Tuvalu rockz the COP – but does it help?

Demo in support of Tuvalu (pic by Robert vanWaarden)

Right now, the negotiations within the CMP in the main plenary are stopped again and a small group of people is meeting in one corner of the room to find agreemend under the guidance of Connie Hedegaard, the COP-President. Tuvalu seemed to have insisted on its proposal to first deal with what kind of outcome COP15 will have before negotiation more details of it. This was – as voiced told me – supported by China. The question comes down to a more significant thing: will there be reductions for China? Todd Stern, Special Climate Envoy for the US said yesterday

“If you care about the science — and we do — there’s no way to solve this problem by giving the major developing countries a pass…We’re not talking about the same kind of need for actions from the vast majority of developing countries. But the major ones, it’s going to be absolutely essential.” (here)

China is opposed to it „in principal“, as I was told. The main fault line of Climate negotiation is slowly coming to the front of the room. While Tuvalu’s proposal is primarily about the kind of agreement (legally or only politically binding), the question is if it will be an new „Copenhagen Agreement“ (=kills Kyoto) and thus probably don’t have an Annex-1 with developed nations. The question, who at all has to give mitigation-aims in a legal form is then new on the table. China wants to use Tuvalu it seems to push for a clear reinforcement of the two tracks of Bali – a shared vision and a Kyoto-revisal with new numbers for developed countries only.