Dec 16, 2009
Wednesday, and I am inside the Bella Center after a long chilly wait. One of the team has spent the entire night in the plenary accompanying the (last) attempt to develop a text in a consultative way. The place is now looking like a fortress as the world awaits two hurricane arrivals, over a hundred heads of state, and a riot planned for today.…
Dec 14, 2009
Well, the ‘walk out’ (not formally a walk out because the G77 spokeperson said “we have not walked out, we are firming up our position on the KP, the KP is our exodus point”) an hour or so ago by G77 negotiators provides a dazzling display of ‘negotiators’ itch’, akin to the itchy trigger finger of someone holding a loaded gun who is feeling frustrated and let down.
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Dec 14, 2009
Mr Tony Blair led a high-level session yesterday on forests, which as we all now know provides up to fifth of global opportunities to 2020 for carbon mitigation. Blair is the unquestioned master of messaging, so i sat humbly seeking to read the tea leaves in his eloquent words. That said, there is an Obama-like complexity in his dialectics so that it can be a little tough to derive a straight line from the word to the meaning.
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Dec 10, 2009
Fighting through the hot air being vented in Copenhagen to understand the real numbers is an obligation, not just a ‘nice to do’. Project Catalyst, an international policy platform that I have been working with for over 18 months, has produced what I think is simply the best piece that crystallises the data in a document entitled ‘Taking Stock: the Emissions Levels Implied by the Current Proposals for Copenhagen’.
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Dec 10, 2009
My second day no longer working for AccountAbility. Bags packed, off to Geneva airport and to Copenhagen. Today the piece I have lead authored with Maya and Fernanda and Joao on the Amazon Fund entitled Radical Simplicity in Designing National Climate Institutions Lessons from the Amazon Fund will be released. It provides a serious look at how autonomous public interest organisations, grounded in a collaborative approach, could work in moving us towards ambitious early action that does not get caught up at the international level.…
