The organised chaos and its legitimacy: the second week of negotiations begin

It’s officially week two of the climate negotiations in Durban, South Africa. Yesterday was also my first day as an official delegate, and as I joined the throngs of people heading through security I felt a tangible excitement (or nervous energy perhaps?) at the prospect of the week.

Having spent the previous week at Howard college in the Civil society space, which was particularly disorganised,  the chaotic atmosphere seemed similar in COP – amongst the masses of people, sessions, side events, negotiations, the atmosphere was overwhelming.

However, unlike Civil society, COP has an aura of being “the real deal”. The ritual around attending COP gives its delegates legitimacy, a kind of importance and agenda which makes it differ from the happenings at Howard College; the delegates differentiate themselves from the public, both physically and symbolically. To enter the conference, delegates get on a conference shuttle, walk through the CCR into a restricted area, go through security and into sectioned and partitioned hallways; they all wear the UNFCCC lanyards. Joining business men in suits, African women in traditional dress, press wielding cameras in their morning ritual gave me a sense of importance and excitement; I too was entering the world of the “official”.

How scary it is that, despite being as chaotic in nature as the civil society events, COP itself has real legitimacy and power. Is the power arbitrary? Is it simply created by an unequal amount of political and economic agency?

It certainly appears so. Despite wearing the right uniform and legitimising lanyard, I was restricted from attending the high level negotiations of the Parties, who differentiated themselves even from the other delegates. Despite being in the conference, we were restricted by layers of exclusivity; hierarchy.

But over the course of the day, unlike our experience in Civil society, we did come to find some general awareness about what was happening in the negotiations. There were whispers of the Green Climate Fund’s controversial move from the COP proceedings into the G20; the EU’s alternative proposal to Kyoto and surrounding support or decline; the ALBA countries’ and youth support of a Kyoto second term. Nothing was very clear, but there were general feelings, issues which were tangible in the general “delegate psyche”. More then that, however, was difficult to grasp amongst the complexity and sheer amount of events happening throughout the day.

Overall, from speaking to people who have been to many other COP’s, it is clear that everyone finds the first COP experience rather overwhelming and chaotic, which is encouraging. However, what is rather underwhelming is the fact that the chaos is something which is legitimising or enabling high-level decisions about the future of the world to be made in an environment of unequally-shared power. It is our job to remain aware of this - and in turn hold leaders to account on their amount of power.

The Debate Begins

Monday the 28th November brought with it the official opening of COP17. The day began early with a youngo meeting that established the youths approaches to the conference and how they hoped to influence the negotiations at hand. In their meeting the global youth representatives used every opportunity to remind their colleges that what they, the youth, wanted from these talks was not another half measure by governments to prolong the fossil fuel generation. 6 of the members within the youngo meeting were even selected, by vote, to join the official plenary sessions. Although the selection process was open and fair there was a definite lack of African presence in those chosen. The main plenary sessions although late went on without a hitch, and unfortunately as expected the major leaders omitted the call for an extension to the Kyoto protocol or a legally binding agreement. The words of welcome from delegates like those of South African president Jacob Zuma were certainly warm. There was however the consensus that climate change is a devastating process that must be stopped and that the prior 20 years of stunted negotiations have taken far too long to have resulted in a lack of consensus. The official proceedings throughout the day followed suit. As a first time conference go-er the amount of formalities and greetings that preceded every parties statement was hard to adjust to. It is understood why they occupy this place yet the question that must be asked is, how much more negotiations could delegates get through if these endless greetings were removed from the official program.Along with the official proceedings cop17 also consists of many side events. One of these included a presentation by The Energy Research Institute, on India's response to climate change. This presentation consisted of an in depth look into local level mitigation measures that have been put in place by Indian local municipalities. This presentation not only included Indian officials but also academics, representatives of industry and other organisations. What this presentation showed was that even though these initiatives were of a local scale their principles could be put in place at an international level.

The final official session met in order to deal with a number of administrative matters and it also have the opportunity to parties to voice their expectations for the conference which lay ahead. Here again there was the consensus that there was a great opportunity for having up a legal agreement and that the time in Durban should not be wasted. Many parties like those of small developing island nations called for responsibility to am taken a developed nations for the sold they played in climate change and that developing nations should not bear the brunt of climate change alone. Observer organisations were also invited to voice their expectations and this is where the most inspiring calls came from. Pleadings like those of Gambia which noted that "No country is insignificant enough to be lost to the effects of climate change". Finally it was the turn of the African youth to voice their concerns. A member of the climate caravan from Nairobi, Ester, was given the honour of this task. She noted that "We cannot allow to leave durban without a legally binding agreement, it cannot be the death of the Kyoto protocol". It was inspiring messages like these that highlighted a day that was otherwise flooded by protocol.