Hur det var att sitta som medförhandlare i Kiribati's COP15 delegation i Köpenhamn december 2009:

Alexander Randall, Centre for alternative technology

Alex Randall will hold an Open Evening at the Schumacher College. At the Copenhagen negotiations Alex was part of he negotiating team of Kiribati – a small island state in the Pacific Ocean. The talk will give a flavour of what it was like being part of the delegation of one of the most vulnerable countries in the world at COP15. During the talk we will explore some of the problems with the COP process and try to understand how these lead to the disappointing outcome at Copenhagen. The talk also look at the specific problems faced by low lying island states like Kiribati including flooding and migration as a result of climate change.

Was present at the cop15 negotiation in the delegation for Kiribati.

Their Ministry of immigration there is dealing with having people to get out of the country…
Do they all have to leave or not?..


Decided to offer help and made some research on that:
Took the IPCC maps on hydrological collapse and matched with density of population and a GDP per capita and ultimately matched with size of negotiation teams. Observed that some countries do have a lot bigger negotiating teams than others.
7 – 200 person in various teams.

They e-mail all of these worst out countries to offer their services - and Kiribati accepted.

Flood become more and more frequent, every other year, every year, every half year. Under water too often even though it recovers. Useless land and lack of fresh water. An aquifer in the middle of the island - salt water intrudes there.
People start to use other water sources which might be polluted. Mortality rise due to water born deceases.

Delegation size important because eight or twelve separated negotiations going on all the time, like financence, forestry, cooperation developed/ undeveloped counties etc. You must be able to follow them all, else you miss decisions effecting your country. Kiribati had 12 people, Canada 200, so big ones get what they want and small ones doesn’t.

Meeting times are often changed, locations constantly change etc – you must know exactly where and when to be present.

Massive amount of documentation being produced. Must be read in order to follow next days positions and watch to argue against or for. Everything will else be only guesswork, so it must all be read thoroughly and summarized. All masses of text also have to be digested.

Getting tiered is a problem since everything goes on and on all the time, and tiered people doesn’t function at all...

The closer to the end, the more tiered people get in reaching the and final solutions. You can slow down the pace tactically in order to make the others exhausted. Probably used deliberately by rich countries.

Big ones also have an office of their own.

(Beskriver komiskt hur en dag kunde se ut på Bella Center…)

You don’t know when something is going to suddenly become important but no chance of know in when and where and how important it would be to cove a meeting.

There was no narrative of “how the negotiations were going”, because you simply could not obtain a helicopter view. Read the Guardian though they didn’t know either.

Friday of the first week the NGOs started to being reduced over the weekend. And Alex had at the start a NGO-pass only. (Yellow badge= NGO, pink badge says government.)

On Monday no NGOs were left at all. And with the all the extra help and friends as well. But on the other hand they also really came in as true friends inside the K. delegation.
So the final story is only told by officials...

The way of taking decisions in a court like-situation is finally the last injustice. Not enough confidence and courage to raise the hands and take the word. You must be a bit aggressive and used to the setting of the situation.
COMPETITION- dedicated mind sets!
Kiribati people really were not so: – they did expect the best of all the other countries and could not imagine to be cheated…

Last days people did not know what was going on.
Truth was that “friends of the chair” had a separate secret meeting and the screens in the main hall were just blank.
The whole delegation went out for the first time to eat together. Whatever was decided were not in their hands anymore.
It all happened at last when Obama flew in.

L9 was the working name on what became “The Copenhagen accord”.
Alex didn’t knew actually what really was in it at that time, and no one else did either.

True outcome:
1 We* cause people to move and live as refugees
2 We cause people to die

*in an organised and deliberate way by the so called developed countries.
- THIS IS GENOCIDE!!!!!!!!!

“Contraction and conversion”

- - - - - - --

The outcome for Kiribati?

Är allt klart bara först när allt är klart?
-Ja så var det tänkt, men nu blev allt omintetgjort och man rafsade bara ihop en soppa på slutet.

Preparations: - regarding Kiribati?
-negotiation technique?
-Probable outcomes?