Bali: all articles

The agreement reached in Bali on Saturday wasn't an end point , but the start of a process. There now follows at least another two years of intense negotiations to pull together an effective global climate deal.

Inevitably this means that there will now be a period of soothsaying commentary and interpretation before the true importance of the Bali agreement begins to be understood and acted on.

And already this coming week will see the start of attempts to tease out a more accurate understanding of what went on in Bali and where it is leading.

Following below are details of two events that Global Deal has interest in - unfortunately both on Tuesday 18th December.

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:

What should we call NGO blogs? Given how they are increasingly appearing in a new space beyond the traditional media, I wonder whether we need a new term for activist-reporter-bloggers. How about blongos? Or blongeurs?

Whatever we call them, one thing is for sure - blogging is providing an effective means of communicating the hopes and frustrations of frontline lobbyists back to memberships and activists. It's still a minority pursuit at present - look through the long list of accredited NGOs and you'll find just a handful trying to connect beyond the boundaries of the conference compound. But that will surely change over the next 2 years of climate activism.

During his hectic blogging schedule last week, David Steven somehow found time to post an in depth analysis of some of the recent criticisms of the Kyoto Protocol.

He ended his analysis with a review of the ‘time to ditch Kyoto' argument of Gwyn Prins and Steve Rayner, particularly their central big idea of putting ‘public investment in energy R&D on a wartime footing'.

David's conclusion was that

[quote]Now spending that sort of money may well be a reasonable response. It should even buy some compelling new technologies (though how wisely governments would invest it is a moot point).

Let's see then. Are there any other bloggers out there trying to stick together the Bali-shaped parts of the climate change jigsaw puzzle?

A quick search of top blogosphere tool the truth laid bear shows that Monday 3rd December saw a peak of 26 posts from around the world featuring the terms Bali, UN, and Climate.

Five years ago, I was in Johannesburg, blogging the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Then the US took on all comers over toilets. For all sorts of reasons (some of which were, in fact, laudable), it held out against a target for getting basic sanitation to more poor people.

So we're off.

Ten thousand or so delegates are beginning to struggle through accreditation. Electricians are rushing to finish wiring up the convention centre. And the vanguard of an army of a thousand or so journalists have set up their laptops in the tent that will be their home for duration of the Bali meeting.

Proceedings started with the first of a hundred or so press conferences that we are threatened with over the next fortnight. Yvo de Boer, the UNFCCC's Secretary General, was the main draw.