Climate summit: 'this is doable'
Amid protests in Paris, UN's Ban Ki-Moon says he is optimistic there will be a strong deal at the Climate summit as deadline looms.
PT1M10S 620 349- 'High ambition coalition' emerges
- Coalition now backs carbon markets
- Paris climate conference: Full coverage
Each day at the Paris climate talks, the 10 members of Cameroon's negotiating team dash between formal sessions, trying to keep impromptu appointments or decipher the latest tweak of the evolving draft accord.
By contrast, European Union officials are sure to be present at every meeting open to them, ready with detailed solutions to any problem they can anticipate. Some of them type directly into Google documents that are being read and assessed in real time by experts across the continent.
Emmanuel Nuesiri, part of the Cameroon team at the climate talks. Photo: Peter Hannam
Welcome to the unequal forces at play in Paris. The nations that have often done the least to contribute to global warming and are also among the most vulnerable, are diplomatically outgunned by those most able to cope with expected impacts and the most culpable.
"How do we cope? We don't," said Emmanuel Nuesiri, an adviser to the Cameroon delegation and a researcher in climate policy at institutes in both the US and Germany. "One thing is, we get very tired."
Only about five of the Cameroon team are active in the negotiations, and even then concentration and energy can be diverted by a visiting minister. They leverage their talents by focusing on key areas affecting the west African state, such as the potential of luring aid to preserve the nation's lush rainforests as a permanent carbon sink.
Cameroon's interest at Paris include promoting its forests as a carbon sink – if they can be preserved.
And every evening during the talks, the team gathers at the African pavilion in the conference centre to network on common strategies with other African states. "It's a rallying ground for us," Dr Nuesiri said.
Those tactics have helped even out the contest so far as nations haggle to secure a global pact to limit warming to two degrees – or less – compared with pre-industrial levels.
Among the almost 200 nations present, Bahamas is said to be the smallest, with just four or five delegates. Ranks are further thinned when ministers arrive, requiring tours of the site, introductions and other distractions from the toil of technical negotiations.
Palau, another of the small nations battling for an ambitious climate agreement in Paris. Photo: iStock
To ease the strain, powerhouse nations such as Germany have their own cafe until 8pm – open to all comers – and have teams of negotiators specialised in German matters as well as actively involved in the EU's collective work.
Australia, too, has a team of negotiators with many years of experience and access to top legal and technical expertise as required.
China says it has 70 delegates actively involved in negotiations, although the support staff appears to be multiples of that number. "They are very well organised, everything has been orchestrated," one negotiator with the EU said.
China appears to be providing the research and messaging for less-resourced countries in the so-called Like-Minded Developing Nations group, the negotiator said. This bloc includes some of the nations expected to press for a less-ambitious outcome at Paris, including India and Saudi Arabia, and also smaller players such as Nicaragua and Bolivia.
The EU negotiator said the Chinese appeared to advance their interests in a manner that dodged the spotlight after being blamed by many in the West for the failure of the Copenhagen summit in 2009 – including in colourful, if undiplomatic, language by then Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd.
"It seems they want to avoid [a repeat of Copenhagen] by any means," the negotiator said.
Even with scant resources, poorer states have managed to overcome some of their disadvantages.
Another European negotiator noted how members of small island states have come to occupy part of one of the many cafes or coffee shops sprinkled through the halls as a base to re-caffeinate and regroup.
Tiny states, such as Palau, have also tapped outside advisers from countries such as Australia (even if the lawyers and other assistants have never visited them).
St Lucia, a Carribean minnow, joined with South Africa to extract concessions from Australia over accounting for deforestation.
Australia had hoped its push for full access to overhang carbon credits from the first Kyoto Protocol period – thereby allowing the nation to easily meet pollution reduction goals even as it increases – without any publicity.
And Marshall Islands Foreign Minister Tony de Brum has emerged as a co-chairman of the self-described "high ambition coalition" that want an agreement that would aim to keep global emissions well below two degrees.
"This is not a negotiating group, but rather about joining the voices of all those who are committed to an ambitious agreement and a safe climate future," Mr de Brum told a conference on Wednesday that had gathered the world's media as he introduced lead negotiators from the US, Germany and the EU.
While the smaller nations can take centre stage on occasion, their lack of numbers can leave them without a seat at the table – literally.
Tireless French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius was holding forth on Wednesday night into the following morning at two key conferences to discuss the first draft of the proposed treaty. The 80 places at each of two tables in the so-called indaba – a Zulu word for a gathering where everybody gets to speak – went to the first nations to show up.
Australia, aware of the limitations, was among those dispatching staff to guarantee a seat, a manoeuvre harder to pull off by less-resourced states.
Fairfax Media is a global partner of the UN Foundation
