COP15 - day 1

Je participe à la rédaction des articles du site de la FYEG (Federation of Young European Greens). Voilà un premier article :

Day 1: Talk today must become Action tomorrow

The countdown has ended, the ceremonies are over and the Copenhagen conference has begun! COP15 opened its door this morning welcoming more than 15 000 people from all around the world. It might not be the final round of negotiation for the post Kyoto commitments, but still here the tension is sensible, during the opening session the message given by the speakers was clear: we have two weeks to save the climate stability!

This first day started with a frustration for the NGOs delegates. First, the security asked us not to enter the opening session hall with bags and computers, then we were told that a specific badge was needed without any indication on where to find it… Finally we found a hall were the opening session was shown on TV… And it started with a 40 minutes delay, while it felt like that the whole world was waiting the negociators to sit down on their sits !

There were a number of opportunities today for countries and groupings to publicly state their position on the state of the negotiations. It is clear that many developing countries feel very frustrated at the progress of the talks so far and that trust (or lack of it) is a major issue. The G77+China criticised the developed nations for producing ‘incoherent and inconsistent proposals’, while the African Group warned developed countries that this was not a ‘pick and choose’ process and that the world needs a comprehensive climate package.

For the small island states (AOSIS), this meeting is about nothing less than the physical survival of their countries and this was reflected when they pledged to work ‘until any hour, under any format’ to get a deal at Copenhagen. Even Russia called for all countries to abandon ‘the tired clichés of the past‘ and to show flexibility and creativity in the next two weeks.

The Umbrella Group of countries (which includes the US, Canada, Japan, Australia and N.Zealand and others) used the term ‘Copenhagen Accords’ a lot today to describe a possible outcome of this conference. This would be a fancy name for a package of agreed climate policies, but not a legally-binding treaty at this stage. Still, everyone has an enormous amount of work to do even to get to this outcome. Tomorrow the real work begins and FYEG will be doing our bit!