(Or how the states will stop the temperature rise of the surface of the earth before reaching the 2C, magically!)

I just participated from the 1^st to the 11^th of June, in the Bonn Conference of the UNFCCC (the Climate Convention). I did so within a delegation from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, which has an observer organization status since 2009 (the year of the failure of Copenhagen).

But today I am not writing to speak about what I tried to do there, concretely try to find ways to conceptually and politically influence the negotiation process currently open, from certain perspectives and proposals resulting from more than a year of the work done by a singular research group (the GGCC the STH) obviously from our university.  

Today I need to speak - I would like to write and leave written - my personal assessment (therefore, fresh out of the oven - written just few hours after having finished last Thursday 11^th of June at 17h until today Sunday 14^th of June- (but not representing anyone but myself) how the negotiations are evolving. The title/s of this post today tries, first, to summarize my perplexity facing the human capacity to make a mess. Come on then!

Where are we trying to go? Towards Paris! Aiming to approve an agreement!

It is well known that we are going towards Paris, where, from the 30^th of November to the 11^th of December, a new agreement should be approved within the frame of the climate convention (UNFCCC), on how to fight climate change which will come on us as a result of the modification of the essential terrestrial phenomenologies of nature; modification caused by the ways in which the industrial revolution and capitalism have been developed in the last two centuries, but actually – we cannot lie to ourselves- is living its maximum "modifier" intensity of the climate on earth, during these first years of the 21^st century.

We go towards Paris in 2015 (to the meeting of the UNFCCC COP21) because it was adopted in Durban in 2011 (at the COP17 meeting), but without defining the legal nature of the type of agreement that should be made in 2015 to get into force in 2020. This is still one of the great unknowns, that nobody in the negotiating process seemed too interested in resolving.

In this sense, the only light (which cannot be considered small by any means) that it could be considered that Bonn has turned on these days; is that what could become the Paris agreement might start to be visible. I will comment on this issue later on.

And how did we do so far? How are we walking towards it? Or about the Geneva negotiating text!

So many hours during these more than three years have been used talking about this, that it is difficult to assess if all these meetings were necessary. Some of the meetings that I attended, and often directly follow, could be defined at least, as very surreal.

We had years and meetings with the hangover of Copenhagen very present, and where the important things seemed and actually were the ways in which the work was done and wanted to be done: always a bottom-up approach, completely transparent and inclusive for all Parties of the Convention (meaning all states that are parties to the UNFCCC) for example, is involved and implies in practice, that as there are small states and / or delegations, it is not possible to have important meetings in the same time frame. The co-chairs and co-facilitators of the meetings are not authorized to make proposals as such, or meet with individual states or groups of states or to create specific sub-groups working on particularly complex or sensitive issues, etc. in order to find points of consensus. Everything, absolutely everything has to be decided, and it is decided in the plenary sessions. We should recall here maybe not to be decided, however, this is also a way to decide!

The work has been done and it is being done showing a manifest distrust -as an outcome of how Copenhagen happened- of some parties over others. Much increased in this case by the fact that the Group of 77 and China has, in front of this great challenge of humanity, very contradictory positions that often prevent them from playing the role that historically they have done for many years in the UN, which is to negotiate in aggregate form with developed countries. The interests of BRICS that, except Russia, are members of the G77 and China, have little to do, in general, with the interest, for example, of the least developed countries, African countries, etc. who are also members of the G77. Today then, and at least on this issue, in the G77 countries and China the countries are not united in a positive way, but rather against, more than ever--and in this sense very rightly--, of the developed countries.

But all this dynamic had to be broken somehow (I could not live it personally) to the extent that we were in 2015 and the most important parts were still to be discussed. It was at the last February meeting in Geneva where some kind of text was agreed and was called and is called negotiating text, and that is remarkable today, the last plenary session On Thursday 11 June the last Bonn Conference is ratified, again, as the only common reference towards Paris. Textually approved that:

"The Geneva Negotiating Text (GNT), as contained in document FCCC / ADP / 2015/1, is the only official document before the ADP until it is withdrawn by Parties at COP-21."

If the reader is interested, the text can be found at:

http://unfccc.int/documentation/documents/advanced_search/items/6911.php?priref=600008407#beg

Why the Geneva "Negotiating text" remains and, most of all, will continue being important?

Why will the text Geneva text remain so important after Bonn? Because ultimately it is the only starting point that all parties still accept.

Despite that, however, precisely these days in Bonn it has become clearer than ever that it is a document with no minimum level of internal coherence and, therefore, it might not be valid -- serve the goal-- for carrying on the negotiation that is needed and should take place.

To the contrary, the Geneva text is a kind of mix made out of all the texts that state parties wanted to put there, or were able to, so their individual positions and / or group positions could be in and, therefore, they would for sure enter into future negotiations. Thus, one can find not one but dozens of opposing positions that precisely reflect perfectly in this regard, major differences with the different states and / or groups of states of the world that would like to face the problem. No one will resign, in principle, to a text where there are their positions: everybody’s positions but above all the one from each state party.

How it was developed and how was the first week of negotiations of the UNFCCC last Conference in Bonn (from 1^st to 6^th of June)?

The proposed methodology by the ADP co-chairs (I remind the reader that these are the initials of the working group created in Durban – of which all the state members parties of the Climate Change Convention are part - precisely to take forward the Durban platform – the current roadmap - that should give as a final result the agreement in Paris 2015) was to rationalize (to streamline, as stated) the text; in words intended to be open, in theory, they aimed before negotiating, for all duplicated texts or those than appeared more than once to be deleted and tried to decide in which place they should be. By doing so, apparently, the text should have been much reduced and, moreover, should have been more suitable for negotiation.

It was hell! Everyone was complaining that it was for absolutely no purpose, as indeed obviously happened, and asked why negotiations did not start. This was not possible because the Geneva text, as it currently is, it not possible to be negotiated as I insist, it is a big rigmarole that required audiovisual media and intellectual masterminds- even macro quantum - to be minimally, digested in some direction.

This exasperated and desperate atmosphere lasted throughout the first week in Bonn and moods were significantly altered. Reporters spoke about lack of ‘peace’ at the ‘negotiations’, something that was obviously essential, in order to negotiate.

The alleged rationalization, together with the intention of the working groups co-facilitators to try to carry out the guidelines of the co-chairs, reduced to a little more of 10 pages a document- the Geneva one- that has around one hundred. In fact, only the parts that were not interesting to anyone were deleted. Above that, it was not possible to obtain a text in a negotiable format.  

The ‘stocktaking brainstorm’ meeting of Monday morning at 8.00h and the North-American co-chair as a big snake charmer

Monday 8^th (Barça had won the Champions – I can assure you it is not the same experience away from home) the plenary meeting of all ADP 2.9 was held.

(By the way, the way the ADP meetings are numbered is something I did not manage to fully understand and that the reader, of course, can ignore from my following accounting: During 2012 there were the first ADP sessions 2.1. For part of the year 2013 there were meetings of ADP 2.2; At the Warsaw COP of 2013 took place the ADP session 2.3. During the first part of 2014 there were the 2.4 ADP sessions, which became the ADP 2.5 in Bonn just a year ago. At the end of 2014 it was the 2.6 session. At the Lima COP of 2014 it took place the session 2.7. The very important meeting in February 2015 in Geneva was the session 2.8. The Bonn meeting that just finished has been the 2.9, and the next one that will take place in Bonn during the first week in September will be the 2.10. But the reader should know that many of these sessions have had more than one meeting. What a waste of inefficient energy; it is not strange, also from this point of view, that climate change becomes ever more real).

Returning to the key meeting of the plenary on Monday 8^th of June, after many interventions by many states showing frustration for a week lost, a kind of miracle happened. For the first time voices were raised and perhaps more surprising, voices that echoed other voices that asked the co-chairs and co-facilitators to rationalize and put the text themselves to at least, a negotiable text!

After more than three years of ‘everything from a bottom up perspective’ everybody was just asking, exhausted, a first touch, and a first movement, ‘for a top down approach’. We will never know if the work of the previous week was organized in the way it was organized to precisely achieve this end. I would bet for a yes, but I will never know if I have won or lost the bet!

And in this particular and peculiar context, the American co-chair - Mr. Dan Reifsnyder - had all the plenary in his pocket. Incredible but true. Intelligent, skillful, empathic, rigorous, energetic, yet gentle and charming, etc. he accomplished the job he wanted, to receive and convince everyone that he would be just a tool (or tools) at the service of negotiation. He even said: ‘We propose, you arrange’ in the same direction at the closing plenary on Thursday 11^th, with a hint of passion that captivated the parts and made them surrender to his charms. For a lover of the ‘arts policy’ like me, it was a pleasure to experience a performance of such a high level.

So, after eight plenary meetings on Monday 8^th and Thursday the 11^th June 2015 in Bonn, there will appear some texts considered ‘non documents’ (the multilateral art negotiation at full speed) that only played, in theory, a technical role to help the negotiation of the text of Geneva; always , remember, from the Geneva text. In practice, though, the Geneva text will disappear in the first row of negotiation.

And how the North American magician pulls the Paris agreement from his pocket

But Mr. Dan Reifsnyder was not happy enough with this and took advantage of it to give two steps in one and to reposition the process where someone is trying to bring it. But there is someone, I am sure (another bet I will never know if I win or lose) that this someone has already achieved the hegemony for the final process of negotiation to Paris.

The argument was essentially this: since there wouldn’t be time enough to have the new tools ready for the short second week to come, he proposed (half propose… and not everyone did…but it was also introduced into the process by different ways…) an exercise in which and always from the Geneva text (naturally, our beloved co-chair always takes care to refer everything to the renowned text ), tried to separate what could be part of an agreement in Paris and what could not, and then, it should be solved as more normal or standard decisions of the COP 21 and the following to come. (There will be life for the UNFCCC after Paris!)

I couldn’t believe … such a special political skill… having achieved putting the plenary into his pocket and making use of a very moderate but highly efficient power he was acquiring , he even slipped in the second big goal of the negotiations…

During the closing plenary meeting, Mr. Reifsnyder provided further details (he obviously felt stronger that day and with enough energy to go further). Part of the text of the Paris agreement may refer to financing but will not provide specific figures regarding budget items; these budget lines have to be defined and reviewed in time in several meetings of the COP.

Let me give an example in terms of mitigation of emissions. The Paris agreement establishes that temperature on the Earth’s surface will not increase more than 2ºC; however, how to fulfill this mitigation goal is something that can only be set up under the regular supervision of the COP (every 5 years, for instance, depending on the evolution of new technological advances).

Some might qualify the Bonn meeting as a failure. However, with regard to the relation between the Paris agreement and the decisions taken in the COP, I can say with absolute confidence that the outcome of this meeting has been extremely positive. In my opinion, it is the only possible way to succeed in a useful agreement! We’ll see. I insist, though, in giving credit to this last meeting.

To sum up!

We have already recognized that this meeting in Bonn, June 2015 has been a huge failure and a total loss of time. Still, it may have supposed a huge step forward to the final process in Paris. I honestly believe that this dead-end road was, in the end, necessary to make multilateral negotiations recover their natural order. I guess the American Co-Chair wanted it this way and succeeded in making it so!

Indeed, there was a perception that everyone wanted the Paris agreement to succeed… although I am not sure it will, because there are so many obstacles. What I am sure of, unfortunately, is that if the Paris agreement arrives it will be useless (the reader may want to read again my analysis on the hypothetical mitigation measures established by the agreement).

In other words, the main conclusion is that the seven biggest countries and regions (China, USA, EU, India, Russia, Japan and Canada) that are particularly responsible for current emissions are not really interested (or capable, if one is benevolent) in tackling the problem. On the other hand, these countries and regions are also aware of the fact that humankind may not accept once again their incapacity to take action. Climate change is a worldwide challenge that people are more and more concerned about, and so the world population’s pressure may eventually be enough to make it happen.

I fully agree with the conclusions stated by the American Co-Chair, though. Therefore, I believe the final agreement will not be enough and, in that sense, the second headline is the one that probably describes best what will eventually happen.

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Final notes:

-    The final text, which was approved explicitly and significantly during the closing plenary meeting in Bonn on Thursday, June 11^th, can be found at:

http://unfccc.int/files/bodies/awg/application/pdf/way_forward_11_june_-_edits_1026am.pdf

-    The current two Co-Chairs were elected on the last COP in Lima, 2014

"At the 14th plenary meeting on Saturday, 13 December 2014, Mr. Ahmed Djoghlaf and Mr. Daniel Reifsnyder were elected by acclamation as the new Co-Chairs of the ADP, and Ms. Yang Liu as the Rapporteur, to serve until the conclusion of the ADP session to be held in conjunction with COP 21 in 2015".

-    The missing link (or not?): There is an issue or working line included on the Durban Platform which is completely out of control. It is the so-called “Workstream2”, which “obliges” to work in the widest way possible to act against climate change during the period between 2013 and 2020. Why this period? Because 2013 was the deadline for the first period of commitments agreed in the Kyoto Protocol, and the forthcoming Paris agreement –if approved– would not come into effect until 2020.

From a structural point of view (Co-Chairs, UNFCCC secretariat, etc.), nobody is working with these guidelines because work is prioritized according to the criteria stated by the Paris agreement (or, at least, that is what you would guess). Actually, this kind of guidelines may be used to put at stake the commitments of the Paris agreements from the point of view of BRICS countries, for instance: if rich countries are not taking it seriously and acting accordingly during this 2013-2020 period, BRICS won’t feel engaged nor committed to fulfil the engagement from 2020 on. Oh! This was, in fact, the main obstacle and reason for the failure of the Copenhagen agreement. Nobody should underestimate that.

- Josep Xercavins Valls: Professor Technical University of Catalonia, UPC. Responsible for the Group on Governance of Climate Change, GGCC, of the Singular Research Group on Sustainability, Technology and Humanism, STH.