Being an official Party representing St Kitts and Nevis in the COP15 meetings I sat bewildered as after nearly two weeks of patient diplomacy all the agreements we were working on were side lined by a document that a small group of 30 nations, led by the US president, inserted into the agenda and then suggested we had one hour to review and approve. What was even weirder is that I was also online getting notes from people around the world who had read that a successful accord had been reached and that the US president had brokered it (this was apparently based on the Press conference that was held by the US president during the proceedings and yet before any document had been submitted to the COP) 

 

What was submitted finally as the document referred to as the Draft Copenhagen accord is indeed deeply flawed in particular in the area of the funding it purports to provide as it is carefully worded to provide up to to 30 Billion USD in quick start funding by 2012 and then nothing at all for 8 years until 2020 when the headline 100 Billion comes into effect (by which time it will be too late to do much of any good)

 

That said the thing to note is that not only did this last minute effort distract the whole conference from any chance of making real decisions the draft accord its self never made it as a decision as there was no consensus to adopt it. (all COP decisions require consensus e unanimous agreement of all parties before they become official decisions) 

 

In point of fact the draft accord was put up first as a decision and knocked back almost instantly (especially given the way it was incompetently introduced by the Danish COP President who, while tired, should know better to ask for a show of hands in the UN)

 

Then at 3 am in the morning we gave up a crucial 3 of our last hours before closing to have it put up again as an INF document (information) and again it was knocked back (this time with Sudan making some very embarrassing and inappropriate references to the holocaust to add to the annoyance in the room).

 

Still they kept trying to force it in and wasted more time so then we see the document as a MISC (miscellaneous) entry into the proceedings and again it was knocked out. Finally at 9am after working a day and a night a COP Decision was given Consensus and we could get on with the rest of the work...

 

The decision was to "Take Note" of the proposed Draft Copenhagen Accord.

Decision -/CP.15
The Conference of the Parties, Takes note of the Copenhagen Accord of 18 December 2009.

 

Decision -/CP.15

The Conference of the Parties, Takes note of the Copenhagen Accord of 18 December 2009.

 

Gals and guys this is about the least recognition the UN can give any document. Forget the contents of the accord they might as well not exist as far as the COP process is concerned in other words a more total failure you could not ask for excepting a mass walk out.

 

Now not only did this waste the time of a truly unprecedented number of world leaders it sought to undermine the ways in which the UN and the COP work full stop. The UN COP process will go on in COP16 is next year and while I am no apologist for the UN, I see the little progress made in the last 14 years and shake my head, still the principles of transparency (yes all decisions are public http://unfccc.int/2860.php there is even a good search engine on the site) bottom up, consensus building are, as I have witnessed them, nothing short of amazing. Face it if you were trying to get 192 countries to agree on something as important as this how long would it take you to get the job done and how would you do it better?

 

That a room can be filled with world leaders (many of whom do not personally get along) and come to any decisions at all is somehow miraculous to me. Yet what happened on the last day of COP15 has actually set the process back a year in my opinion and so the hope is at the midyear conference in Bonn things can be made to change back to the right direction as the decision of this COP were curtailed by the aforementioned very untimely intervention. 

 

I humbly beg you to take direct action - Get in to meet the technical negotiators for your countries or better yet become a party as I have done. Bring the urgency inside as it is possible to get in to COP16 and not just in as an NGO get in as a party make the change! Find out the names of all the technical negotiators from your countries delegation and get into communication with them they are real people and many have been at this for 15 years or more. You can get into the process and you can make a difference you could even bridge the gap between countries by lobbying the delegates just please do not distract them or get in their way as its hard enough already, instead support them, encourage them and even join them.

 

Above all please realize that the UN and the world governments are not going to fix the problem so please assist us to plant trees now! As if we can permaculture reforest 20 of the 39 Million Square Kilometers of degraded land we have on Earth by 2020 the extra cloud cover the trees generate will halt global warming in 2023 long enough for the politics, the technology and the economy to catch up.