Warming-up is over. Time to talk seriously now

Towards the end of the first week of negotiations, first conclusions appear In COP20 warming-up is finished, but not global.

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Now it starts to get serious. There were many people today who roamed the corridors of the conference with their luggage and when stopped for an interview, confirmed that they had just arrived. Technicians gave way to politicians.

The negotiations that took place this week take the path of concrete decisions of binding agreements. But what do the experts think of this first week?

… The official negotiators tend to be shy and not to make statements, but some countries, in turn, take the opportunity to reiterate their positions and ask once again that the negotiations can continue on the path they propose. This is the case of Pakistan, which draws attention to the theme of Loss & Damage, so important to developing countries, as the spokesman said: “Developing countries are the main victims of climate change, not being able to face the new reality, because they are more vulnerable and have low capacity for resilience and recovery from damages”.

So they ask everyone to work together to address future climatic changes. “We demand equality,” he concludes. The representative of Thailand in charge of Capacity Builing agreements, transfer of technology and knowledge to developing countries, is satisfied, claiming to have received positive feedback on the proposals submitted by the majority of developing countries and even by some of the developed countries.

Thise who diverge somewhat in this first week of the conference are the representatives of “Adopt a Negotiator”, a program that closely follows the negotiations, in order to understand all the implications and rumors circulating in the corridors and then make them public for those who want to follow their progress.

Among them, Josh Wiele is satisfied in relation to the financing arrangements for the Green Climate Fund, stating that it is coming close to $ 10 billion of financing, which is the current minimum target, waiting for the bigger deal that should lead to 100 billion annual funding. Wiele recognizes that is advancing very slowly, since until now its has been spoke mainly about mitigation, but not yet seriously faced another macro-problem, adaptation – the most important for developing countries, which are the ones that suffer the consequences of climate change.

Another member of the “Adopt a negoziator” Federico Brocchieri, speaks of the difficulties of reaching an agreement on Loss & Damage due to concrete challenge to recognize if the damage suffered by a country is actually caused by climate change or would have happened any way and, if so, it is still difficult to estimate the damage caused by climate change due to the negligence of governments.

The European Union is openly against this agreement and would like to just focus on mitigation, in contrast to most developing countries. Negotiations continue next week, when it is expected the arrival of many other diplomats with their luggage, hoping that they are more likely to make statements.