The first day of the COP has been quite a rush: a surfeit of people, causes, paper, languages and a sensory and information overload probably only paralleled by one's first day of university. It is overwhelming. 

The welcoming ceremony began with a heart-wrenching movie clip of a young-girl who dreams of a world torn apart by drought, then floods, and is moved by this dream to make a you-tube type appeal to world leaders to please help. Whilst it got the point across, I’m not sure it wasn’t a bit OTT, but perhaps because I was in the overflow room I wasn’t close enough to spot the tears her plea might have occasioned in the leaders she addressed. 

One of the highlights of  Danish PM, Lars Rasmussen’s speech was that he didn’t launch into a confusing discussion of getting a politically vs legally binding agreement out of these talks as he has lately espoused. He called for delegates to be “constructive, flexible, ambitious, courageous and visionary” and reminded us all that hope is the starting point for all major efforts, thoughts with which I can only concur.

The COP is housed in the Bella Centre which has many elements of a mini city: routes from A to B requiring maps, a postal service, food outlets, recycling points, loos and leisure and work areas. The sheer magnitude of the organisation is impressive. The public facilities include two generous computer centres for those of us without laptops - right now I'm looking at row upon row of PCs with the blinking COP15 logo as the screensaver as I'm one of the few people left working in the public areas. I'm sure, however, that delegates are working behind closed doors to digest and interpret the opening statements from the welcoming ceremony this morning and from the 1st meetings of this afternoon. 

It has long been observed that the people living closest to nature are those who will be first and most affected by climate change, so perhaps it is not surprising that at the opening sessions Papua New Guinea would be the sole (and unsupported) highlighter of a significant flaw in the UNFCCC rules of procedure. Apologies for picking on such a seemingly dry subject matter, but the rules of procedure of any meeting affect the outcomes which that meeting is able to reach. In the case of the UNFCCC rules of procedure for making decisions have not been agreed upon even though this is the 15th COP... Particularly significant here is the rule that decisions need only 3/4 of ratifying members to be passed. 

Why is this an important matter? In the absence of an agreement in this regard, all decisions have to be taken by consensus, a point which some countries use unscrupulously to scupper agenda items unfavourable to themselves - Saudi Arabia is a name I heard most often linked to this issue. Apparently having pots of money buffers and dims the reality of our reliance on natural systems. 

This small item brought up by Papua New Guinea highlights the irony of the Climate Change talks that we can only hope are not their downfall; that those most affected are frequently those with the least clout.

And I do wonder what they will do with all these shiny new laptops when the COP is finished.

Kim Coetzee for Green Energy Republic

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