The View from Here: Barcelona Update, Wednesday

The climate talks in Barcelona saw some real drama and excitement today as the African delegations put their foot down and said they wouldn’t negotiate the finer details of a global climate deal until some fundamentals were resolved.

Monday night the African delegations closed the Kyoto Protocol track of the negotiations for 24 hours citing frustration with the lack of progress on realistic emission reduction targets for industrialized countries.

The African group met with developed countries late into Monday night and most of Tuesday, also going public stating that the numbers were a matter of survival for vulnerable countries where both people and whole nation states would die as a result of unchecked climate change.

The boycott became block wide as the G77 group and China chose to support the African call publicly and in emergency meetings.

A compromise way forward was announced Tuesday night with Africa agreeing to go back into the talks on the condition that 6 of the 10 remaining discussion sessions on the Kyoto Protocol between Wednesday and Friday focus on developed country emission reduction numbers.

In accepting the compromise deal, the Africans placed the developed countries on notice that they had to come forth with realistic numbers and split them to show the proportions of domestic reductions, offsets and LULUCF within 24 hours... or risk another walk out by the African group which could extend right across the negotiations.

A long list of countries including Sudan, Grenada for the AOSIS, Bolivia, Brazil, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, China and India also spoke up in plenary to say they supported the Africa group in their move. All of them called for developed countries to put their emission reductions *and* money on the table, citing their moral responsibility to protect vulnerable peoples and avoid dangerous climate change.

This was more or less the only show in town yesterday, so the media were following the story, reporting blow by blow aspects of the fight between the different groups. (The EU has said it shares the concern of Africa and is placing stories to publicly urge the US and other countries to come out with or lift targets.)

While the developed and developing world are continuing the negotiations Wednesday, we expect frantic diplomatic exchanges with capitals overnight as clarity and further instructions are sought... and quite a bit of staring down in meetings behind the scenes here as a diplomatic way through the impasse is sought.

Overall...

...it is not clear how this will play over the next few days.

• A diplomatic way through may be found,
• Africa and the G77 may dig in,
• The G77 may fracture with some in and some out of elements of the talks, or
• The Annex 1 countries may put more figures on the table.

With the Africa group demanding numbers that add up to an aggregate of 40% it is a tough bar to jump but quite strong language has been used here today so we need to be prepared for the fight to fizzle out or increase in intensity.

As there will be a lot of diplomatic scrambling behind the scenes over the next 24 - 48 hours, we are working with our WWF team to use this opportunity to press the point politically and publicly on numbers both for mitigation targets and for putting finance on the table.

Governments will all be frantically sorting out their positions and taking constant temperature checks of the public and political scene both in their countries and at the negotiations.

This presents the possibility of a sudden opening of formerly hard positions and extra pressure will be useful to push heads of state and ministers to take political decisions, to stop the political pain they are wearing in Barcelona and in the lead up to Copenhagen.