GLASSGOW, Scotland (AP) – The princes, presidents and prime ministers have left, and now the real mask-to-mask climate talks begin.
For the next 10 days, perhaps more, the crowded UN climate conference will see professional diplomats convert marching orders left by their heads of government into compromises and agreements. The talks take place in a limited number of meeting rooms in Glasgow, Friday 12 November, with deadlines and a record-long agenda listing 104 items that must be resolved.
The conversation is restricted by the pandemic, but aided by a year and a half of virtual meetings, instant soup brought in from Norway and chocolates from Swiss and Australian diplomats.
The deadline pressure is set to intensify by next week. The meetings will run round the clock. Food and sleep shall be set aside, except when a person sleeps in a seat or on the shoulder of a colleague.
“We eat together and spend hours in convention centers with little sleep and poor food. It’s a crazy bonding experience, but it builds trust. And trust is the key to a compromise,” said Kelly Kizier, vice president of the Environmental Defense Fund, who spent 15 years as an EU negotiator.
At least 120 meetings were scheduled for Wednesday, with more likely to be added. But only 25 meeting rooms are available in the sprawling convention complex, where half the structures are temporary, with temporary roofs and rows of immaculate but cool portable toilets. And those rooms allow a limited number of people in because social-distancing rules are designed to keep everyone 1.5 meters (4.9 feet) apart.
Between meetings, everyone has to step out for a 15-minute cleanup, which the Scottish government insists, said Laura Lopez, conference administrator for the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change, which technically talks about UN assets. drives. .
“The problem is that our people are not disciplined,” Lopez said. “They keep talking and won’t leave the room.”
People gather at a table inside the venue of the COP26 UN Climate Summit in Glasgow, Scotland, on November 2, 2021. (Alberto Pezzali/AP)
The rooms where this happens are often adjacent rooms where this happens.
“Deals are often made outside the room,” said longtime negotiator Yamid Dagnett, who now heads negotiations for the World Resources Institute. Countries give their position at the table, but it’s in hallways, during coffee breaks, snatches of food and other distant times that compromises take place, she said.
This is why in-person meetings cannot be replaced by virtual ones, said veteran negotiator Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, who chairs one of the two main negotiating groups for the United Nations.
“In the hallway, you meet someone, and that’s where you agree on that comma versus that semicolon, and that’s what’s missing” in virtual meetings, he said.
18 months of virtual interactions have brought people closer and inspired them to work together more. But they personally need to seal the deal, said Mpanu Mpanu and Marianne Carlsen, who lead another negotiating group for the United Nations.
“People need to sit eye to eye,” Carlson said.
They both credit the pandemic and months of virtual meetings for improving past meetings.
“I really think the pandemic brought an extra deal of flexibility,” Mapanu Mapanu said.
Lopez said that in previous years, the United Nations would replace beanbag chairs in meeting rooms and offices for catnaps during the last crisis. But this year the pandemic took his life.
Carlson said a key to survival is a supply of snacks, chips, chocolate and fruit, as well as his personal contribution.
“I always bring extra stuff with instant soup,” Carlson said. Australian and Swiss finance negotiating teams have been known to bring chocolate.
“And there’s no strings attached,” said Mapanu Mapanu.
When talks are late and people are tired, big, rich countries that have extra negotiators tend to set foot on smaller countries, he said.
“If you’re not at the top of your game, people will take advantage of it,” Mapanu Mpanu said.
The illuminated words ‘Hurry up please it’s time’ are displayed at the COP26 United Nations Climate Summit, Glasgow, Scotland, November 2021. (Alberto Pezzali/AP)
In the past, negotiators were often joined in the room by supervisors, often from nonprofits. But the conversation has now closed to those groups and the media.
Due to the coronavirus, the United Nations Climate Office has tried to offer a more remote meeting. With many poor island nations unable to send negotiators and room capacity severely limited by health regulations, the remote system is important, but it is fraught with glitches.
Supervisors and workers have complained that they cannot attend the meetings or view them online.
The United Nations apologized for the video’s inaccuracies at the United Kingdom’s largest diplomatic event ever Disability Access for an Israeli Cabinet Member, and for long, slow security lines.
Security lines were slow as 25,000 people have taken passes. But at any given time, only 10,000 people can attend because of the pandemic, and lines must be wider and shorter to social distance, Lopez said. The convention had to briefly stop allowing people because of the 10,000-person limit.
But difficulties are a part of the deal with the negotiators, Carlson said: “There are no easy kids in the process.”