Ken Cloke's Diary - Day 4

Copenhagen Diary:
Reflections from Inside the Climate Change Conference
by Ken Cloke

Entry 4: Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Today has been very interesting, with several significant breakthroughs. We began with a meeting of the MBB team at 9, where we discussed what happened the day before, and reiterated the fact that we are in Copenhagen not representing only MBB, but mediation as a process, and mediators everywhere. We see this is a long-term process of education and support for climate change collaboration.

We also spent some time talking about strategy. Our idea is to focus attention on the delegates, and there seem to be several ways of reaching them. First, they have different colors on their badges and have to walk through a common walkway that weaves through the building. Second, there is the main hall where they meet, and especially during breaks we can go up to them and strike up a conversation. Third, we can visit the places where they eat lunch, which are in a different area that where most of the NGO representatives eat theirs. Fourth, we can go and knock on the doors to their offices. Not every country has an office, but those that do are often in their offices during breaks in the official sessions. That, of course, is when much of the horse-trading takes place, and when we can meet them.

So far, we have made contact with representatives from Australia, Austria, Botswana, Brazil, China, Egypt, Greece, India, Malawi, Mexico, Nigeria, Norway, Tonga, Turkey, the Pew Foundation and the World Bank. Most of the people to whom we have spoken are quite receptive to the idea of mediation, wish it was already being practiced, and can imagine using it if they can’t reach an agreement with traditional negotiation techniques.

We all understand, however, that these traditional techniques have many limitations and often favor the wealthier and more powerful nations and commercial interests, including coal, oil, and other unsustainable industries. Lots of secret deals can then be struck that are far from transparent, benefit local elites, and do not serve the interests of smaller, poorer, or less powerful constituencies. These negotiations follow the rules of power, which make it more difficult to sustain implementation in the long term.



The biggest breakthrough of the day occurred when two of our members went into one of the offices of multiple countries, including many of the poorest developing nations. The young man who was there immediately understood what we were proposing and asked if we could start mediating right away! They told him they wanted to check with us, so they came back to report and a team was dispatched to meet with him, including one of our members who has worked in Sudan. We had a delightful conversation in which he expressed his interest in the idea of mediation, and desire for it to be implemented right away. He is, however, a mid-level diplomat and needs to check with his boss, who is at the ambassadorial level.

We doubt that any actual mediations will occur here as a result, but value the contact and strong interest in our work, and hope we will be able to build a relationship with the group of less developed countries, which are experiencing serious conflicts between its members over emissions and reduction of greenhouse targets.

By the afternoon, the delegate hall is mostly empty, as they are hard at work in the halls and meeting rooms that we are not allowed to enter, trying to iron out an agreement before the political leaders arrive next week. There is a lot of high-sounding official public speech making, diverting attention to what we imagine are a lot of aggressive negotiation and pressure tactics in the back room that will decide who among the competing nations is going to come out ahead.

Whether this will result in a decent treaty is anyone’s guess. Mine is that it will not, and while form kind of agreement remains possible, it is not likely to go far enough in addressing climate change to avoid catastrophic outcomes. What is worse from our perspective is that pressure tactics could reduce the willingness to implement whatever agreement is reached, and actually increase political opposition and resistance. So watch out for the self-congratulations – they both reflect and conceal a flawed process.

Most of the discussion here seems to finally boil down to money. Should the industrialized nations bear the greatest burden in reducing emissions? How much will they pay the developing nations, either through “cap and trade” agreements (which are actually investment devices and derivatives), or other forms of economic support in developing their economies using green technologies?

Meanwhile, the science continues to show that the Greenland ice sheet is melting at a far faster rate than previously assumed, and evidence that we are already at a turning point is accumulating. Personally, I think that the human brain can easily imagine additive, or arithmetic increases, but where we get into trouble is imagining multiplicative or exponential change.

A simple example comes from an ancient story involving a king who offered a mathematician who had performed an important service anything he wanted in return. Seeing a chess-board close-by, he asked for a single grain of rice on the first square, two on the second, four on the third, etc. The king agreed, not realizing that, before reaching the 64th square, he would be giving more grains of rice than there are grains of sand on the planet.

So here is the mood: on the one hand, the MBB team is working beautifully, figuring out how we are going to operate as the day proceeds and working as a single, intelligent organism, with lots of hope and optimism about what we are doing. Other NGO’s I imagine are having similar experiences.

On the other hand, I think we are all feeling a bit like relatives waiting in the anteroom at the hospital for someone to come out and tell us the operation was successful. Everything we are seeing and hearing tells us the patient is in crisis and the physicians are acting as though it isn’t very serious, and are prescribing aspirin and plenty of rest when a major medical intervention is called for. Certainly the Pacific Islanders who interviewed me today spoke this way, and they are in danger of losing their entire countries if sea levels rise to the levels predicted. We are filled with hope and an intense desire for things to work out, and a deep, profound fear that the rhetoric does not match the problems. We will see what happens tomorrow.

Ken