Going for the SmackDown! in Copenhagen

From the WWF Climate Blog

Everybody who works for WWF will have experienced this.

You meet a stranger and one of the first questions is about what you do for a living.

“I am working for WWF”, you answer.

And you will often get the same reaction: “Ah, the World Wrestling Federation”, says the stranger, either being serious, or with a bit of irony in his voice, looking at you and not really finding the match.

It’s not that we are not well known. On the contrary. But the athletes with their warrior names and funny costumes are also well known, and that’s how a panda is sometimes mistaken for a wrestler.

Usually one would think that there can hardly be two professions that differ more than a wrestler and an environmentalist. But somehow the pandas in Copenhagen have all become wrestlers over the last few days. We are wrestling with negotiating texts, with square brackets, with stubborn negotiators, with a lack of sleep, or with a cold, or in some cases even the flu.

After 2 weeks in the Bella Center, we cannot help but admit that it’s all a bit exhausting.

However, like every good wrestler, we are persistent, have a strong will to win, know all the good tricks, and try to make the right moves.

 

Today it was a whole new game for us. Civil society participation has been extremely restricted the last 2 days of the Conference, and with a much smaller team we first felt a bit short-handed: outnumbered by the army of negotiators that did not have to accept cuts in badges and access limitations.

The “work in” action the previous night, where we decided to stay and work because that’s what we’re here for, hadn’t really worked out.

Late at night the security guards cleared the building and expelled the brave team members that tried to defy the access rules by just staying inside instead of leaving. We still have a strong team of lobbyists and campaigners in the Bella Center, but those inside miss those outside, and vice-versa.

But we soon got used to the new way of working, when communication channels between the Bella Center team and those working from office space kindly provided by companies like Dell and Ericsson were established. Via email and phone calls, the team outside stood firmly by the side of those fighting inside. There emerged some great new divisions of labour, for example between the campaigners at the Ericsson office, who drafted our press releases, and those remaining inside the Bella Center, who now found themselves pitching them to the world’s media.

If you work well together as a team, you quickly loose the feeling of being short-handed.

Upon arrival in the early morning hours whether to Dell’s work space, or Ericsson’s work space, or the Bella Center, we also had to wrestle with serious frustrations. The Danish Presidency has really not shown much talent in facilitating these crucial negotiations, and as a result the whole process was in shambles yesterday morning.

Danish morning papers carried headlines saying the Danish government had already given up, and media in other countries quoted pessimistic ministers who also didn’t sound like they’d still believed in a success.

Had Copenhagen already failed before it was really over?

When COP President Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, explained the outcome of lengthy overnight consultations and outlined the next steps in Thursday’s opening plenary, it felt for a second like everything could fall apart. Rasmussen presented his plan for a way forward, asked for objections, and waited a second… before immediately rushing into the next agenda item.

For a moment it looked like there was agreement, and the talks could continue smoothly as proposed.

Only for a moment.

Then the Sudanese G77 chair Lumumba asked for the floor.

The CCTV screen switched to Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister and previous COP President, who had been leading the consultations over night. As if she couldn’t believe that Lumumba would object again, she covered her face with her hands and shook her head. Over the past 2 weeks Lumumba, the Africa Group and the G77 had rejected many Danish plans and proposals – a true wrestlemania.

It seemed like the Danes trusted their consultation process and the resulting proposal this time, so they had apparently expected that Lumumba would be on board. And he was, but only after an intense little dialogue with Rasmussen, who confirmed what Lumumba needed to hear.

As a result, the talks continued on both the LCA and the Kyoto track, even though Danish newspapers had already declared them dead. After that we saw a long day of negotiations at delegate and minister level, in almost all the different areas, and organized in a range of informal and contact groups.

It was SO good to see negotiators talk about the substance of the future agreement rather than getting stuck in process discussions. Worrying to see, however, was that the spirit still remained bad.

After they had already wrestled with their texts without much success during the 1st week, today the same negotiators showed the same helplessness while discussing the same texts.

Apart from a few exceptions, it felt like they were going nowhere and would create a result that’s even worse rather than better.

This confirmed what we have known for a long while now: more time doesn’t necessarily mean more progress in the UNFCCC process.

Game changers have to come from outside the climate talks, and only leaders – not bureaucrats and experts – have the power to deliver them.

Yes, Leaders.

Leaders like Hillary Clinton. The US Foreign Secretary paid a surprise visit to Copenhagen, and delivered a much needed surprise to the flagging talks. In her morning speech, she announced the US would support a global fund of $100 billion by 2020, for the long term finance support of mitigation and adaptation in developing countries.

This was a totally unexpected move, and stood in sharp contrast to the rather unhelpful strategies applied by the US throughout the 2 weeks.

Suddenly a big, new contribution to the global effort was on the table. The kind of stuff that creates a dynamic and forces others to react.

Sure, as in other cases where countries put forward vague finance pledges, we have to wait and see

• how much money the US is willing to contribute to the fund,
• where the cash is supposed to come from, and
• how to govern and distribute it in the end.

But today’s announcement is a start, and an important boost for the much needed agreement on long-term funding that we want to get from Copenhagen.

It didn’t take long until the first reactions came in:

• The Chinese suddenly expressed increased flexibility in the area of transparency when it comes to accounting of mitigation efforts in developing countries.
• And rumour has is that the EU wants to increase its mid-term emission reduction target, from 20% cuts against 1990 levels by 2020 to 30%.

These moves are clearly connected.

Many European Heads of States are already in town, and tonight they are sitting together over a fancy dinner to come to a joint position.

The desert on the menu could be very special: a 30% target.

This would be the domino effect we mentioned previously. No, we will not get the fully fledged, fair and ambitious legally binding treaty we need from this conference. But yes, a positive dynamic like this can bring us much closer to it, and even though we have no time to lose and every delay will cost lives and jobs, laying a strong foundation is better than being completely empty-handed.

Now, back to the wrestlers!

“No”, we usually answer, “it’s the other WWF, the World Wide Fund for Nature.”

Those who care about the environment often get excited and won’t let you go before you have told them a bit more.

Those who are more interested in wrestling, however, usually find a quick reason to walk off.

To be honest, they don’t seem to know anything about the wrestling skills of angry pandas.

And so the fight continues, for another day, or 2.

Kim Carstensen
Leader, Global Climate Initiative
WWF International