Bonn Homies

The Maldives place at the UNFCCC meeting in Bonn

So, you may be surprised to hear that the Seventh session of the Ad-hoc Working Group on further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG-KP) and Fifth session of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention (AWG-LCA) are now over. Yaaawn.

Sorry, where was I. Still reading? Good.

Yes, you may well be surprised, because this meeting has passed nearly everyone by unnoticed - despite being another critical point at which progress towards safeguarding the future of humanity should have been being made. These 'Intercessional' meetings are considered crucial in the lead up to the global agreement to reduce emissions which must be finalised in Copenhagen in December.

I sometimes think the UN has named these meetings so impenetrably so that nobody can focus on them for long enough to keep track of what's actually happening. If they'd really wanted people to pay attention, the meetings would be called things like the 'Climate Doom! Fightback Weekender', and would look more like that bit in Flash Gordon where the different planetary races discuss what to do about Ming the Merciless.

The reality of course is that the meetings look no different than any other boring international policy negotiation, so it is no exagerration to say that a major highlight of the Bonn Intercessional was the first ever Not Stupid Awards ceremony.

The Climate Action Network have been running the Fossil of the Day Awards since 1999, with members voting each day for the country judged to have made the worst input to the negotiations, with a summary award at the end of each round of talks. This time, the Fossil of the Week went to Saudi Arabia for blocking consensus. But during the most recent round of talks, Chairperson Michael Zammit Cutajar asked why there weren't awards for the parties who were making significant commitments to the agreement.

This seemed like a perfectly reasonable question, and so the Not Stupid awards were born.

Not Stupidisers

Many parties to the convention make necessary commitments to the historic agreement, but the most responsible decision makers are not, sadly, found in the wealthier bloc-groups such as the EU and the Umbrella group (America, Australia, Japan, Russian Federation among others). The strongest commitments at Bonn came once again from AOSIS, the coalition of some 43 island states including the new global climate champion, the Maldives. 

Maldivian Delegation

AOSIS, united by the the threat that climate change poses to their survival, are advocates for strong action and commitment of the kind exemplified by the Maldives' move to carbon neutrality within the decade. Based on the most recent science, AOSIS are pushing for the avoidance of dangerous climate change and effective implementation of the precautionary principle, and the principle of inter-generational equity.

Even 2 degrees celcius temperature change is too much risk for the survival of the member states of AOSIS, and as such they have set concrete targets for the next agreement, including stabilisation of atmospheric CO2 well below 350ppm CO2 equivalent and more recently, due to the changes in scientific predictions, a minimum -45% cuts on emmissions, based on 1990 levels for Annex 1 countries by 2020.

“We do not want to be looking at options to relocate our populations. We want to take strong mitigation action so that such a scenario is not necessary... Either we accept a higher stablisation level and high impacts, or Annex 1 has to do more.”

Unfortunately, the most affected in these negotiations do not have the most political sway, and the required consensus is often blocked by wealthier contries. The ambitious targets that AOSIS advocated in the original Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol were never met. They cannot afford to fail a third time.

So in light of all this the Maldives, on behalf of the Aliance Of Small Island States (AOSIS) were certified NOT STUPID by the International Youth Delegation - becoming the first ever recipients of an official Not Stupid Certificate (Martin Durkin, of Great Global Warming Swindle infamy, has already become the first recipient of a corresponding Stupid Certificate).

AOSIS: Not Stupid

Here you can see the delightful Maldivian delegation being handed the certificate by Team Stupid's Nic Seton.

The winning team 

The Maldivian delegation, which consisted of Mr. Amjad Abdulla, Director General of the Ministry of Housing, Transport and Environment, accompanied by the ministry’s Environment Analyst, Mr. Ali Lishan, and Ms. Shazra Abdul Sattar, First Secretary of the Maldives Permanent Mission to the UN in Geneva, only look so teeny in these pictures because Nic is nearly 8 foot tall.

The first ever Not Stupid Certificate

Team Stupid hope that this will be the first of many such certificates - although at the moment, there are scarcely any worthy recipients, at least not involved in the UNFCCC process... 

Big one in Bonn

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