A few final snap-shots from Bali...

In no particular order…

• Frazzled journalists: Becoming increasingly frustrated at the lack of an outcome. In a press conference on Friday, one US journalist asked when it was all going to end because he wanted to make dinner plans.

• Conference lumbago: Carrying a shoulder bag around stuffed full with documents, camcorder, digital camera etc. for 2 weeks does your back no good at all.

• Hard working people: Nita, one of the barmaids at my ’local’ near my hotel, works all day running her own business (a laundry) and then all evening (until 11.30) working in the bar. And there was me thinking I worked long hours and had a right to feel tired.

• Confusion on the final day: Has anything been agreed? What has been agreed? Who is still opposing? Who is still meeting? What the hell is going on?

• Tired delegates: Asleep on sofas in the hotel next to the Convention Centre on the Friday night.

• Pacific Islanders: The loveliest people you could hope to meet, alongside all the people I met from Bali itself.

• Conference lag: Too little sleep, too much coffee, no time for lunch.

• Sympathy: Hilary Benn wearing a full suit giving a TV interview in the baking Bali sunshine – not easy under normal circumstances but in this heat more like torture.

• A blast in my ear: ‘Motivational’ music (usually Everyday Combat by Lostprophets) during the half-hour taxi ride to the Convention Centre each morning – partly to get me going for the day and partly to block out the fear of the taxi running over one of the many scooter riders weaving in and out of the traffic.

• The rumour mill: Everyone knows something but nobody knows everything. Be careful what you say because it only takes a second or third hand conversation to turn wild speculation into ‘hard fact’ – a kind of intergovernmental conference alchemy.

• Conference paranoia: Everyone else is busier than me. Everyone else knows what’s going on. There’s something more important I should be doing. There’s somewhere else I should be. Somebody please stop these voices in my head…

• Wanting to go home and be with my family: Oh good, I can do that now…

The deal

So there was me thinking I might get some time to rest in Bali before flying home but it’s been another full day at the Convention Centre.

Negotiations continued through the night on the key remaining sticking points: how to reference the science and targets and whether/how to differentiate between developed and developing countries. This morning a new draft proposal was tabled but on the latter issue, India asked for more time to negotiate. Several hours later, and after a certain amount of semi-organised chaos, a new compromise was reached.


It’s not easy to explain the full story, and also convey the tense and emotional atmosphere in the huge plenary hall, but basically the group of developing countries (G77) proposed an amendment, which was supported by the EU (to much applause). The US then objected to the amendment. What followed was a series of statements from countries across the world with varying degrees of condemnation of the US position. And with the World’s media watching, the United States dropped its objection.

So high drama on the last day (+1). The final outcome is what is being called the ‘Bali Road-Map’; an agenda for the next two years of negotiations. As I have said before, this seems dull and unimportant but believe me it is a critical staging post in the international process and every single word has been pored over and many have been fought over.

I won’t go into great detail on the text but I think there are two ways of looking at the final deal. First, in the context of what is actually needed to address the problem of climate change, the negotiations here have been some way off the mark, largely due to the intransigence at various times and on various issues of the US, Canada, Japan and Russia.

Second, in the context of current global politics, what has been achieved here is probably as good as could be expected in light of the Bush Administration’s history of outright hostility to climate science and to binding international action, particularly in the UN. Despite this hostility, the UN process is still alive and kicking and in my opinion it is the only way we can get governments from across the world to take cooperative action on such a complex interaction of issues.

So, the door is still open for a progressive outcome by the time the talks are supposed to conclude in 2009. But the door has certainly not been closed to a minimalist fudge. The critical question over the coming months and years is about the extent to which politics changes in key countries like the USA and also the extent to which governments like our own put in place the policies necessary to cut the carbon out of our economy.

WDM said at the very outset that the subtext of this negotiation was all about trade and competitiveness given the massive trade deficit the US has with China. And I think this has proved to be the case. The US in particular has been petrified of agreeing to anything that is seen back in the States as being a commitment to action by the US that is much greater than the Chinese. If you are interested, take a look at WDM’s report: Blame it on China? Which explores the international politics of climate change.

On a final note, all I can say is that I feel utterly drained. Sometimes I have wondered what the hell I’m achieving by being here. On a few occasions I’ve felt like I have made a small contribution. On the plus side, I leave here with a strong sense that there is a growing movement of people from all parts of the world seeking real and lasting solutions. Being concerned about climate change is not just the preserve of middle class westerners. The strongest advocates for action are those in developing countries living at the sharp end of its impacts, and the impacts of the ‘quack remedies’ like massive palm oil plantations for bio-diesel. The voices of these people need to be heard.

Please check out WDM’s web site over the coming weeks and months as we upload some of the interviews with developing country activists that I have been able to do here.

Anyway, I hope that you (all three of you) have found the past two weeks of blogging informative, and perhaps at times thought provoking and every now and then entertaining. Maybe you’ll hear from me, or perhaps someone else at WDM, next time governments from across the globe gather together for a big showdown

Meena Raman interview

Walden Bello on climate change and globalisation

The beginning of the end game

You might not have guessed from my previous blogs but I’m actually a serious and intense sort of person. This is starting to come in handy because things are getting increasingly serious and intense.

Now I have no doubt that for many outside observers a lot of this stuff will appear dreadfully dull. Let’s face it, governments have come all this way to hold talks about having further talks. We all want outcomes and we want them now.

The media will be desperately trying to find a clear cut win/lose story at the end but in all probability there wont be one – unless the whole thing collapses (very bad news) or governments create a framework here in Bali that essentially ‘locks-in’ an ambitious and equitable agreement in a couple of years time (good result).

However, in all likelihood, we’ll get some sort of score-draw with some positives and negatives, or perhaps a no-score-draw, where no agreement is reached but everyone is still rhetorically committed to the process. This latter scenario could be pretty desperate given the urgent need to get some agreed and binding action out of rich countries so that the next phase of the Kyoto Protocol can continue smoothly after 2012.

So, the word in the corridors on what is going on is as follows …

Everyone is rhetorically committed to doing a deal but major differences remain.

Some larger developing countries are prepared to talk about what kind of contribution they can make in reducing emissions but in return they want meaningful talks on transferring technology from rich countries to poor countries (opposed by the US, EU and others).

The US is playing a blocking game here and is trying to create its own process outside the UN for talks on voluntary action with what it calls ‘the big emitters’.

Australia isn’t sure what it wants because the new administration hasn’t had time to communicate to its negotiators what the new strategy is. So Australian officials are in what they call a ‘holding pattern’, which seems to translate into being either silent or moderately obstructive.

The Saudis are still trying to insert language in the text that opens the door for ‘compensation’ for lost oil revenue (they just won’t let it go).

The EU is playing a relatively more progressive role here (emphasis on the word ‘relatively’) and is pushing for specific language on targets (opposed by the US, Japan, Canada and Russia) but my fear is that the EU will get outplayed by the US in the final hours of the talks (seen it happen before).

The small island states are still demanding, cajoling and pleading for more radical and urgent action but it’s falling largely on deaf ears.

Word is that Number 10 is worried about how the outcome (i.e. just an agreement on a future agenda for talks) will play with the UK media and public given high expectations of some action. I think the main action we need to see from Number 10 is scrapping plans for airport expansion, coal fired power stations, nuclear plants and ever more roads.

From celebration to demonstration in Bali

The Kyoto Protocol is ten years old today. This afternoon, Greenpeace unveiled an enormous cake in the Bali Convention Centre to celebrate this 10th anniversary/birthday (not sure which). I watched as the broadcast media and photographers swarmed around what could best be described as an edifice rather than a cake.

I then had to rush across to a different venue (passing Hilary Benn doing a media interview on the way) so that I could participate in a demonstration, outside a World Bank side-event, protesting against the World Bank’s planned Forest Carbon Partnership Facility. Organised principally by Indonesian activists, the demo was aimed at highlighting the World Bank’s past failure at protecting forests and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples, as well as the danger of including natural forests within carbon trading mechanisms.

There have been several press stunts these past days, mainly involving people dressed as polar bears (today’s cake stunt notwithstanding), so it made a change to see, and be involved in, something with more bite. And I think the die-in that was staged and the boisterous chanting had the desired effect as several journalists inside the meeting raised the issues of concern to the demonstrators and the Danish government stated that its funding for this scheme would be dependent on the World Bank securing the consent of indigenous peoples.

Not so sure what the UK’s approach to this is (Hilary Benn ended up inside this meeting and came out with a now familiar line about the need for people to be ‘for’ things rather than ‘against’ them) but overall it felt like a good result.

Taking action across the world

Eight hours before WDM activists braved the December cold to join the climate demonstration in London on Saturday, I marched in solidarity with campaigners from across the world in the searing heat of Bali. The local Indonesian NGOs did a great job of organising a march and then demonstration in a park in the town of Denpasar. And given the rather twitchy nature of the local police it all went off very well.

Most marchers were of course from Indonesia or the surrounding Asia-Pacific region but there were also Latin Americans, Africans, Europeans, and North Americans represented. I’m no great judge of these things but I would guess about a thousand people turned up.

What struck me most – aside from the almost debilitating heat - was the way that many campaigners are linking climate change up with a much broader range of, what some might consider, ‘traditional development issues’ like debt, trade, aid, World Bank/IMF, land rights, indigenous peoples’ rights and so on. They see these issues as intimately connected with climate injustice and also with the tendency for governments and businesses to pursue responses to climate change that just perpetuate injustice (e.g. biofuel plantations where workers are exposed to toxic pesticides, tree plantations that result in people being kicked off their land, or rich countries using ‘tackling climate change’ as another pretext for pushing open markets and so-called ‘free trade’).

On a slightly different note (no pun intended), another thing that struck me…

After the march, we congregated in a park next to an amazing looking monument. As I walked into the park there was a local band on a large stage playing music. Now when western development organisations put on events, we almost invariably lay on some music, and that music is almost invariably some sot of ‘world music’. I guess this is because we think that’s what people in the global south play and listen to and we want to please any guests from southern countries.

The trouble for me is, truth be told – and at the risk of getting lynched on my return home - I can’t stand ‘world music’ (or at least most of what I’ve heard). So it was a surprise, and a pleasant one for me at least, to hear this local band playing heads-down chugging heavy rock. Is it possible that they went to all the effort of buying the equipment and learning to play the tunes solely in order to please the very small proportion of westerners participating in the demo? Nah. I think they did it because they love it. Event organisers take note.

Virtual Bali meeting in Second Life

Peter Taylor, the WDM web officer in London writes...

For those not attending Bali in the real world it is now possible to watch some of the events via the Second Life virtual world. WDM generated a lot of publicity last year, as one of the first UK NGOs to have a presence in Second Life with our giant death clock. However Second Life has a lot of potential as an online meeting venue, which has the added benefit of avoiding all the flying that normally takes place. You can check out Virtual Bali and take part at One World's website - and an account with Second Life is not required if you just want to watch the video.

So as WDM's online 'avatar' in Second Life I thought I'd visit the Bali climate change island and take a look. Islands are areas in Second Life dedicated to a particular meeting or company - since the increase in popularity of Second Life large numbers of organisations and corporations have jumped on the bandwaggon and purchased their own plots of land.

After an initial look round, where I took in the nice views of palm trees, the UK government energy saving trust stand (which featured tips on using energy efficient light bulbs, but sadly nothing on flying less), I settled down to watch a webcast being streamed live from Bali.

Sitting in the auditorium and chatting with the other delegates there I was able to watch video being broadcast live from Bali, and then take part in an interactive question and answer session. It was possible to suggest questions which were then passed onto the representative in Bali, who put them to his interviewee on the live video link. The crossover between the virtual / real world did seem quite strange, but on the whole the system worked quite well . There were other avatars attending from other organisations, and helpers on hand to facilitate the session.

There are a few drawbacks to the Second Life system: the computer hardware requirements are quite high (I was using the only computer here at WDM which was new enough to run the software) and there is a need for a suitably fast broadband connection.

Still it is an interesting experiment, and something which I'm sure will become more mainstream and accessible in the future. If you want to check it out for yourself, head over to the OneWorld website to find out more.

Swimming against the tide.

Twice today I encountered two very different examples of people swimming against the tide.

Walking through the Convention Centre I encountered the Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. Here’s one person who won’t be too fussed about the carbon emissions of his flight over here. His argument: humans are not causing climate change. He handed me a flyer for what he calls a daily ‘science briefing’ he is holding. Today’s was entitled, “The IPCC’s Scientific Fraud”.

Here’s a guy who spends a lot of time and energy disputing the science of human-induced climate change; disputing the findings of the world’s pre-eminent scientific body on the issue – the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). If you want to be really generous you could say he’s got guts for coming to a place where he won’t find a warm audience. If you want to be less generous you could say he’s a nutter. I’ll let you work it out.

But whatever you think of him, it’s hard not to see him as swimming against a huge tide of scientific evidence that has stimulated massive public concern and, we hope, unstoppable political momentum. Can’t say I was desperate to make the short bike ride in the baking sun to listen to him.

On a very different note, I spent some time at the alternative NGO conference that is taking place just down the road from the main convention centre. A diversity of activists from across the world has gathered to share experiences and discuss campaigning, including indigenous peoples’ groups, small farmers and many others.

They are not only at the sharp end of climate change – like the Inuit people whose livelihood is threatened by warming in the arctic – they are also at the sharp end of some of the dodgy ‘solutions’ that are being peddled in the name of tackling climate change. These are the people who get kicked off their land in order to grow biofuels. These are the people whose rights get ignored when huge tree planting schemes are undertaken. But they are swimming against a tide of donor cash and ‘carbon finance’ projects that are sold as being environmentally beneficial.

After campaigning on environment and development issues for over a decade, I know what its like to swim against the tide. Can’t say I’ve got much sympathy for the Viscount. The campaigners on the other hand deserve all the support they can get.

50/50 chance of climate survival

I went to a meeting yesterday that gave me a chance to listen to the experiences of some Pacific Islanders from Kiribati, the Torres Strait Islands and the Cartaret Islands. To be honest, it blew me away.

These people are already, right now, in big trouble. Not in 100 years time. Not un-named potential human beings in future. But real people, right now, today, literally on the front line of climate change.

And that front line is where land meets the sea. Even with the modest level of global warming we have experienced to date, the sea level is already rising. These people are losing land, and believe me they haven’t got much land to lose. They expressed anger and frustration at the pitiful lack of meaningful action.

And they are right to be angry and frustrated. Later on, a lovely guy I met from the Cook Islands called David who is on his government’s delegation told me of an official meeting he went to that included the aviation industry. He was gob-smacked by the fact that there is such strong (and currently successful) pressure to exclude aviation from emissions cuts in the next phase of the Kyoto deal. He told me that it was only in the 1990s that cartographers started remembering to put his homeland on world maps because it is so small. He reckoned if the aviation industry has their way, we might as well take the Cook Islands off again.

These people are already in trouble and face losing their entire country in the not too distant future. They are the most modest, generous, friendly people you could ever hope to meet and they talk of the need for international solidarity; for brotherhood; for the need to work together. And what do we get? We get the aviation industry and various others, along with their mates in government, busy negotiating loopholes and get-out clauses. What the hell are they doing? These people’s entire country is going under.

You can bet your arse that that if it was London or New York being inundated there would be some radical action from the politicians. By god if the square mile was under threat there would be some squealing from the bankers and financiers. Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling would be fighting with each other over who gets to ‘come to the rescue’.

But it’s not; it’s small islands somewhere in the Pacific that are steadily disappearing along with their vibrant cultures. Not key players in the global economy. Not movers and shakers on the international political stage. No, they’re more important than that. And here we are negotiating loopholes and get-out clauses for rich people. This is just shit. Sorry, but I can’t think of better description right now.

So here it is: the science says that with an 80 per cent cut in carbon emissions – the absolute upper limit that is even being considered here by the politicians – we have a 50/50 chance of keeping the rise in average global temperatures to 2 degrees Celsius beyond pre-industrial levels. Think about that for a second. The absolute maximum effort many governments are prepared to make will give us a worse chance of success than if we were playing Russian roulette. That’s insane!

We would never accept those odds in other parts of our lives. Would you be prepared to play a normal game of roulette where you can choose red or black: if the ball lands on your chosen colour you get to carry on your life as normal, but get it wrong and you will be forced to move from your home in 10, 20 or 30 years time?

So, just to re-cap because this is important: an 80 per cent emissions cut = 50/50 odds on 2 degrees, and even 2 degrees = saying goodbye to some Pacific Islands. What can I say? We have to change our lives if there is to be any justice in the world. Do the maths.

Who is the biggest NGO in Bali?

Is it Greenpeace? Is it WWF? The International Chamber of Commerce? I was surprised to discover that it is the lobbying group, International Emissions Trading Association (IETA).


With 336 representatives including lawyers, financiers, emissions traders, consultants, certifiers and emissions trading experts from companies like Shell, the ETA makes up 7.5% of the 4483 Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) delegates at the UN climate talks. This dwarfs even the largest environmental groups like WWF (2%) and Greenpeace (1.6%).

Emissions trading has been implicated in several scandals and has come under fire from campaigners for failing to deliver real cuts in emissions.

The fact that the International Emissions Trading Association is the biggest NGO in Bali is indicative of the massive expansion in this industry over the past few years, and the influence it will extend over the outcome of the talks.

This expansion and influence is based on the argument that it is cheaper, easier and more efficient to pay for emissions reductions in developing countries, whilst developed countries continue to pollute. This argument sounds fine in theory but in practice has been riddled with problems.

Making money out of the desire to tackle climate change is only legitimate if emissions are reduced, and if it works without unwanted side-affects. So far emissions trading has not proved it can deliver what is needed, yet governments will be lobbied heavily to expand trading by the growing number of companies that stand to make money from it.

These climate talks could set in stone a deal that lasts for years. It may be our last chance to get it right and governments cannot afford to put all their eggs in a basket full of holes.

Blame climate change on China?

There is a worrying and much-loved trend of laying the blame for climate change firmly at China’s door step, so much so there is a very real danger at the Bali conference of the talks breaking down in a pointless blame game. If this is to be avoided, rich countries like the UK must recognise their responsibility for fuelling climate change, not only with emissions created on our shores but also with our massive consumption of goods produced overseas.

The World Development Movement has released a new report called Blame it on China? The international politics of climate change. The report clearly shows that the consumption of Chinese imports in the UK is so great that when included in our carbon emissions, the average UK citizen’s carbon footprint increases by 10%. The report recognises that larger developing countries have become significant contributors to climate change and need to be brought within a globally agreed framework for curbing emissions. But, it highlights the difference between current emissions and historical emissions; the difference between emissions per country and emissions per person; the UK’s recent patchy history in reducing emissions and a comparison between these talks and the infamous trade talks.

Using the mass media to point the finger at China will not help get the global deal we need to avert climate change disaster. Not only have rich countries historically caused the problem; they are also ‘importing’ emissions from the developing world. The UK and other industrialised nations must provide major technology transfer and aid if a deal is to be struck that brings the larger developing countries on board. The consequences of failure are unthinkable for the world’s poor - disease, drought, flooding and death on a truly catastrophic scale.

Download the report at www.wdm.org.uk/blameitonchina

The cost / benefit of flying to Bali

Ok, let’s get it straight from the outset. The irony is not lost on me that many hundreds of people have flown across the world – no doubt with the total carbon footprint equivalent to the entire annual emissions of a poor country – in order to attend a conference on climate change. How can this use of precious ‘resources’ (oil and the atmosphere) possibly be justified?

Well, for governments, that depends on whether they do the right thing and create a process that will give us a fighting chance of getting out of this climate change mess we have created. And let’s face it, there’s no way this can happen without governments meeting in person. Anyone who works in an office will know how badly wrong communicating by e-mail can go. One typo (‘I do apologise Mr Chinese Environment Minister, I missed an ‘r’ in the message I sent last week. I meant to say “we have some concerns over the draft document you submitted.” The British Government wishes to apologise for any offence and to assure you that I have been re-assigned to a junior position in the tea and biscuits department.’), or perhaps some inappropriate use of capitals can lay the foundations for simmering resentment. And even with the wonders of modern technology, it’s hard to imagine video conferencing between dozens of countries. So they need to meet. Granted, it seems pretty bizarre coming to the holiday island of Bali to do the job – maybe they thought the stifling heat would help increase the pressure for a deal. Who knows?

As to the cost/benefit of the rest of us flying across the world for the climate conference, I feel less certain. The guys I play football with in London were quick to raise an eyebrow when they heard about this trip – particularly given what I do and who I work for - and I imagine many others would think the same. To be honest, there’s no simple and compelling reason why myself, or any other individual campaigner, should be here. However, I strongly believe that some campaigners need to be here and the extent to which it is worthwhile depends on whether we can play an active and positive role in making something happen.

Again, the face-to-face stuff is important. Governments need to be scrutinised and kept to their word. The way these things develop - with constant shifts in positioning and tactics during the talks – it’s useful to have people who don’t work for the government keeping an eye on things. There might have been a time when it could have been argued that it is the media’s job to keep tabs on the powers that be, expose hypocrisy and keep governments to their word. But these days, with some notable exceptions, most journalists covering the climate talks simply have not had the experience, or been given the time by their employers, to understand the detail of what is happening.

So there it is. Alongside governments, ‘civil society’ as they call it, in all its myriad forms - from business lobby groups and academic researchers to local authorities and development/environment campaigners - is here en masse. Whether every single one of us needs to be here is a reasonable question, but I’ll leave it to you to work out the complex algebra needed to create a fair quota system that reduces overall numbers while giving all interested parties a voice.

For now, let’s just hope the outcome in 12 days time makes all this worthwhile.