{"id":120,"date":"2015-12-03T12:10:24","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T12:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop21\/?p=120"},"modified":"2022-03-09T21:39:20","modified_gmt":"2022-03-09T21:39:20","slug":"too-fast-or-too-slow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/2015\/12\/03\/too-fast-or-too-slow\/","title":{"rendered":"Too fast, or too slow?"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\"IMG_1579\"<\/a>
\"IMG_1578\"<\/a> Animals from “Noah’s Ark of the climate”, by artist Gad Weil, on display here at COP21.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“The pace has been slow and we have many issues that remain unresolved.” <\/em><\/p>\n

“…progress was too slow.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“We need a change in the mode of work.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“The parties have engaged actively… but the pace, in my view, is nowhere near fast enough.”<\/em><\/p>\n

“The parties have expressed clearly… support for transparency.\u00a0 Like others, the pace is not good enough.\u00a0 We will continue to work tonight.”<\/em><\/p>\n

One after another, thus went the summary statements about the negotiations from the facilitators of the various groups.\u00a0 This was part of an update last night on the progress of the negotiations so far.\u00a0 It was attended by the lead negotiators of the various countries, as well as the COP President.\u00a0 As you can see, there was a consensus that not enough progress is being made toward the goal of having an agreed-upon text by noon on Saturday.<\/p>\n

\"Ambassador<\/a>
Ambassador from South Africa<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

After the updates from the facilitators, the chair of the meeting opened the floor to the individual country representatives who were present.\u00a0 At that point, the tone and focus changed dramatically.\u00a0 The ambassador from South Africa, speaking on behalf of the G77 (a coalition of developing countries) and China, expressed “some concerns with the process.”\u00a0 She spoke of the proliferation of spinoff and informal discussions, sometimes on the same issue and taking place simultaneously.\u00a0 She also noted that sometimes these were announced at the last minute, and asked for better advance notification of schedules.<\/p>\n

In addition to concerns about scheduling, she made some specific requests on behalf of the countries for which she was speaking.\u00a0 One concrete request was for the UNFCCC to compile the various edits that had been produce so far in the various negotiating groups, and to produce a new master (but still provisional) text that would be made available to all parties in the morning.\u00a0 I assume that the goal of this was to allow them (and everyone else) to get a better sense of where things stand, since issues being discussed in one part of the text will have impact on other parts of the text.\u00a0 (The chair of the session later agreed to this request, and the new text is out this morning.)<\/p>\n

After South Africa spoke, the representative from Malaysia spoke, saying that he was speaking on behalf of like-minded developing countries.\u00a0 He said that he supported everything in the previous statement, adding that the pace of the negotiations was “punishing.”\u00a0 As an example, he cited three parallel processes on mitigation taking place in three difference rooms.\u00a0 He said, “We cannot sacrifice a durable agreement at the altar of expediency,” saying that some of the countries were beginning to feel left out.<\/p>\n

Apparently this is a perennial problem at the COPs.\u00a0 The smaller and\/or less-developed countries have smaller delegations, and thus it is harder for them to have a presence at multiple sessions taking place simultaneously, and to keep up long negotiations that can stretch well into the evening hours.\u00a0 In fact, some of the observers who are here come to COP specifically to help smaller states navigate the process, so that they have extra bodies to track what is going on in various parallel sessions (though observers have much less access than party delegates do).<\/p>\n

I don’t have the experience to gauge whether these concerns are worse at this particular COP, given the urgency and the relatively short deadline of trying to agree on a provisional text by Saturday, and how much this is viewed as part of the process.\u00a0 But having read about this before the COP, it was interesting to see it playing out in real time.<\/p>\n

After these statements, several other countries were given the floor to make statements.\u00a0 One interesting bit of procedure that I noted: it appears that parties request the floor by turning their country nameplates on their side, so that they are sticking up in the air.\u00a0 (You can see this in the photo above.) \u00a0 I couldn’t see everything that was happening (we were watching on closed-circuit TV from another room), but everyone who spoke had an upended nameplate, and they put it back down when they finished speaking, so this appeared to be what was going on.<\/p>\n

Some of the remaining discussion amounted to parties saying to each other, “No you<\/em> need to be more flexible,” albeit in a diplomatic way.\u00a0 Other countries weighed in with additional comments on the fast pace or the need for progress.<\/p>\n

The final statement came from the representative from Mexico, who said, “We have talked about urgency for a long time, but this is the place to show it.”\u00a0 The negotiations are continuing today, and it will be interesting to see whether the collective sense of urgency produces more progress.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  “The pace has been slow and we have many issues that remain unresolved.” “…progress was too slow.” “We need a change in the mode of work.” “The parties have engaged actively… but the pace, in my view, is nowhere near fast enough.” “The parties have expressed clearly… support for transparency.\u00a0 Like others, the pace … Continue reading Too fast, or too slow?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.swarthmore.edu\/cop\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}