INLSA
Bored with the official COP17 negotiations, Mercury journalist and photographer Yusuf Omar took to the podium in the Yellowwood conference hall to speak his mind (during the tea-break).
Yusuf Omar
yusuf.omar@inl.co.za
One day remains for Durban’s 17th Conference of the Parties of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP17) to produce more than weak political window-dressing.
Having covered the event inside and out, one soon realises the conference has little to do with climate change. It’s about economics, geopolitics and money, which form the faultlines of the new world.
Covering the conference is chaos. With 192 countries (193 including the Vatican), it’s the biggest meeting in the world, with over 15 000 delegates.
The first week was mostly negotiators on hotlines back to London, Rome or Lagos. The international press, heads of state and celebrities arrived this week as things heated up.
Countries negotiate in groups. There is the G77 plus China, made up of about 143 countries. Then you have the African group of about 56 countries. There is also the Alliance of Small Island States, who worry about the sea levels rising. The Alba (Bolivian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America) group is Latin America, which includes most of the left-wing radical states such as Cuba and Venezuela. The EU stands together. The rich countries like Australia form the 37 nations of Annex 1. NGOs are also observers in some meetings, and they too have agendas. And all these groups are hammering away at each other. After all, negotiators are essentially lawyers.
Like a conveyor belt of jargon, there are press conferences every half an hour. It’s like an international cocktail party where everyone pretty much fits his stereotype.
China, the world’s second-biggest economy, doesn’t say a lot. American press conferences are frustrating: they bark at you for half an hour, but say nothing at all, and then take four questions at the end. The British hide behind the EU, while the Latin American countries talk about environmental revolutions and other such romantic notions.
Different languages are also an issue. Not just from country to country, but also the “diplomatic climate change language”, a dialect in itself. Delegates sprinkle their conversations with acronyms and political gibberish.
Honestly, no one knows what is going on; it’s complete chaos. By the end of the day, a kind of consensus emerges. Something is forward. Other talks have collapsed. Finding a good analyst is gold – they have been following the talks for years like a soap opera.
The UN sits in the green room every day. It’s an invitation-only affair. Most of the meetings are in fact closed, not just to the press, but also to other member countries.
But it’s even more complex. There are two key sets of negotiations taking place at the same time. Firstly, the current buzz-question: “Is Durban the burial ground of the Kyoto protocol?” Signed in Brazil in 1997, it is a treaty which legally binds 15 Annex 1 (rich countries) to reduce emissions by 5.4%. They have more or less done this. The question now is if countries will sign on for another term.
America wants to kill the Kyoto protocol and make it a voluntary system, but they didn’t even sign it in the first place. Despite this, their presence is felt strongly on every negotiating table. They play dirty, looking over the shoulders of smaller nations and poking the big ones with a long wooden stick.
The other contentious topic surrounds the Green Climate Fund. Conceived in Copenhagen and born in Cancun, one of the major success stories of COP17 in Durban would be sourcing funds for the fund.
The fund is aimed at helping the developing world adapt to climate change, as they will reap the worst consequences despite having done the least to cause it. Industrialised nations promised that the fund would have $100 billion (R810.05 billion) per year to spend by 2020. Now they are reluctant to dig into their wallets. The EU claims it is broke, citing their current financial crisis. Anti-capitalist Latin American states like Bolivia are rejecting the fund outright. And America and Saudi Arabia are dragging their feet and looking for loopholes in the agreement.
An almighty battle is also who will administer the fund, and how it will be administered. The rich countries want to distribute the money through the World Bank. The developing countries have other systems in mind.
Basically, carbon is money. If you limit a country’s carbon emissions, you limit their growth. China has been growing at 8.9 percent a year. How can America curb this? By limiting China’s emissions. So, if China wants to continue to grow, they will need to offset their pollution by buying other countries’ carbon credits.
This is where the controversial Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation scheme (Redd) comes in. Forests produce carbon credits and therefore become an emissions offsetting scheme.
The forest talks are dominated by tropical countries such as Congo, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. They want deals on carbon offsetting and credits, smelling big piles of US dollars. It all sounds fantastic – don’t cut down forests and get paid anyway.
There is big money in carbon offset schemes, but it’s essentially corruption. Not brown envelopes under the table and Swiss bank accounts stuff, but providing huge rewards for very little work. The other major problem is that rich countries are allowed to buy credits and keep polluting, so nothing is really solved. It has led to what are called “carbon cowboys”: businessmen who are signing up villages and whole communities living in forests for carbon credits.
However, getting back to the science, there remains a small problem called global warming, which is allegedly the reason for the whole meeting. A lot of people outside are chanting “1.5 to stay alive”, a call to curb runaway climate change and limit the rise in the Earth’s temperature. More than 110 countries are set on 1.5°C, but the rich want 2°C. The final figure won’t be decided at COP17, but if it does, that would be the icing on the cake. However, if the rich countries refuse to budge on 2°C, Africa will fry.
As host chair of the conference, and the powerhouse of the continent, South Africa holds a vital position in these talks and tries to play on the big tables. However, Africa doesn’t entirely trust South Africa. It’s a complicated relationship, because we are seen as valuing our friendships with the developing BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) more than those with African states.
In the end, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. The high-level ministerial meetings are a little like a game of musical chairs – and Durban is the playground.
