COPENHAGEN: The final agreement is less than 24 hours away and, for the first time in maybe a week, there are some positive news coming out of COP15. More than 130 world leaders have arrived, or are arriving in the next few hours, to Copenhagen. This is the biggest gathering of world leaders in history. Not even the UN General Assembly in New York attracts that many people. The fact is – they will look bad if they fail to come to an agreement. Many NGO’s are now hanging all hope on Obama, scheduled to fly in tomorrow and stay for three hours. Obama in particular would look very bad if Copenhagen’s conference is a failure. But things started to look a little better today. After yet another suspension of discussions yesterday, talks resumed with heightened energy today. The problem yesterday was that the Danish conference presidency tried, again, to form smaller groups to move discussions forward. There was a bit of a lockjam last night with a lot of complains that not everyone would’ve been adequately represented in the panel that the Danish presidency wanted to convene. That ended up the African group once again refusing to continue talks, leading to another day wasted. But the issues were addressed and resolved today and talks resumed. Especially important is the fact that progress is being made on the smaller working groups. These groups are involved with coming up with agreements on issues such as adaptation, technology development and transfer, and financial systems. US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton also pledged to work on mobilizing US$100 bn by 2020 from the industrialized nations to the developing world if a satisfactory agreement is reached. But all is not rosy. The Danish presidency started to play down expectations for a powerful deal in Copenhagen and many delegates are starting to look to COP16, taking place next December in Mexico City. And the atmosphere around the conference venue is not helping alleviate the mood. No matter how depressing the negotiations got, it was always a relief to visit Hall H. Hall H is where all the NGO’s gathered. They had dozens of booths with large empty areas where they held events, shows, and protests. It was very normal for me to walk in and be greeted by someone posing as a panda or young girls dressed as frogs with messages calling for a fair and ambitious agreement. Today there were no pandas nor frogs nor gatherings. It was completely dead since NGO’s have been barred from the center today and tomorrow, due to the heightened security. It feels like all the soul and life of the place has been drained out. Those young people who cared and had so much energy were outside, while politicians who have been bickering over a deal for two weeks were inside. And the weather keeps getting colder. It is as if Nature itself is sending out a message – along with billions around the world – to the world leaders to seal the deal. BM
