Just quickly. I’m shattered and need to get to bed.

By the end of the day, yesterday, it was clear that we wouldn’t get a legal agreement. We were too close to the midnight deadline set by the United Nations, and countries were still stuck on the main issues of emissions cuts and climate compensation.

A draft of a new document, the “Copenhagen Accord” had been circulating all day—so we knew for sure that we’d see a political agreement come out of the climate summit.

What we didn’t expect was that Barack Obama would call a press conference close to midnight (with only White House press allowed into the room) in which he announced to the world that this agreement had been reached!

He gallops into town at the 11th hour, calls a meeting with 28 people—heads of state (including our prez) and leaders representing the different blocs. They decide to back the Copenhagen Accord. He announces it to the world (so it’s being called the “Obama Accord”!!) before all the 192 country representatives have had a chance to state in plenary whether or not they back the thing.

The cheek of it!

I had to file copy very early this morning, to get into the Sunday papers. By 4am, many of the smaller and more vulnerable countries had rejected the accord out of hand. So I wrapped up my 1 000 word piece stating that the summit was a failure, with the accord being rejected. I filed at 6am and left for our digs to get some sleep.

I slept until 10am, only to wake in time to find the entire political landscape had changed and that the accord had been accepted! I got onto the phone to my editor back in SA to see if there was still time to rework the story to show the very final stages of development.

Thankfully, after the quickest rewrite in history, we managed to get the updated story through in time. It was a harrowing day—one 24-hour shift, three hours of sleep, then final edits and one last news story. Whatever way you read it, though, Hopenhagen became Hopelesshagen this week because the summit was a failure, if you take the science of climate change seriously.

I drifted through the rest of the day in a fog—a combination of losing a sense of time passing (not seen much sunlight during the past fortnight), lack of sleep and the demands of deadlines. But most of all, there was an undercurrent of despair because cheap politicking and White House power mongering hijacked a democratic (if flawed) negotiation process last night.

Leonie Joubert is a science writer, reporting for Independent Newspapers from the United Nations climate negotiations taking place in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December. This is her blog-on-the-side.

Belynda Petrie

The RCCP COP15 Negotiation Preparation Training Workshop held at the Airport Grand Hotel and Conference Centre in Johannesburg came to a close on 10 September, 2009.

The four-day preparation workshop consisted of a two-day technical session, where one technical group debated water and climate change, while another focused on land use, agriculture and finance. Each group came up with a technical climate change statement and strategy, which formed the basis for the third day’s workshop, the aim of which was to develop text on a shared vision for the region. Issues that rose to prominence in the shared vision were reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) and climate change finance, closely followed by adaptation, mitigation and technology. Not surprisingly—given the fact that the two are so closely related and the former is mooted for discussion in Copenhagen in December—the issues of finance and REDD saw most heated debate.

Southern Africa’s newly formulated shared vision on climate change is set to be finalised and taken through negotiation channels. The region, on impetus from the RCCP and in partnership with SADC, has its sights set on hosting a side event in Copenhagen, where the shared vision would be presented and discussed.

The COP15 presentation will be done in an informal manner, taking the regional position into negotiations. The SADC vision will, more formally, be taken through the Africa position process. What this means is that Africa’s position will have much stronger Southern African representation—which, until now, has been led by South Africa.

The text that has emerged from the process thus far is relatively robust and is lacking neither in teeth nor depth—in some ways it should serve to strengthen the Africa position, which often ends up somewhat diluted.

Of course, all of this hinges on the assumption that the partnership between RCCP and SADC will be successful in getting its position through to Africa and that the delegates at this workshop are able to communicate effectively with and convince lead negotiators in their countries that the regional position will not compromise individual country positions. However, optimism is not entirely out of place, with several lead negotiators attending the workshop and having expressed their support for the process.

The workshop can be safely labelled a success, with delegates having learned and experienced how negotiations work, what they are about, how much stamina is needed, what one another’s country-specific challenges are and where and how they can learn from one another. For example, Angola has reached agreement with the DRC on the latter helping the former develop a strategy and building capacity around REDD.

The Southern African Shared Vision will not be made public until it becomes official and has entered negotiation channels, as per agreement between all party to the RCCP/SADC partnership.