negotiations: all articles

It seems that the confusion in Bali is still not yet over, not even for the BBC's news gathering resources.

Just over an hour ago, the Bali negotiations were the first item on the Radio 5 Live news bulletin, for what seems like the first time this week. They quoted UK Environment Minister Hilary Benn as saying that a deal had still not been reached.

Yet over on the BBC website, the latest news on their Bali section is that

It's close to 1am and the negotiators are still arguing about two main issues:

Here's a future essay topic in the making. ‘Compare and contrast the impact of internet activism and mass demonstrations on the 2007 Bali climate talks'.

We'll soon have a chance to do just that, as the innovative global campaigning organisation Avaaz has launched an ‘emergency global petition' which aims to collect 100,000 signatures before Friday.

They state:

‘Kyoto's failure haunts new U.N. talks.' ‘Time to ditch Kyoto.' These recent headlines have found a ready audience among those who have never liked the treaty.

But has Kyoto really proved a let down? Or is it performing as advertised when it was agreed with great fanfare in 1997, and then ratified a little over 7 painful years later?

It took up only a few innocuous words in the unofficial record of yesterday's proceedings. Delegates here in Bali had agreed to ‘prepare options for consideration by the ministers, focusing on the form, substantive scope and timeframe of the process and its budgetary implications.'

Doesn't sound like much, but according to Yvo de Boer, Executive General of the UNFCCC, it's something of a triumph and one that, for a while, it seemed that Saudi Arabia would block.

The ‘contact group' will allow delegates to take negotiations about future options out of the full plenary and should allow them to prepare a menu of possible solutions for Ministers to sign up to when they arrive next week.