Sergio Abranches

If 2009 was the Year  of Twitter, it was also the year Twitter has become a solid journalistic tool to cover climate change, and a widely used resource for climate change advocacy and militancy, pro and con.

As Alfred Hermida observes (@Hermida)

there has been a rapid uptake of Twitter by journalists, provoking somewhat of a Twitter frenzy in some quarters of the media.

He also notes that

Twitter has been quickly adopted in newsrooms as a mechanism to distribute breaking news quickly and concisely or as a tool to solicit story ideas, sources and facts.

I saw that happen in the Media Center. Tweets were used to break news everyone knew would become updated in a matter of hours, if not minutes; to socialize sites and Twitter accounts that were good sources of info; to opine about events; to comment on the experience and ambience of COP15 coverage. It as like a TwitterBabel, a multi-language ongoing dialogue and information sharing experience.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy spread his own impressions, infos, and ideas through a Twitter account specifically setup for COP15: @ElyseeCop15. UK Prime minister Gordon Brown used the regular @10DowningStreet account to tell about his impressions. They both became very useful sources.

A typical tweet representing Sarkozy’s views would be

PR : “les difficultés de cette conférence, c’est la preuve d’un système onusien à bout de souffle”, about 13 hours ago from Seesmic. (“The difficulties of this Conference are proof that the UN system is exhausted”.)

A typical tweet reflecting Gordon Browns’s views would be

PM: Negotiations fraught, but determined to get this done. Leaders must put cards on table. 8:12 AM Dec 17th from web

When I look back at the hectic days in the Media Center, during COP15, one of the sharpest images I get is of thousands of journalists frantically looking for information, checking and verifying what they get by all means possible, a large number compelled to report real time.

The intermediation of Twitter turned this rather common situation, into one which best expresses the new emerging forms of what Hermida has called ambient journalism.

(A)mbient journalism – an awareness system that offers diverse means to collect, communicate, share and display news and information, serving diverse purposes. The system is always-on but also works on different levels of engagement in terms of awareness.

COP15 was the first COP in which Twitter was an integral part of media coverage. I guess it was also the height of blog climate journalism. I can’t show any evidence of that, but I can tell about my own experience: I got info from more blogs than online conventional news sites, except for Reuters and The Guardian. Sure, I’m counting blogs hosted by newspapers sites, such as @Revkin’s Dot Earth, or The Guardian’s Environment Blog .

Twitter was also a crucial resource for climate policy advocates, militants, and NGO’s. They served advocacy or militant purposes, but they were also good sources of information. I found Adopt a Negotiator’s use of blogging, facebooking and tweeting particularly interesting. It was probably educational to the participants, and was also a source for journos.

Twitter is today the single most important source for information about climate militants still detained by the Danish police.

And Twitter has become an unavoidable tool for research and journalism.

In fact, Twitter can be a serious aid in reporting. It can be a living, breathing tip sheet for facts, new sources and story ideas. It can provide instantaneous access to hard-to-reach newsmakers, given that there’s no PR person standing between a reporter and a tweet to a government official or corporate executive. It can also be a blunt instrument for crowdsourcing. (Paul Farhi – The Twitter Explosion, AJR)

Hashtags were widely used, but the dominant ones became #COP15, #Copenhagen, and #climate.

Hashtags are just one of the tools that bring coherence to what can seem like Twitter’s tower of Babel. (Paul Farhi – The Twitter Explosion, AJR)

The flow of tweets under #COP15 continues unabated and remains as a good source for journos, policy advocates and militants. The number of silly tweets has increased, it is true, but the meaningful and interesting outnumber the useless. My guess is that #COP15 will continue full of life and content until it transforms itself seamlessly into #COP16.

There are several interfaces between journalists, climate policy advocates and green militants. One of them is certainly Twitter. While policy advocates and militants can be sources for journalists, they are also among the most frequent visitors of news site and news blogs, looking for aggregate information and analytical opinion.

All of which means that Twitter attracts the sort of people that media people should love — those who are interested in, and engaged with, the news. (Paul Farhi – The Twitter Explosion, AJR)

Those who are still debating whether Twitter will replace blogs or other social networking resources, even some news sites, are missing the point. What we are looking at is a closer integration among them all. Each performing the function it is best suited to perform.

The change that made me see real value in Twitter came about a year ago, when the people I had learnt to know and appreciate from their writings in blogs started to have conversations on Twitter. At that time, I had been a frequent blogger for a couple of years and had been conversating with other bloggers via my own blog and via the comments on their blogs. Gradually I noticed that the conversations which previously were held on blogs and blog comments were moving to Twitter. So I started following the people whose blogs I subscribed to on Twitter. I hadn’t search for them before on Twitter, but now most of them exposed their Twitter name on their blogs. (Oscar Berg – “Why 2009 was the Year of Twitter”, The Content Economy)

For some purposes, Twitter works better than RSS Feeds. As blogger Oscar Berg says, blogs are personal, while Twitter is  collective platform, a sort of commons. Twitter, blogs, and social networking will be central to the continuation of the processes of aggregation, segmentation and specialization in the Websphere as well as in the media world.

Where no other resource still competes with Twitter is on what Cloud9Media has aptly called Realtime Magic. Be it real time search, or breaking real time news, or getting real time reactions or fulfilling any other real time info or social communication need one can imagine, Twitter works better and more economically than any other available tool.

Twitter is amazing as its the most efficient mechanism I have ever seen to allow me to peruse the thoughtstreams of others who live all over the world. (Vivek Wadhwa – “Twitter and Me! Why It’s The Only Social Media Tool I Use”, TechCrunch)

My computer screen showed climate militants marching and facing police blockades over the streets of Copenhagen and in the neighborhood of Bella Center. On the TV screens spread all over the crowded Media Center journalists could watch a plenary session of COP15, where government delegates discussed the most pressing global threat of the 21^st Century.

I pushed my chair back and looked at the numerous long tables, each seating around 40 journalists of all parts of the world, of all possible kinds of media. One glimpse revealed it all: government delegates debating their differences, the NGOs marching, peacefully trying to make their way into the negotiations, and the media watching, reporting, commenting.

And, yes, tweeting. About 7 out of 10 computers had Twitter opened on a window. With the right hashtag one could follow what journalists were reporting on Twitter in their languages. Several would tweet in their native languages and in English or French.

This was only one of several dramatic days. While in the plenary sessions delegates defended principled points, in the negotiation rooms intense, tense, and extensive negotiations were in progress. Or, sometimes, in regress. Militants marched protesting for access to the Conference and demanding that negotiators take meaningful action to respond to climate challenges.

Journalists jumped from one press conference to another; looked for exclusive info or insight talking to delegates.

This momentary view of the three international critical players of current climate politics simultaneously in action, like in a movie, made me start taking notes in a frenzy. They were gathered around the same agenda, but to play very distinct and relevant roles: governments, NGOs and the Press. They address climate issues from very different angles. Differences are central not only among these three sets of players, but also within each one. Individuals in each think in different languages. Groupings within and among them reflect diverse social, economic and political backgrounds. They display widely varied degrees of concern, knowledge and engagement regarding climate change.

To a professional political analyst and a journalist this was a very rich situation, a brain-storming event.

Arriving early in the morning every day at the Bella Center, I would immediately start to tweet many ideas about what was happening. Over the twelve days I was there, I posted several pieces to my blogs Ecopolitica and Ecopolity. I also made daily commentaries for the Brazilian radio network CBN. And I took notes all the time, to later help me think and write about the Copenhagen meeting, its aftermath and what’s to be done.

Back home, after some rest, I started reading my notes and browsing some books in order to design an analytical framework to organize my observations. But those intense 12 days of COP15 kept bringing back fragments of memory, snapshots of meaningful moments.

There was a sharp and annoying contrast between the aloofness of my academic readings and the liveliness of these fragments. The first book I picked was about the new transnational activism. For more than 40 pages all I could read was an endless conceptual argument. Academic minutiae seemed to obliterate a sense of relevance. I can’t see how it really matters whether an NGO such as Greenpeace should be called an NGO or something else; whether it is an international, transnational or global organization.

Form has replaced meaning. Formality is mistaken by precision. To be more formal doesn’t mean to be more accurate.

I am too fond of books to abandon reading them, though. I browsed, selected, dropped the useless, and kept reading what seemed relevant to me.

Like Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers. Browsing it, I stopped at the paragraph below, on chapter 7, “Cosmopolitan Contamination: Global Villages”.

People who complain about the homogeneity produced by globalization often fail to notice that globalization is, equally, a threat to homogeneity. (…) (H)omogeneity, though, is the local kind. (…) In the era of globalization – in Asante as in New Jersey – people make pockets of homogeneity. (…) And whatever loss of difference there has been, they are constantly inventing new forms of difference: new hairstyles, new slang, even, from times to times, new religions. No one could say that the world’s villages are  – or are about to become – anything like the same.

To anyone who spent about 16 hours a day in the Bella Center, for 12 days, as an “embedded journalist”, covering every aspect of the Climate Summit and interacting with all the different tribes that crowded the conference site, Appiah’s contention is crystal clear and couldn’t be more accurate.

It describes and explains the contradictions of globalization, the encounters, exchanges and diversity that it entails. The Bella Center had become a “global site” gathering very different tribes, some with antagonistic interests, to deal with a major global issue.

We could see an NGO militant on a crash-demonstration in the passageways of Bella Center, marching over the streets of Copenhagen, debating technical issues with delegates and lobbyists, or passing the results of intelligence work to journalists.

This role differentiation develops while these organizations grow, become stronger, wealthier, and more influential. They diversify their political roles as they get more expertise, more organizational capabilities and enlist people with different skills, aptitudes and backgrounds. Through this process, these new actors of global politics are creating a global civil society even before the first pieces of what will become a system for global governance are put in place. Formal international politics, having governments as the main actors, is far behind, particularly as far as global climate politics is concerned. And we saw plenty of evidence supporting this hypothesis there.

Although the different tribes interacting at the Bella Center theater had the same agenda, it was their different approaches to this common agenda that mattered most. Differences were paramount. They allowed critical actors to play very different roles: as militants, negotiators, reporters, analysts, commentators, doing intelligence or sharing information. Differences were a source of diversity as well as a fuel to contentious politics. Diverse actors expressed distinctive perceptions of climate change as a threat, an opportunity, a hindrance or a hoax.

At the end, diverging interests were stronger than commonalities and the deal was watered down. This end to the summit has by no means diminished its historic dimension. Formal politics has stayed behind, but made a few steps forward. Civil society got out of there stronger and more enlightened about what to do next.

My own perception is that interests, conflicts, and different views became more visible and recognizable in Copenhagen. Like when the small and threatened Tuvalu confronted the giant and threatened China.

I can’t say whether other global meetings on other issues have gained the same political magnitude as COP15 did. What I know is that the Copenhagen Summit was unprecedented in all counts, when compared to the other COPs: the number of NGOs, the size of national delegations, the scale of media presence and coverage, or the number of chiefs of states and governments present to the last 2 of the 12 days of the Conference. This was beyond any doubt the larger and more cosmopolitan climate meeting ever.

It was, by far, the major display of strength, technical expertise and political capability by the global environmental movement in recent history. Large and small NGOs became critical actors in the negotiations. They had expert people doing serious policy advocacy. They fiercely confronted lobbyists and greenwashers. They aptly transmitted to the media technical information and intelligence on what was being negotiated within closed doors.

As far as climate meetings go it was the first time ever that the components of a future cosmopolity were assembled in full. What we’ve seen in Copenhagen was the first full scale emergence of a cosmopolitics that will very likely become a dominant feature of 21^st Century global life.

Cosmopolitanism was clearly visible as the main element of climate politics at the Bella Center meeting. One could see Timothy Brennan’s “polychromatic culture” live at the atrium, passageways and rooms of the Center. Brennan is right when he says this multiverse culture is “a new singularity born out of a blending and merging of multiple local constituents.” The quote is from the essay “Cosmopolitanism and Internationalism”, published in Daniele Archibugi (editor) – Debating Cosmopolitics.

And it was possible to discern the seeds of cosmopolitanism as global governance in the dramatic exchange of visions, demands, interests and principles. The strength of global civil society, in situ and all over the world directly connected with their counterparts in Copenhagen, is clearly building momentum for the emergence of this sort of cosmopolitanism.

The unprecedented presence of world media and the width of media coverage, will certainly help to broaden the scope of cosmopolitan politics.

Finally, the unprecedented attendance of more than 100 heads of states and governments, among them the leaders of the major mature and emerging powers has contributed to give this first experiment of climate cosmopolitics strong political significance.

The citizenship of this future system of global governance is emerging before any new element of effective global governance is in place. Building such a governance regime will be a daunting endeavor. Its complexity should not be underestimated. It is not about building a world state, or a global government. There is too much risk for freedom and human rights in such a notion. It is about global governance without global government. It requires a considerable amount of institutional innovation and experimentation.

Ben Block from the World Watch Institute, pointed correctly that despite disappointment, the Climate Summit marks a high point for the activist movement. This part of global civil society has swelled in strength and recognition in recent years.

The two-week U.N. conference may have ended in disappointment for most climate activists, who travelled from nearly every continent, but the gathering marked a historic high point for a movement that has swelled in strength and recognition in recent years.

An estimated 45,000 people attended the climate negotiations. This included greater participation from government delegations, business groups, and academics, in addition to larger turnout from campaigners. The “youth” delegation, representatives of the below-30 age group, increased its presence at forums that were once attended only by bureaucrats and scientists. Youth organizers said that their volunteers registered some 1,000 attendants, twice the participation compared to a year ago.

The activist crowds were relentless: they raised their voices during negotiation sessions, press briefings, and lunch breaks; they scattered in the corners of conference rooms and gathered in mobs to block passageways; and they screamed loudly for adaptation aid, among other demands. Activists also made subtle suggestions about the ineffectiveness of carbon offsets, for example by using tricks to show airplanes vanishing magically in the same way that carbon offsets make emissions “disappear,” they said.

Negotiation leaders acknowledged that the demonstrations captured their attention.

This history in the making gives full support and deep meaning to Jonathan Watts’s opinion that

Copenhagen will shape our lives for years to come.

Sergio Abranches

And failure it was. A clear failure of collective leadership. In spite of individual efforts, the most powerful and influential incumbent world leaders failed to reached a common understanding of their domestic and planetary responsibilities. They left, as we say in Brazil, à française, without a word to close the meeting and the deal. Presidents Obama and Sarkozy talked to their countries’ media in their hotels before leaving to the airport. They said almost the same thing: the better deal possible was done, and it was a meaningful one. But it was not.

Technically they’ve left the result of their talks in a political void. As a political outcome negotiated above and beyond UN rules, the only way to actualize it would have been to hold a press conference, explain the accord and make it public. To leave the final terms to be negotiated within the UN track was both a violence to established rules, and a major political mistake.

A mistake that led the majority to cry failure. Within the formal gridlocked tracks of the Climate Convention it would have the same fate as prior efforts have had: watering down to the point of becoming meaningless.

The plenary has done the only sensible thing to do about it: to take note and adjourn. It could not veto it: delegates did not have the authority to formally undo or reject what represented an accord by their chiefs of state and governments. They could not vote it either, because, from the standpoint of UN rules, the Copenhagen Accord was a “non-paper”. A document that did not go through the formal channels of the Climate Convention. It was not tabled by any of the Working Groups Chairs for discussion and deliberation. When the Chair of COP15, prime minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen, tried to table it somewhat irregularly at the end of the day, literally, he faced strong open and veiled opposition.

Then, the professionals came to the rescue. The plenary could not deliberate about such a “non-paper”. Delegates could not use the rules either to support or to reject their leaders doings. They could only take note of the Copenhagen Accord, with its meaningful parts, the appendices with the countries’ commitments of emissions cuts, as blank tables. This draft belonged to the politicians that started to negotiate its terms and abandoned it before it was completed. They can now complete it, fill in the blank tables, and adhere to it.

If they do it, and the tables show a meaningful effort on the part of the world’s bigger emitters, even if they fall short of the scientific requirements, than it becomes a meaningful deal. And only then, it could provide a guideline to a legal accord to be drafted and adopted by the Climate Convention, in Mexico City.

If there is progress, the promise of a midyear summit in Bonn, could even become an extra session of COP15, to vote a second Protocol that would either replace or complement the Kyoto Protocol. Today, it seems unlikely that there will be progress enough for a legally binding agreement in June or July. Let’s hope an agreement becomes possible until COP16.

Copenhagen has not ended only with this half blank “non-paper”. There was meaningful progress, not enough, not enduring if nothing else is done, not to meet the expectations, or the dimension of COP15. Yet there was visible and tangible progress.

This meeting was unprecedented in almost everything. It was the largest gathering of global civil society ever in the history of the Conference of the Parties. It was the largest and widest media coverage ever of a COP. It briefly hosted the larger number of heads of state and governments for an environmental summit ever, since Rio ’92.

COP15 began on a very different political note. It was clear that diplomacy and formal UN procedures had been taken by politicization. The first day was marked by the leakage of the so-called “Danish document”. On the second day, Tuvalu provoked a political maelstrom that would never dissolve. It was only fair that Tuvalu should start the movement that led the final plenary session to reject the attempt by COP15 president to table the Copenhagen Accord.

A delegate from the IPCC told me during the moments of perplexity and dismay, after the leaders left Bella Center without addressing COP15, that “it was no longer about science, but about politics”. COP15 was never about the science, it was always about the politics of climate change.

From the point of view of the science of climate change, Copenhagen was a major failure. From the perspective of the politics of climate change, there was important progress.

First, for the first time since the climate talks have been gridlocked, I’d say since COP4 in Buenos Aires, the governments of the world largest emitters have committed to mitigation actions. Their targets may not be in line with the science of climate change, but they’ve crossed the crucial political line separating denial from commitment.

Second, the Copenhagen Accord, if honored by the leaders that have negotiated it, if the countries fill in the tables with their quantified national actions, can serve as an instruction to delegates to draft a formal proposal for a legal document to be adopted by the Conference of the Parties. This document could then be adopted by the plenary of the next COP.

Third, there were minimal, yet meaningful, advances on the positions of the two major emitters: the US and China. Brazil and India have also changed their attitudes and assumed commitments they have also consistently denied before.

Fourth, the target of 2^oC has been accepted and institutionalized as a global mitigation goal.

Fifth, the finance deadlock has been solved. If the blanks on the Copenhagen Accord are filled by the first quarter of 2010, the fast-track US$ 30 billion for 2010-2012 will be available. If an agreement is formally reached in Mexico City or before, a long-term fund will be created, and by 2020 there will be a significant sum of at least US$ 100 billion a year to finance mitigation and adaptation actions by developing countries.

Sixth, there was progress on technology transfer, another point of stalemate.

Seventh, there was progress on monitoring, or rules on measurable, reportable and verifiable actions. An issue that almost led to a political incident between US and China. The two countries negotiated the issue, with the intermediation of Brazil and India. Barack Obama and Wen Jiabao talked during a meeting of the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) at Bella Center. President Lula intermediated the talks. India prime-minister, Manmohan Singh, proposed an WTC like solution for reporting and verification, that was acceptable by both parties.

Eight, the practical disruption of G77, and the new roles assumed by the “African” group of countries, the AOSIS (small island states) and the BASIC countries allowed a new geopolitics of climate change to fully emerge. These new groupings are more coherent and their interests are clearer. This new division largely prevents emerging powers to manipulate small country’s veto powers on their favor.

Ninth, it has become clear, as president Sarkozy has stated, that the UN process is on the verge of exhaustion. The climate change issue is bigger than the institutional arrangements under which it has been negotiated. A new system for climate change governance is needed. However, a new institutional setting, particularly a new climate change multilateral organization cannot be created before we have a new legal agreement that encompasses all major nations of the world. It seems likely that this new framework for the global governance of climate change is finding its place in the global agenda.

These contradictory results; the extraordinary display of vigor by global civil society in Copenhagen and around the world; coverage by about 3500 accredited journalists and many thousands of citizen journalists; the unprecedented presence of more than 100 chiefs of state and governments and their dismal achievement; real progress towards solving the complex net of issues and interests gridlocking a global climate change deal, all are ingredients of a historic event. Two weeks not to forget.

Sergio Abranches

President Obama came to the Plenary of COP15, to do a very basic, yet very difficult political operation: say yes to something his country has been saying no for more than a decade. That is progress enough.

However, he can only approve an accord that falls short of what is needed to meet the US “global responsibilities”, and is not near enough to “act boldly, and decisively, in the face of this common threat.”

The problem with Obama’s speech is that its two crucial paragraphs do not match the objectives he sets forth in the opening paragraphs. Obama’s speech adds up to two crucial paragraphs:

Second, we must have a mechanism to review whether we are keeping our commitments, and to exchange this information in a transparent manner. These measures need not be intrusive, or infringe upon sovereignty. They must, however, ensure that an accord is credible, and that we are living up to our obligations. For without such accountability, any agreement would be empty words on a page.

Third, we must have financing that helps developing countries adapt, particularly the least-developed and most vulnerable to climate change. America will be a part of fast-start funding that will ramp up to $10 billion in 2012. And, yesterday, Secretary Clinton made it clear that we will engage in a global effort to mobilize $100 billion in financing by 2020, if – and only if – it is part of the broader accord that I have just described.

And they don’t match the challenges and objectives with which he opens his statement:

We come together here in Copenhagen because climate change poses a grave and growing danger to our people. You would not be here unless you – like me – were convinced that this danger is real.

So the question before us is no longer the nature of the challenge – the question is our capacity to meet it. For while the reality of climate change is not in doubt, our ability to take collective action hangs in the balance.

I believe that we can act boldly, and decisively, in the face of this common threat. And that is why I have come here today.

Moreover, on Obama’s first condition, or proposal for a deal, the closing sentence:

I’m confident that America will fulfill the commitments that we have made: cutting our emissions in the range of 17 percent by 2020, and by more than 80 percent by 2050 in line with final legislation.

does not match the opening ones:

First, all major economies must put forward decisive national actions that will reduce their emissions, and begin to turn the corner on climate change. I’m pleased that many of us have already done so…

Global levels of emission by 2020 and 2050 still undefined.

If the blanks are filled, together it all adds up to the possible agreement, or the imperfect agreement, as Obama has named it.

In pursuit of the ultimate objective of the Convention as stated in its Article 2,

Recalling the provisions of the Convention,

Being guided by Article 3 of the Convention,

Affirming our firm resolve to adopt one or more legal instruments under the Convention pursuant to decisions taken at COP13 and this decision as soon as possible and no later than COP16/CMP6.

Have agreed on this Copenhagen [X] which is operational immediately

1. The Parties underline that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time. The Parties emphasise their strong political will to combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities. Recognizing the scientific view that the increase in global temperature ought not to exceed 2 degrees and on the basis of equity and in the context of sustainable development, the Parties commit to a vigorous response through immediate and enhanced national action on mitigation based on strengthened international cooperation.

Ambitious action to mitigate climate change is needed with developed countries taking the lead. The Parties recognize the critical impact of climate change on countries particularly vulnerable to its adverse effects and stress the need to establish a comprehensive adaptation
programme including international support.

2. Deep cuts in global emissions are required. The Parties should cooperate in achieving the peaking of global and national emissions as soon as possible, recognizing that the time frame for peaking will be longer in developing country Parties and bearing in mind that social and economic development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of developing country Parties and that low-emission development is indispensible to sustainable development.

3. Adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change is a challenge faced by all Parties, and enhanced action and international cooperation on adaptation is urgently required to enable and support the implementation of adaptation actions aimed at reducing vulnerability and building resilience in developing country Parties, especially in those that are particularly vulnerable, especially least developed countries, small island developing States and countries in Africa affected by drought, desertification and floods.

The Parties agree that developed country Parties shall provide adequate, predictable and sustainable financial resources, technology and capacity-building to support the implementation of adaptation action in developing country Parties. The Parties further endorse -/CP.15 on adaptation.

4. Annex I Parties to the Convention commit to implement, individually or jointly, the quantified economy-wide emission targets for 2020 as listed yielding in aggregate reductions of greenhouse gas emissions of X per cent in 2020 compared to 1990 and Y per cent in 2020 compared to 2005 ensuring that accounting of such targets and finance is rigorous, robust and transparent.

5. Non-Annex I Parties to the Convention resolve to implement mitigation actions, based on their specific national circumstances and in the context of sustainable development. Mitigation actions taken and envisaged by Non-Annex I Parties shall be reflected through their national communications in accordance with Article 12.1 (b) of the Convention.

The frequency of submissions of the national communications of Non-Annex I Parties shall be every two years. Mitigation actions taken by Non-Annex I Parties will be subject to their domestic auditing, supervision and assessment, the result of which will be reported through their national communications.

Clarification may, upon request, be provided by the Party concerned at its discretion to respond to any question regarding information contained in the national communications.

Nationally appropriate mitigation actions supported and enabled by countries in terms of technology, financing and capacity building, will be registered in a registry, including both action taken and relevant technology, financing and capacity building support.

These supported nationally appropriate mitigation actions shall be subject to international measurement, reporting and verification in accordance with guidelines elaborated by the COP. The Parties take note of the information on enhanced mitigation action actions by Non-Annex I Parties as listed.

6. Developing countries Parties should, in accordance with the provisions contained in decision /CP.15, contribute to mitigation actions in the forest sector by undertaking the following activities:
reducing emissions from deforestation, reducing emissions from forest degradation, conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forest, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks.

7. The Parties decide to pursue various approaches, including opportunities to use markets, to enhance the cost-effectiveness of, and to promote, mitigation actions, in accordance with decision -/CP.15.

8. Scaled up, new and additional, predictable and adequate funding shall be provided to developing country Parties, in accordance with the relevant provisions of the Convention, to enable and support enhanced action on mitigation, including REDD-plus, adaptation, technology development and transfer and capacity-building, for enhanced implementation of the Convention. Parties take note of the individual pledges by developed country

Parties to provide new and additional resources amounting to 30 billion dollars for the period
2010-2012 as listed and with funding for adaptation prioritized for the most vulnerable developing countries, such as the least developed countries, small island developing states and countries in Africa affected by drought, desertification and floods.

In the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency on implementation, the Parties support a goal of mobilizing jointly 100 billion dollars a year by 2020 to address the climate change needs of developing countries. This funding will come from a wide variety of sources, public and private, bilateral and multilateral, including alternative sources of finance.

9. A High Level Panel will be established under the guidance of and accountable to the Conference of then Parties to assess the contribution of the potential sources of revenue, including alternative sources of finance, towards meeting this goal.

10. The Parties decide that the Copenhagen Climate Fund shall be established as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the Convention to support projects, programmes, policies and other activities in developing countries related to mitigation including REDD-plus, adaptation, capacity-building, technology development and transfer as set forth in decision -/CP.15.

11. In order to enhance action on development and transfer of technology the Parties decide to establish a Technology Mechanism as set forth in decision -/CP.15 to accelerate technology development and transfer in support of action on adaptation and mitigation that will be guided by a country-driven approach and be based on national circumstances and priorities.

12. The Parties call for a review of this decision and its implementation in 2016 including in light of the Conventions ultimate objective.

13. Capturing the progress achieved in the work by the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-Term Cooperative Action and Ad Hoc Working Group on the Kyoto Protocol under the Convention the Parties by continuing negotiations pursuant to decisions taken at COP13 and this decision, with a view to adopting one or more legal instruments under the Convention as soon as possible and no later than COP16.

Deciding to extend the mandate of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action under the Convention and continue the work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under Kyoto Protocol to negotiate one or more legal instruments under the Convention.

Sergio Abranches

Gordon Brown said in his speech that “the task of politics is to overcome obstacles even when people say they are too formidable.” He made every move possible to make his words true. The next hours will tell whether he will succeed. He told at the COP15 plenary early this morning that his talks yesterday convinced him that

while the challenges we face are difficult and testing, there is no insuperable barrier of finance, no inevitable deficit of political will, no insurmountable wall of division that need prevent us from rising to the needed common purpose and reaching agreement now.

The leaders he and his colleagues from France and Germany have mobilized will meet at the Bella Center, on an open ended informal plenary, to discuss the details of a deal on climate change.

President Barack Obama has clearly underestimated the scale and pace of the political endeavor that brought several key world leaders to Copenhagen. He missed the critical moments of political negotiation that made the summit possible. He did not mobilize the world political leadership, neither did he lead the climate change talks.

He sent his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to remove US vetoes and set his conditions to help an understanding. Not really enough. He will arrive after the fact, at the closing moments. His absence was felt in the most difficult hours, when failure was a possibility greater than success. Now success seems more likely than failure.

Presidents Lula and Sarkozy met before the dinner, to announce the decision of the heads of state to hold an open ended summit and to negotiate a Copenhagen Agreement.

There still are risks. Failure continues to be a real possibility. However, an agreement with elements to persuade global public opinion that the Copenhagen Summit succeeded has become a more likely outcome over the last few hours.

Sergio Abranches

With NGO’s barred from Bella Center, where COP15 is taking place, the media confined to the Media Center, and talks at the formal negotiating tracks stalled, the Climate Meeting seems to be heading to a gloomy end.

Politics, however, is not really an affair for formal environments. Formal settings are used by politicians for speeches, photos and ceremonial handshaking. Politics is done in hotel or private rooms at the conference center, through the phone and videoconference equipment. A deal is being negotiated above and beyond the formal tracks here in Copenhagen.

Prime minister Gordon Brown spent the day, yesterday, holding a dozen of private meetings with other leaders from developed, emerging and least developed countries, on a last attempt to create the conditions for a deal.

“The task of politics is to remove obstacles,” he would say this morning at the plenary of COP15, recalling his endeavors the day before. In his talks yesterday he found that “the challenges are difficult and testing,” yet there are no unsurmountable obstacles in finance, mitigation actions, or any other major issue to an effective Copenhagen Agreement.

On his carefully drafted speech, Brown outlined the deal he is negotiating together with other leaders, such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, and the President of the European Commission, José Manoel Durão Barroso.

Brown’s outline on finance was pretty much the same presented yesterday by Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, on behalf of the African Union. It is essentially a commitment by developed countries of US$ 30 billion for a startup fund in the period 2010-2012, to be used to address urgent adaptation and mitigation tasks, and to prepare long-term plans for adaptation and mitigation.

Long-term finance flows should start in 2013 to reach up to US$ 50 billion a year by 2050, and US$ 100 billion a year by 2020.

The Prime Minister has also talked about how he envisions a political deal regarding emissions reductions from developed and emerging countries. He defends a strongly politically binding deal, with numbers and clear guidelines to become a legally biding one within six to 12 months.

This in essence is what is being tirelessly negotiated by Brown, Merkl and Sarkozy, on consultations with US President Barack Obama, President Lula, Japan Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, and Spanish Prime Minister José Luiz Zapatero among several other key global leaders.

President Obama sent Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to participate on what she called on her first press briefing in Copenhagen the “macro”, larger framework of negotiations, beyond “text negotiating.”

The Danish presidency apparently renounced the idea of proposing a document from the Chair. The text was announced yesterday, but never came to fore. The first “Danish document” produced a definite loss of confidence in the relations between developing and developed countries, after it was leaked in the beginning of the meeting. Distrust apparently led Prime Minister Rasmussen, and COP15 Chair, to abandon it altogether. “Text negotiating” will be based on the documents tabled by the Chairs of the Working Groups on the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and on the Climate Convention (AWG-LCA).

If top level talks see real progress today, president Obama will arrive tomorrow to “fill in the gaps” and seal the deal. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has said, for instance, the US is committed to the finance scheme outlined by Meles Zenawi and Gordon Brown. Asked how much the US would contribute she answered “we’ll contribute proportionately.” How much only Obama will tell, under the condition there is a deal and it includes adequate “transparency mechanisms” for all Parties.

The pieces are progressively coming to place. Any meaningful Copenhagen Agreement will only happen above and beyond the formal tracks of COP15. If there is an agreement, then the formal and legal details would be worked out within six to 12 months, as Gordon Brown said in his speech at the otherwise largely ceremonial COP plenary.

The Climate Meeting has become a sort of G120 Summit. Real negotiations involve the G8, the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), leaders representing African nations, and the AOSIS, the Association of Small Islands States.

If this deal from the top is actually sealed, than COP15 will ceremonially embrace it and bring its conclusions back to the formal multilateral tracks where a deal of this kind belongs.

Sergio Abranches

Connie Hedegaard has been working hard facing the enormous challenge posed by the Chair of COP15, while in the midst of a political arm-wrestling with Danish Prime-Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen. When she resigned the Chair of COP15 it became clear that she was forced to yield politically to the Prime Minister. It has also become the symbolic indication of an unprecedented turn of events at the Climate Summit. The formal diplomatic conference is deadlocked, while an intense maneuvering of top global leaders looks for a political solution.

Today there are two different events taking place under the umbrella of the Climate Convention. One is the continuation of the formal agenda for the first day of COP15’s high level segment. The other is a semi-virtual series of intense consultations among the heads of state, both here in Copenhagen and elsewhere, through videoconference and telephone calls.

The formal meeting is hopelessly gridlocked. After a whole night of hard work, negotiators weren’t able to deliver a working draft. After hours of consultations ministers and heads of delegations have also failed to agree on the critical points. Polarization between the US and G77 reemerged last night blocking any further progress.

The best outcome negotiators could yield was to somehow return the drafts to the status they were at the beginning of the week.

The prevailing assessment here is that the diplomatic track of the climate meeting has reached a dead end. The high level segment, where negotiations are conducted by ministers and heads of delegations has also showed it is powerless. So far it has only reproduced the polarizations and gridlocks of the so-called “technical segment”.

The only hope now is that top level political conversations, above and beyond the formalities of the Conference of the Parties, can find a solution to the major points of conflict. Heads of state are expected to accomplish in 48 hours what three years of negotiations have failed to achieve: an effective agreement.

The generalized sentiment here is that either the heads of state are able to announce such a deal, or they will be forced to admit failure.

This admission would be an ironic anticipation of the ad created by the NGO Greenpeace to welcome COP15 participants. The ad depicts top global leaders in 2020 admitting to have failed in Copenhagen and to be responsible for the climatic consequences of their failure.

Sergio Abranches

There was a major setback today on the work of the core working groups at COP15. Negotiators failed to reach an agreement on all major issues: measurable, reportable and verifiable actions for reducing emissions by developed countries; nationally appropriate mitigation actions by developing countries; finance; REDD. They decided to transfer decisions to the ministers.

The “technical” phase ends today. Negotiators will very likely work overnight to try to get a working paper upon which the ministers can work and perhaps improve. This phase is led by diplomatic negotiators and senior government officials.

Ministers, the heads of delegation, respond for the “high level segment”, and they need a document as complete as possible to serve as a basis for their political assessment and decision.

It is unlikely ministers will have the time and the technical information necessary to reach an agreement on the texts that apparently could come out of the discussions on the working groups.

It is also unlikely that the heads of state and governments will be satisfied with a text that fails to address all important substantive issues, either transferring them to the political level, or to COP16, on December 2010.

There is a clear demand from COP15 Chair, Connie Hedegaard, and UN top climate official, Yvo de Boer, for a complete draft for the ministers to review. If negotiators fail to produce such a text, the whole summit may collapse.

The stronger argument for an acceptable deal that remains valid is political. It is unlikely that this unprecedented number of heads of state will come to Copenhagen to celebrate a failure or to sign a vague letter of intentions.

There are still some resources the Chair of COP15 can use to get a draft done overnight or during the morning tomorrow. An intervention from the Chair to get a document done is an instrument of last resort, rarely used at a Conference of the Parties.

Connie Hedegaard made a dramatic appeal for action, compromise, commitment and responsibility to get the job done today, at the opening ceremony of COP15’s high level segment.

I must warn you: we can fail, she said. And we cannot afford to fail, she added.

This is not only about the climate. It is also about the world’s confidence on their global leaders.

This call for action may also be interpreted as a warning that she could use the Chair’s prerogatives to get a working document, if the negotiators fail to deliver.

Sergio Abranches

After the walk out of African delegations from all discussions and the interruption of the negotiations at group level, President Connie Hedegaard was forced to temporarily suspend the plenary of COP15. She created an informal consultation group, with representatives from the three groups: developed countries, developing countries, and least developed countries.

The “African” walk out was induced by an unresolved procedural objection. They argued that the negotiations lacked transparency. The complaint was actually prompted by rumors that developed countries were conducting side negotiations around a text to be submitted only to heads of state. COP15 president Connie Hedegaard tried to assure them she wasn’t conducting any side negotiation, to no avail.

An issue of trust has developed since the leakage of a document attributed to the Danish Prime Minister, as a means to save face if the gridlock remained unresolved in Copenhagen.

The walk out by the “Africans” has crystallized a split within G77 everybody was already expecting to happen. That this heterogeneous conglomerate of 130 countries would not hold on a serious multilayered, multi-issue vital negotiation as this one was obvious enough. How the split would emerge was unpredictable. It came about when the BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China) started meeting on their own to negotiate a strategy at the political level of COP15, that began today. The “Africans” blockage followed suit.

There were rumors that the “Africans” would massively walk out for good of the summit tomorrow, if they were not satisfied with today’s developments. South Africa has apparently persuaded them to wait one more day of negotiations.

So far, after talks resumed informally. Everything will now depend on whether they make enough progress to yield raw material for an effective new plenary tomorrow.