Extract from The Guardian
In huddles in corners, sitting on the floor in corridors, crowded
around smartphones at cafe tables around the sprawling conference centre
in Paris where crunch climate change talks are ongoing, a new form of meeting is taking place.
These are the “informal informals” - groups of negotiators meeting outside the conventional apparatus of plenary sessions in large halls in order to facilitate a deal.
These meetings are intended to tease out and resolve the remaining differences over the detailed wording of the text of a possible Paris agreement. Often, they will work on a single paragraph at a time, reworking the wording and attempting to forge consensus in small groups that they can then feed into the larger process of negotiations.
The informal informals are seen as a key - and novel - strand of the talks. In previous UN negotiations, proceedings have been hampered by the cumbersome process of presenting all 195 countries with long texts - sometimes scores or even hundreds of pages - every word of which must be approved by consensus.
By allowing for these smaller, ad hoc meetings, the French hosts and the UN are hoping to lubricate the process of reaching an agreement.
While these informal meetings are taking place, another strand of negotiators have broad oversight of the whole package of details that will make up any agreement, attempting to steer it through to a deal, and a third strand are working on some of the important issues that will make up the package, such as financial assistance for poor countries, commitments on greenhouse gas emissions, and mechanisms for ensuring countries are accountable for meeting their targets in a transparent way.
Negotiators say that the French, who have put a massive diplomatic effort into the last year of preparations, are acutely aware of the risk that any agreement will be foiled not by a lack of political will to forge a deal, but by being bogged down in the unwieldy details of the text. That was a key problem at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, and the hosts are determined not to repeat the mistakes made there.
The two weeks of talks, aimed at drawing up a new global agreement on greenhouse gas emissions that would kick in from 2020 when current commitments run out, kicked off formally on Monday. Negotiators met in back rooms while an unprecedented 150 world leaders took to the stage to emphasise their commitment to tackling global warming. In a sign of things to come, their initial meetings carried on late into the night, with some ending only at midnight.
By this Thursday, they are expected to come up with a draft text that will be further refined on Friday, then examined by the French team over the weekend. On Monday, that text should be released again for the negotiations to continue - hopefully, with the removal many of the notorious “square brackets” which denote phrases or issues over which agreement has not been reached.
At that point, the French will decide whether to entrust the ministers of each country with the task of coming to an agreement immediately, or demand further work from the facilitators before doing so.
The process of UN talks was first developed in 1992, when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed, and the emphasis is on consensus and transparency. This process can seem arcane and unwieldy, but the task of forging a lasting treaty on the climate among all world governments is so complex that little can be done to change it.
Among the remaining unresolved issues at the talks are the proposed mechanism of five-yearly reviews after Paris, at which countries would be expected to take stock of their progress towards their emissions targets, and potentially ratchet up those targets if circumstances permit.
Some countries which have set emissions targets for 2030 have reservations about the latter, though most are happy with the notion of a stock-taking exercise.
This, and mechanisms for ensuring transparency and accountability in reaching emissions targets, along with the target of providing finance from the rich world to poor countries that will be most affected by climate change, are likely to be the subject of many formal meetings and “informal informals” in the coming days.
These are the “informal informals” - groups of negotiators meeting outside the conventional apparatus of plenary sessions in large halls in order to facilitate a deal.
These meetings are intended to tease out and resolve the remaining differences over the detailed wording of the text of a possible Paris agreement. Often, they will work on a single paragraph at a time, reworking the wording and attempting to forge consensus in small groups that they can then feed into the larger process of negotiations.
The informal informals are seen as a key - and novel - strand of the talks. In previous UN negotiations, proceedings have been hampered by the cumbersome process of presenting all 195 countries with long texts - sometimes scores or even hundreds of pages - every word of which must be approved by consensus.
By allowing for these smaller, ad hoc meetings, the French hosts and the UN are hoping to lubricate the process of reaching an agreement.
While these informal meetings are taking place, another strand of negotiators have broad oversight of the whole package of details that will make up any agreement, attempting to steer it through to a deal, and a third strand are working on some of the important issues that will make up the package, such as financial assistance for poor countries, commitments on greenhouse gas emissions, and mechanisms for ensuring countries are accountable for meeting their targets in a transparent way.
Negotiators say that the French, who have put a massive diplomatic effort into the last year of preparations, are acutely aware of the risk that any agreement will be foiled not by a lack of political will to forge a deal, but by being bogged down in the unwieldy details of the text. That was a key problem at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009, and the hosts are determined not to repeat the mistakes made there.
The two weeks of talks, aimed at drawing up a new global agreement on greenhouse gas emissions that would kick in from 2020 when current commitments run out, kicked off formally on Monday. Negotiators met in back rooms while an unprecedented 150 world leaders took to the stage to emphasise their commitment to tackling global warming. In a sign of things to come, their initial meetings carried on late into the night, with some ending only at midnight.
By this Thursday, they are expected to come up with a draft text that will be further refined on Friday, then examined by the French team over the weekend. On Monday, that text should be released again for the negotiations to continue - hopefully, with the removal many of the notorious “square brackets” which denote phrases or issues over which agreement has not been reached.
At that point, the French will decide whether to entrust the ministers of each country with the task of coming to an agreement immediately, or demand further work from the facilitators before doing so.
The process of UN talks was first developed in 1992, when the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was signed, and the emphasis is on consensus and transparency. This process can seem arcane and unwieldy, but the task of forging a lasting treaty on the climate among all world governments is so complex that little can be done to change it.
Among the remaining unresolved issues at the talks are the proposed mechanism of five-yearly reviews after Paris, at which countries would be expected to take stock of their progress towards their emissions targets, and potentially ratchet up those targets if circumstances permit.
Some countries which have set emissions targets for 2030 have reservations about the latter, though most are happy with the notion of a stock-taking exercise.
This, and mechanisms for ensuring transparency and accountability in reaching emissions targets, along with the target of providing finance from the rich world to poor countries that will be most affected by climate change, are likely to be the subject of many formal meetings and “informal informals” in the coming days.
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