Swarthmore at COP29

Hey guys, this is Saadiq. I had a packed day at COP24 today running around to meetings about very interesting stuff. I had meetings about Gender and Climate, the role of business in helping countries reach their NDC (Nationally Determined Contributions) targets, ways to mitigate food waste, financing food projects, and a meeting about how to ensure equity in national actions to achieve NDCs. I’m going to briefly talk about two of the meetings, financing food projects and how to ensure equity in national actions to achieve NDCs because I found these really interesting.

The equity in NDCs talk focused on the research of academics who conducted case studies regarding the development of NDCs. It looked at how NDCs are developed by states and exposes what/who they choose privilege in these formulations. I had never thought of NDCs as being biased or problematic because these are supposed to be the ambitious goals of countries to ensure we stay under 1.5 C. What I learned is that certain countries could choose mitigation strategies that did not benefit their whole population. For example, dams could be built in one region while electrifying a whole other region would be ignored. There are no specific guidelines about ensuring equity from the UNFCCC (smh). I also learned that for some developing countries, the same consulting firms help formulate LDCs (Least Developed Countries) NDCs. Therefore, these firms, from the global north, could have great influence on what LDCs NDCs look like.

The second talk about food financing was hosted by the World Bank and focused on how to get financing to small farmers to support smart agriculture. This is supposed to be a bottom-up approach to greening the food system that takes into account and allegedly quantifies carbon offsets, gender equity and health impacts of projects before giving them money. (I would be interested to see how they quantify gender impacts.) They, however, failed to talk about efforts and policies to green big-agri which was suspicious even while saying that by  2050 agriculture will account for 70% of GHGs (Greenhouse gases). Yes, shocking right. On the somewhat bright side, they discussed how big banks are now taking climate change seriously by considering the environmental impacts of projects that want funding. They talked at length about case studies but again only related to small farmers who do not contribute as much to emissions as big-agri.

That’s all for today but stay tuned to see more rants. Pa!

Last week, protests were a kind of ongoing theme, and of course we arrived at the tail end of the biggest outdoor protest allowed here. I say allowed, but some folks here have told us that 170 activists were arrested at the Polish border.

Within the walls of the conference, however, some protest is indeed allowed. A little after 1 on Monday Wells Griffith, President Trump’s international energy and climate advisor, tried to push clean coal technology. He and his colleagues on the panel were shut down by chanting and singing.

In this picture, from the New York Times article Tuesday, you can see Ben Goloff from the back, just behind the plaid arm with the mic or camera:

And here he is outside in the hall, as the protest marches out of the room and down the hallway.

Later in the day, the developed countries involved in the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage were among those winning the Fossil of the Day award:

To celebrate the 5th anniversary of the Warsaw Mechanism, CAN presented a birthday card full of wishes the global community doesn’t ever quite fulfil.

But after the birthday celebration, Austria got a fossil all to itself, for taking incentives intended for carbon emissions reduction and using them to build coal, oil and nuclear infrastructure.

There’s so much theatre here: in the high-level sessions, the negotiations, the pavilions, the hallways. Part of me wants someone to design a more inclusive theatrical process to bring us all to a different place of deeper collaboration.

After the RINGO meeting, I went to the High-Level Session devoted to assessing mitigation efforts prior to 2020. There’s been a tendency on the part of some developed countries to plan for climate action after 2020 without undertaking any present action. The pre-2020 Global Stocktake is one way to try to increase ambition and urge countries to act more ambitiously and more immediately.

The session was launched by the COP President Michal Kurtyka, State Secretary in the Ministry of Energy in Poland.

His speech, laying out the procedures used in the global stocktake, was followed by another procedural speech and then the “High-Level Climate Champion” Mr. Inia  B. Seriuratu, Ministry of Agriculture for Fiji, launched a far more energetic call to action.

As is the way of conferences, however, that speech was followed by a relatively tame panel discussion. Rachel Fyke moderated a panel of speakers from Grenada, China, Poland, Australia, and the EU.  Melissa Price of Australia was the only woman panelist.

Predictably, but perhaps also as part of the positive focus of the Talanoa Dialogue, each speaker focused on what their Party had accomplished in the last two years.

Poland (above) is rolling out programs right now, one focusing on energy efficiency in single family homes (projected to cut 18 million tons of greenhouse gasses). Their other major program focuses on electro-mobility: turning public transport electric (from a current diesel fleet of busses). They are supporting 44 cities in adaptation strategies—the most anywhere! (His exclamation point rather than mine.)

Simon Steel of Granada was both blunt and eloquent: he complained that developed countries were supposed to lead the way on climate action, but they had not demonstrated much leadership. The Doha Amendment (an extension of the Kyoto Protocol) has not yet entered into force because only 122 countries have ratified the amendment, and 144 (another 22) must ratify to reach the 75% threshold for it to enter into force.

Grenada’s climate action has involved “liberalizing the energy sector” by breaking the 88 year monopoly of the primary energy provider. “This has put us into the international courts of arbitration, but you see our ambition.” (I wonder what other views of this “liberalization” might be.) Grenada has ambitious plans for geothermal, which is a resource for much of the Caribbean. They are also planning to increase energy efficiency and solar.

“As for the stocktake, performance has been mixed—and that’s being polite,” Steele said. “Developed countries pledged to emission reductions 25-40% below 1990 levels. They have achieved 11%. There is more work to be done. We haven’t made the progress we need to make. The Small Island Developing States are already suffering. A Category 5 Hurricane in 2017 left one island uninhabitable in Caribbean; another island had 200% of its GDP wiped out by the passing of hurricane. This is our new normal—contiue to face ravaes of climate change

Reports of the WMO, IPCCC (and others) paint a bleak and stark picture of the almost apocalyptic world that the most effective of us will face. We have a 12 year window to react: action is both financially and technically feasible—so there is hope.

International cooperation is a critical enabler for developing countries…. This is not about fingerpointing but how we can move forward as one global community in which some of us have more capacity, some require support in capacity building.

I seem to have missed taking a picture of the EU commissioner for climate action and energy. He responded pretty directly to Grenada’s points, stressing that all of EU countries had ratified the Doha amendment, that the EU remained committed to pre-2020 action as demonstrated by them having exceeded their reduction pledge (a modest pledge of 20% reduction from 1990 levels, currently 22% reduction), that the EU remained committed to the global target of 100 billion per year to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) and that they are currently the largest donor to both the GCF and the Global Environmental Facility (GEF).

China’s special representative also stressed China’s efforts and successes. Of China’s (also modest) 2020 objectives, two have been achieved three years early: 1) lower carbon intensity by 46% (the objective was 40-45%), and 2) forest coverage, which is now “much higher than expected.” Some of the translation was hard to follow, but China also mentioned electric vehicles (1.6 million), a carbon market with a trading volume of 33 billion tons—the largest carbon market in the world—as well as south-south cooperation in 29 developing countries (support in areas of early warning, reduction and prevention, efficiency, renewables).

Australia stressed its success in “incentivizing demand for renewables.” Melissa Price mentioned a “reverse auction mechanism” which “contracted 100 million tons of abatement since 2015.” The government will provide 1 billion in grants over five years, including some focused on Pacific nations; they share measurement, reporting and verification experience, such as helping in 2009 with Indonesia’s forest monitoring program, which they then expect Indonesia to share with others. There’s a reef initiative; Australian farmers are increasing their productivity. Their “Clean Energy Finance Organization” is the world’s largest green bank: they contributed 10 billion to organizations matched by double that amount of private investment. They doubled their investment levels from 2015 to 2020. Renewables will grow in mix by 23% to consumer by 2020. What can I say? It all sounded kind of weak to me.

The moderator Rachel Fyke said, “It’s clear that some things are working and working well—we’re still not where we need to be—where would you like to see the focus to be moving forward?”

The EU stressed structures and governance. Grenada said they needed more financing. China said we need to change our lifestyles (and no one picked up on that). Fyke challenged Poland and Australia more directly. “A signal must go out from this room.” Poland and Australia pretty much doubled down on what they were doing.

Then Fyke took questions from the floor.

India wanted to know whether the actions that had been taken were adequate (answer: obviously not). He mentioned significant gaps—up to 40%–noted in IPCC, but he also complained that the IPCC report didn’t do justice to the urgency of the issues: it didn’t call out those failing to act.

He proposed that any emission gap from this pre-2020 stocktake  be carried over to post-2020 (instead of letting Parties get away with failing to live up to their NDCs). Significant gaps in support (that 100 billion per year has not yet been achieved) should also be carried over. [I can’t imagine developed nations agreeing to this.]

Ecuador ramped up the pressure. She spoke fast and furiously: “None of the clear mandates have been met. We are moving away from the possibility of meeting targets, putting at risk our trust in process. The IPCC report clearly underscored the importance of efforts on poverty eradication—ministers recognized main countries responsible for situation have not met responsibilities: they are falling behind. This is the climate debt we have to the planet and to current and future generations. We need financing, tech transfer, capacity building. Kyoto was not met, Cancun not met: we hope the secretary’s report on pre-2020 will be updated regularly and used to determine opportunities for support.”

The Maldives got the last word on the panel: Concerns about progress led us to call for stocktake last year: we knew we were falling short—Small Island Developing Nations are uniquely vulnerable. We were startled by findings of the IPCC: without dramatic transformation, we could hit 1.5 by 2030. This shines a new light on the importance of pre 2020 action.

 

 

 

 

RINGO (Research and Independent NGOs) is committed not to advocacy but to evidence-based policy making and good process. Beth Martin, one of the two “focal points” of RINGO, gave us a great overview of where we stand in the process and where to find relevant materials and texts. In case you’re interested in following along at home, here’s some of what Beth pointed us to…

WARNING: this is a geeky post. It’s long and detailed, but it might give you a sense of how this meeting operates (perhaps)—or at least as much of that operation as I’ve managed to gather here.

This second week kicked off with a note from the COP President–Eriko posted the link back on Sunday. That note said a couple of things:

This note is a wake-up call. We’re not moving fast enough! Time to bring in the big guns! No more open discussion! The officers in charge of the subsidiary bodies are going to act as experts helping facilitate dialogue, and pairs of ministers (from different countries) will also be in charge of moving things forward. Part of the problem here is that the basic text of any agreement has to be settled by the end of Tuesday because then the ministers or high-level negotiators have to work out political disagreements and then the agreements are sent to Nairobi to be translated into all the UN languages and checked multiple times—all before being released on Friday.

This lets us know what are the major issues still needing to be negotiated. You can actually trace the process of negotiation up to this point if you go to the home webpage of the conference: https://unfccc.int/katowice. That takes you to something that looks like this (only the first image is a green-y picture of the venue):

If you scroll down, on the right hand side, below the grid of options, you can see “Session Information” and under that “Session pages.” You may have to squint to see it here:

If you click on APA 1-7, that takes you to a page for the sessions of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement:

Click on “APA 1-7 draft conclusions” and you can open a document (English) that looks like this:

And on later pages of this document, you can see the elements that have been under discussion:

This is how it works when a document is written by committee. You work on the problem parts rather than trying to write the document as a whole.

There’s been a lot of controversy over financing, especially “9.5” and “9.7”–Article 9, paragraphs 5 and 7. The debate on 9.5 addresses climate finance and 9.7 addresses “transparency” (also described as accounting). If you click on the link for SBI (Subsidiary Body on Implementation) on 9.5, you see the following:

Okay, that’s quite a few words to think about and argue over when you’ve got 10–20 people in a room negotiating. One key thing to know: brackets indicate something not everyone is wiling to agree to. So the entire document is in brackets at this point: nothing is set in stone. But the more detailed disagreements appear both in the preamble (before the numbered items), focused on which elements of the Paris Agreement are relevant to “recall,” and in the question of which part of the climate regime is officially going to look at the reports issued biennially (every two years): some people want the SBI (Subsidiary Body for Implementation) to be in charge; others want the synthesis to be sent to the CMA (Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement). Overall, though, the text is pretty free of brackets, once you get past the fact that the whole thing is bracketed.

Here’s another example, from SBSTA (Subsidiary Body on Scientific and Technical Advice): again, the entire body of the text is bracketed, but beyond that, there’s debate about whether or not to include points one and two, five and six, and nine.

This is the text that was sent to the COP Presidency on Saturday, completing the work of the APA (Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement). Add all of the pieces of this work together (and I’ve only included two examples from a much longer list) and you begin to see how complicated these negotiations are.

We finally made it in! Just the walk back to the first meeting was fairly impressive. Most of the day, these ottomans were full of people conferring, resting, shmoozing.

Just past the elevator was this little corner for a “people’s seat.” Around the corner to the left are the big rooms for the plenary sessions.

The pavilions are fairly ornate: one woman was dancing in traditional dress in the Indonesia pavilion in the middle of the day.

This was right at 8 am, before the crowds. Much of the day, it’s all a little overwhelming and high stimulation.

Poland is pushing a “just transition” from coal to a green economy, but as with this exhibit, there seems to be more coal than green in the mix just now.

Still, Saadiq and I learned in the Food Loss and Waste side event that the apples given out freely are all “rescued” (from destruction on the basis of imperfection).

The RINGO meeting at 9 am was larger than I expected (about 100 people in the audience), and it was nicely organized and implemented. This was only about half the panel, a few minutes before the start of the session.

 

Melissa mentioned that we attended a Yale Network Dinner on Saturday, December 8, only hours after arriving in Katowice. One of the speakers at that event was an inspiring woman who said that she always numbers her points because people tend to remember numbered items better. So here’s my list from the day and a half that we’ve been here:

1. Saadiq and I moved on from the Yale dinner to a party hosted by the Climate Action Network in a club with an eclectic playlist. We were impressed by the venue. Every time we tried to leave, we would stumble upon another room with even better music. It beat any Swarthmore party I’ve attended till date (which isn’t a high bar). I noticed there were only a handful of attendees from the G77 countries at the party, and most guests were either from Europe or the United States. It was strange to be in a crowded club with deafening music and people of all ages from all over the world, and even stranger to think that we were dancing with negotiators at one of the most important climate change conferences. As Martin, our Uber driver from the airport, said, “it’s all one big party”. So far it seems like that to me too. Hopefully, that will change tomorrow when I actually attend sessions.

2. On our way to Krakow today (December 7), I sat next to an interpretor for the UN who translates from English to French, and English to Spanish. Surprisingly, she knew about Swarthmore (but she kept referring to it as “Swarth”). She was a Columbian-French freelance interpreter from New York who most often translates for the African Union, European Union, and UN bodies such as UNICEF and UN-Women.

I learnt some interesting facts about the work of interpreters. For example, they are officially only “allowed” to work for five-and-a-half hours a day because they tend to hit fatigue beyond that time frame and start making mistakes in the translations. Interpreters work in pairs and switch every half-hour. I asked how translating simultaneously works, whether doing everything in real-time meant that she occasionally missed words and whether she’s able to translate everything from one language to another when some languages do not have the same vocabulary. She gave me a bewildered look and said, “that’s the job”. You have to know when to stop yourself from working because it’s a high stakes job. Misinterpreting something could have wide-reaching implications at the UN, where translations are often published and incorporated in texts.

She translates from English to French 75% of the time, and one of her favorite words to translate is “accountability” because apparently, that word does not exist in French. There’s the word “responsibility”, but of course it’s not the same. She liked the precision of the word accountability, for which she needs three words to communicate the same meaning in French (Google translate does not have the French translation for accountability as I now know). French is about 16% wordier than English, so when speakers speak fast, interpreters can often sound like robots trying to squeeze in meaningful translations.

It’s another problem when speakers have thick accents that she cannot understand. “But then I look around in the room and realize that nobody else understood it either, so it’s okay. It just gets lost. So it’s the responsibility of countries and organizations to send speakers who are articulate when they speak.” That was an interesting take. Having the text in front while she’s translating always helps, she said. Even if she’s looking at it for the first time. “Then I can add intonations and make the speech more interesting.” Otherwise what gets noted down is a dry speech. “The UN Secretary General’s office is always very organized.” They share speeches with interpreters at least a day in advance. On the other hand, most other countries and small organizations that make speeches almost never share their speeches in advance, which makes it more difficult for interpreters and for the speakers to get their message across.

3. At the end of our day, we got a text saying the Polish delegation just published a document for how they want to second week of COP to proceed. Here’s the link: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/Information%20Note%20by%20the%20President%20on%20the%20mode%20of%20work.pdf

On the bus ride home from Krakow, Monica made space for me to sit with her. She is attending the COP as an observer, as part of an NGO: the Inuit Circumpolar Council. As we got on the road, it was already dark though it was only 4 pm. “When does it get dark for you?” I asked Monica, who lives in Nunavut. “It’s not as bad as here!” she exclaimed, taking a photo. I followed suit.

Nunavut. Monica’s community is the largest in the territory with 7000 people. Other communities are smaller: 700 or 2000 or 3000 people. There are no roads between communities: the travel is all by airplane. I was surprised to learn that we live in the same time zone, however, because I always think of northern Canada as slanting westerly. Clearly not.

The Inuit Circumpolar Council includes members from Canada, the USA, Greenland, and Russia. Each country provides support for its own section of the council: the Canadian staff is largest, followed by the US, then Greenland, then Russia. They speak English (with the exception of the Russians, who presumably work with translators). They could speak their own language(s) as well—and Monica switched seamlessly from English with me to Inuit on a phone call—but the dialects are so different that comprehension would be slow and they would be less effective than they can be using English as a common language.

The Council works on many issues, climate change among them. Every community Monica represents needs health care and education and recreation centers and funding is scarce, so communities have to prioritize among their needs.

Because it was dark, and Monica was tired, having flown in from Anchorage via Seattle, I spared her my normal request for a photo and a card. Here instead is a link to the Circumpolar Inuit Declaration on Resource Development Principles in Inuit Nunaat:

declaration_on_resource_development_a3_final

As Betsy wrote yesterday, Swarthmore’s Week 2 delegation arrived in Poland yesterday (Saturday) afternoon. It’s been a whirlwind day and a half, with things sure to stay busy as the COP resumes tomorrow.

Day 1: Katowice

Yesterday evening, for our first event of the trip, Saadiq, Eriko, and I (Melissa) attended a dinnertime gathering hosted by Yale University. It was posh – with hors d’oeuvres and wine – and clearly intended to be a networking event. We chatted with undergraduate and graduate students with similar elite US university affiliations about their research and how they ended up at COP. Toward the end, three big-name speakers gave short speeches: Todd Stern (former US Special Envoy for Climate Change), Susan Biniaz (former Deputy Legal Adviser of the State Department – serving as lead climate lawyer), and Tom Steyer (philanthropist/environmentalist). If nothing else, it was a relatively familiar way (oh, academia) to ease into an otherwise overwhelming setting.

 

Day 2: Auschwitz

The COP was closed on Sunday, so we took the day to explore – splitting up for different activities. I went my own direction, leaving before sunrise to get to Auschwitz early (the others will go next Saturday). It was an appropriately horrible day: cold, with high winds and rain.

I booked an English-language, 3 hour tour of the remnants of the grounds. We spent about 2 hours at Auschwitz I, and then another hour at Auschwitz II-Birkenau. The entire grounds is now a museum. I was moved to hear that it had opened in 1947 – at the request of survivors, some of whom also served as the museum’s first tour guides. That this experience is exactly what the survivors wanted of us made me even more motivated to go through with the visit, abhorrent as the place is.

Auschwitz I consists of many brick barracks, some of which have been refurbished for educational purposes. The tours are carefully designed to take visitors through a sequential program. First, we learned about the process that the Nazis put arrivals through: often after train rides in lethal conditions, Jews were distinguished from non-Jews, and ‘healthy’ Jews from ‘non-healthy’ Jews. Gentiles and healthy Jews went to the concentration camp, where they were likely to die from starvation or heavy labor. Non-healthy Jews (and children, elderly, pregnant women, etc.) were sent directly to the gas chambers. Next, we saw the sorted piles of the belongings of the massacred. Most Jews arriving at Auschwitz, many from other countries, had been led to believe that they were being relocated and had brought (with Nazi encouragement) bags of possessions. It wasn’t just material goods either; I cried in the room showcasing nothing but piles of hair. Finally, the tour of the first camp ends with an enforced silent walk-through of an intact gas chamber.

Auschwitz II-Birkenau is many times bigger than Auschwitz I. It is also less intact, partially because some barracks were made of wood, partially because the Nazis successfully destroyed much of it just prior to liberation. The several gas chambers, for example, were reduced to rubble. At this camp we also saw in more detail the standard living quarters (such as they were), specifically for women.

After the camps, I went directly to a Jewish museum nearby. It is one of the few representations of Jewish culture in the area, and served as something of a balm. The museum also answered a growing question of mine: why does Poland not seem to have a resurgent Jewish population, when in the early 20th century it was so huge? The answer is that anti-semitism did not end with liberation, and many Jews who initially returned home after the war soon left due to continued pogroms. But still, for this museum to exist there was a reassurance that the long history of Galician Jewish culture has not been completely erased.

This is only an extremely brief reflection on this experience – a pilgrimage of sorts for this Ashkenazi. Auschwitz is a name from my childhood nightmares, a hell that so many of us have imagined ourselves trapped in. But until planning for this trip, it was not one that I ever imagined actually physically stepping foot in.

I know this isn’t directly related to the COP, but I hope you’ll agree that it’s immensely important. Certainly other COP attendees did, because it was clear that hundreds of people made the same decision today to make the trip down from Katowice. We’ll go into this second week of the conference with, perhaps, a reminder of the devastation that humans are capable of inflicting on each other. We’d do well not to forget, so that protection of the vulnerable might be woven into the fabric of these negotiations.

Sunday the COP was closed. Roughly half of the attendees went to Krakow, the other half to Auschwitz. Eriko, Saadiq and I went to Krakow, Melissa to Auschwitz. (Eriko has already been to Auschwitz; Saadiq and I will go at the end of our time here.)

The path to the shuttle bus to Krakow (leaving from the COP) was full of one of the Christmas markets the first week’s delegation described.

People here are really into Christmas!

On the bus to Krakow, I had the great pleasure of chatting with Sr. Saddy Rafael Pineda Castellanos, part of the Honduras delegation. Señor Pineda is the head of the Forest and Climate Change Department in Honduras. He is part of a twelve-person delegation and his primary focus is on mitigation, with some attention to adaptation and financing, which others are also helping to cover. The delegation is spread around the area, with some people staying in Krakow, and others in small towns some distance from Katowice. This makes it hard for them to meet and plan each days’ negotiations, but they make do with WhatsApp.

It sounded to me as if the Honduras forestry department is doing a lot with the resources available: they have plans for restoring one million hectares of forests. They broker deals, providing restoration plans for private landowners and connecting people to funding when needed. Honduras is also working hard on watershed remediation, especially in the dry corridor.

I was pleased to hear that a recent extradition law (extradition to the US for drug trafficking) had decreased gang violence. Food security continues to be a big issue, and climate change is driving migration, but so is the differential in wages between the US and Honduras.

Señor Saddy Pineda will be happy if this COP24 produces three things: a completed Paris Rulebook, a completed Talanoa Dialogue, and a financing mechanism. I’m crossing all my fingers and toes that this may come true.

In fact, in Krakow, at the Wawel Castle and surrounding buildings, I climbed the bell tower of the Cathedral. The audio guide says that if you put one hand on your heart and touch the clapper of the bell with your other hand, your wish will come true. I tried it both way: left hand on heart, right on bell, and vice versa.

 

Sunday the COP was closed. Roughly half of the attendees went to Krakow, the other half to Auschwitz. Eriko, Saadiq and I went to Krakow, Melissa to Auschwitz. (Eriko has already been to Auschwitz; Saadiq and I will go at the end of our time here.)

On the bus to Krakow, I had the great pleasure of chatting with someone who is part of the Honduras delegation. I won’t say any more about that conversation until I get approval from my new friend, but the conversation made me think about the broader context of the negotiations here.

For those following along at home, I thought it might be worth laying out some of the groupings and negotiating blocks operative here. (Lots of lists and names coming up below, but this chart lays out the blocs more visually.)

The UNFCCC organizing Parties to the Framework Convention into three groups: Annex I, Annex II, and non-Annex I. This division is based on earlier groupings of countries through economic development, most notably the OECD or the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Annex I countries were either part of the OECD when the UNFCCC was formed in 1992 or they were Economies in Transition (Russian Federation, Baltic States, several Central and Eastern European States); Annex II countries were a subset of OECD countries “not in transition:” because of their level of economic development, Annex II countries are required to provide financial and technical support to developing nations. Developing nations are sometimes called non-Annex I nations: the point is that they should be recipients of finance and technology transfer.

The UNFCCC also operates in terms of regional groupings, mostly for the purposes of electing representatives to the Bureau. The regional groupings are African States, Asian States, Eastern European States, Latin American and the Caribbean States, and the Western European and Other States–the “other states” include Australia, Canada, Iceland, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland and the United States of America.

But negotiating blocs have arisen separately from this geographical grouping.

Honduras is part of AILAC, a negotiating group including Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, and Peru. I asked why Nicaragua was not part of this group and Paraguay was—the map of this group stretches oddly to allow for exclusions and inclusions. My seatmate explained that Nicaragua was more aligned ideologically with Venezuela and Cuba and Paraguay was not part of ALBA, so they needed a different coalition. Indeed, in the chart below (same as the one above) which was drawn up by then-student Jonas Haller, Nicaragua and Bolivia join Venezuela and Cuba as part of ALBA as well as forming part of the LMDCs group. Venezuela along with Ecuador is also part of OPEC.

The UN always offers ample portions of alphabet soup. In this case, AILAC is the Independent Alliance of Latin America and the Caribbean; ALBA stands for the Bolivarian Association for the Peoples of our America. The G77 was originally the Group of 77 formed in 1969 during the UN Conference on Trade and Development; it now includes about 133 Parties. Because this large group is also very diverse, smaller groups have formed within it: the African Group (54 Parties; established at COP1 in 1995), SIDS (Small Island Developing States; roughly 40 Parties; first to propose draft text of reducing emissions in Kyoto protocol), LDCs (Least Developed Countries; 48 Parties). The LMDCs are Like-Minded Developing Countries, including both Iraq and Iran (while Iran is left out of the Arab group). EIG stands for Environmental Integrity Group. OPEC stands for Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries; OECD stands for Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

The Umbrella Group came together after adoption of the Kyoto Protocol; the subgroup of Annex II nations in the umbrella group are also sometimes called Juice Cans (Japan Iceland US Canada Australia Norway New Zealand: JUISCANNZ is how I envision this, but I have no idea whether or not that’s correct).

The chart suggest how confusing it can be to think about any given Party’s allegiances and/or negotiating priorities. It also shows the impact of history. China, for instance, might have had more in common with African nations in 1969, but its development trajectory has been quite distinct in the past few decades–but the negotiating alliance remains intact.

In addition to these three categories of Parties (rich Annex II, doing-pretty-well Annex I, and developing non-Annex I), there are also a host of “constituencies,” including observers like our little Swarthmore delegation. But that will be another post, full of its own alphabet soup.