Delegations are back at work after Sunday break. The first week of negotiations ended with a “tremendous amount of work done”, according to the Chair of the AWG-LCA. Many Countries are ready to work on the draft texts that were proposed by the Chairs of both LCA and KP tracks on Friday. However, serious divergences remain, especially on the legal aspects of the agreement that Parties are trying to reach. Some Parties fear that these texts shaping an “overarching decision” will prejudge the final outcome of Copenhagen.
In the light of this, yesterday was not a real day-off for many negotiators. The COP President Connie Hedeegard convened informal consultations with the involvement of a number of Ministers (almost 50) who were already in town in order to kick off a political process before the official high-level segment starts on Wednesday. A strong political guidance is indeed needed as soon as possible. African countries and least developed States have in fact blocked the negotiations. They declared that, unless the issue of emission reduction targets by developed countries is addressed and set without delay, they will refuse to further participate in the negotiations. Besides that, developing countries are pushing to have more clarity on the legal form of the Copenhagen outcome, to be resolved before deciding on the substance of the text. High-level Chinese and Indian representatives pointed out that they expect key elements to be agreed before their arrival in Copenhagen. In their view, this is to avoid a situation where western leaders fly in and rush developing country Parties, forcing their hands on main points on the last day of the conference.
As a consequence, today’s drafting groups – that had been working on the “daughter decisions” for days – were stopped, and another general informal consultation session was held. COP Presidency sketched a list of crunch political issues to be discussed at the “informal political level”, including developed countries’ emission reduction targets and long-term financing that appear as the hardest nuts to crack. This is intended to provide world leaders with a condensed number of options to fix during the final segment. Some Ministers were selected to help the Presidency conduct this informal dialogue on critical issues. So experts are now supposed to resume the works of drafting that had been interrupted to finalize the remaining technical aspects in the meanwhile.
Negotiators can sense the feeling of nervousness and slight diffidence in the rooms, which is definitely not a good sign for the coming days.
