Climate of tension as ministers arrive in Poznan

This morning, ministers of the 190 countries participating in the UN Climate Conference in Poznan arrived to take part in the last 2 (or eventually 3) days of negotiations. The disappointing result of the negotiations up to now and the fear that the conference in Poznan will be a failure result in a tense climate in the corridors of the conference. But there is still much hope that the arrival of the ministers can trigger a more fruitful process and that’s why NGOs are doing whatever they can to get our highest representatives at the UNFCCC to “stop talking and act now!”.

Nobody can say it was for lack of effort of the delegates that there have been little advance in the negotiations. Their task was made almost a mission impossible. At this moment most parties don’t dare or can’t move in any direction. This was partly already expected because of the financial crisis and of the fact that the new presidency of the US will only take office in January. The American delegation is taking part in the conference as only quiet observers and it’s hard to know to what extent Obama will be able to give the American position the necessary 180˚ turn. Yet, even the very low expectations that we had in the beginning of the conference are not being met due to the lack of leadership of the European Union. The EU hasn’t been able to agree in time on its own climate package and it is therefore playing a very disappointing role in Poznan.

But we’re not watching this in silence. On Tuesday, we woke up at 5am to take part in a demonstration in Warsaw, where Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, was meeting with Donald Tusk, the Polish prime minister. Germany and Poland are the key players among a group of countries hindering the approval of a strong EU climate package. A weak EU climate package would influence the UN climate negotiations process in a very negative way and would therefore make an ambitious global deal to combat climate change extremely difficult.

In this climate of tension, civil society organizations in Poznan are putting together their last resources to call upon the ministers to speed up the process. This morning, the conference was full of small actions by NGOs. ICCO and partners also held a press conference to reinforce its concerns expressed in the campaign ‘Countdown to Copenhagen’

However, so far we haven’t seen much speed from the part of the ministers. It seems that all the 190 ministers will first give their opening speeches of around 5 minutes. I personally only managed to listen to a couple of them. They’re not only very boring, but how anxious can they make us before they starting doing business?

by Raimer Rodrigues Rezende