;
(h) [Requests] Invites [Yale][Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies][students][conference delegates] to [continue to] contribute content to this blog forum, for the benefit of others.
[alt. Invites Yale students to continue to engage in information dissemination practices.]
2. An informal informal may be convened at the request of parties in need of assistance.
In COP-17, China is one of the “major emitters” that has contributed a large share of global greenhouse gases. This should not be a surprise after you count in China’s population and economic development. By 2011, China has a population of 1.3 billion people, the largest in the world. China’s estimated GDP in 2011 is $11.3 trillion, making it the second largest global economy. China, with its mass population of hard-working people, has closely followed the “old-school” development model, which every developed country has gone through and has benefited from.
This growth model came at the cost of environmental degradation, and it has been increasingly challenged by climate change in recently years. With strange weathers and even climate disasters occurring more and more frequently around the globe, today, most people in our world, including the Chinese, have become aware of the warning signals from mother earth. The question is: can we fix it?
….the 1966 Aaron Neville classic, and good advice to live by.
I love the oldies….like REALLY love the oldies. If the original recording of a song was on the A-side of a vinyl by 4-5 guys in matching polyester suits, spinning smoothly and dipping the microphone stand – I am probably listening to it right now. There are many reasons why I love this music, one being that the message always has a way of coming through crystal clear. The music and lyrics are simple and elegant, conveying pure emotion with an eclectic balance of innocence, wit and charm. The music moved you, and moved through you. What you heard was the real deal.
You may be wondering why I am writing about music on a blog that is supposed to be about a climate change conference. Well, after five days here, I would really like to hear someone “tell it like it is”. If you listen to the official statements by delegations day after day, it’s akin to skipping on autotune, it’s the same artificial message over and over again.
But today I caught the dull whispers of a song that I had not yet heard during week one of COP17.
While the majority of interventions or comments made by delegates during meetings here are extremely dry, serious and / or monotone, there have been a handful of negotiators who’ve made memorable comments, making their colleagues laugh or raising the level of drama a bit. Here are a few examples:
From Doug: In a session on mitigation, a couple of large, wealthy countries repeatedly complained that small countries were trying to shift the nature of agreements made in Cancun, saying something along the lines of, “We agreed to ‘targets’ in Cancun, now some countries want to change the word to ‘commitments’.” The large countries intervened multiple times with, “In Cancun, this” and “In Cancun, that”. With impeccable delivery, a small, poor country responded with, “With all due respect, this is NOT Cancun, this is Durban”.
In a session on issues relating to the Clean Development Mechanism, a Latin American delegation twice warned the co-chairs of the group that “there would be hell” in the closing plenary if their submissions were not included in the next draft of the text.
Hello folks,
In Monday’s post I outlined four major issues that I would be following at the COP.
1) humanitarian and disaster response
2) mitigation and adaptation funding
3) climate modeling
4) poverty and vulnerability to climate change
It is fitting that like the process of adaptation and risk assessment, the growth of my knowledge about these interrelated topics, and the synergies that bind them has been gradual but profound. I have seen how issues 1,2 and 3 are even more closely linked than I first imagined. Furthermore, creating comprehensive solutions to one of those problems helps to address the others.
Here is a taste of the lively expo and delicious ‘carts’ right outside the ICC. Life seems to be smiling upon us, hopefully that smile will extend to the negotiation rooms:
A lot of numbers get thrown around at UN climate change negotiations. 17%, the U.S.’s voluntary emissions reduction pledge by 2020. 20%, the EU’s own unconditional pledge to reduce carbon emissions. 40-45%, China’s pledge to reduce carbon intensity. But behind those weighty numbers are perhaps even more important ones: the baselines from which those reductions are calculated. The above targets were all announced at the 2009 Copenhagen conference, but are derived from different baseline years: 1990 for the EU target, and 2005 for the U.S. and China targets.
Such inconsistency in baseline years can lead to confusion at best, and distortions at worst. For instance, when we spoke with a prominent U.S. negotiator, he noted that at the time of the 2009 Copenhagen conference, the U.S.’s 17% below 2005 pledge was actually more stringent than the EU’s 20% below 1990 pledge, since converting the EU pledge into 2005 terms would bring the relative reduction to less than 17%. It’s a clever spin on the issue, but of course glosses over all the hard work between 1990 and 2005 that the EU did—and the U.S. didn’t do—to get a lower 2005 emission level in the first place. And of course, it’s a much nicer point for the U.S. to make than to convert its own target baseline from 2005 back to 1990, which would shrink reductions down to 3% (source at p. 9).
