By Wendel, Bali project team leader, now in Brussels

The Bali meeting was an extra-ordinary one with final decisions being made more than 24 hours after its scheduled ending. The last couple of hours of the meeting were a bit of a drama with countries changing their positions at the very last moment, and the media thinking it was over while there were still some important discussions going on. There for the news that came out of Bali may have been a bit confusing. Allow me to clarify.

1. We have a Bali Mandate! Maybe not as clear and as coherent as we wanted it, but looking at where we were at the start of the COP/MOP, our team in Bali achieved a lot. The language could have been better, and it could all have been more coherent but if we look carefully at what has been decided, we got a lot out of Bali: we have a process and a deadline, we have recognition of ambitious targets (25 to 40 % by 2020), and we have all our major issues on the agenda (deforestation, adaptation, technology transfer and financing). So, in fact we can be proud of what we have achieved.

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Posted by Andrew at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Now that Bali's over, it's easy to forget all the hard work people around the world did to pressure governments to deliver. To be sure, letter writing, phone calls, lobby work, etc is all important. Everyone who contributed by sending messages in and turning up the heat on their governments deserves our thanks. Protest, getting out on the street, and civil disobedience play a big role in this.

So we've put together a map showing some of the protests around the world leading up to and during Bali...

View Larger Map

Posted by Andrew at 7:09 PM | Permalink

Posted by Arieta Moceica from Fiji at the Bali International Conference Centre

It is now 5pm of Saturday 15th December. The UN Climate Change Conference was scheduled for 3-14 Dec. The conference is still in session! Why are we still sitting here in plenary hearing the debate on the text a full day after what was to be the official end date?

In the face of heartfelt plea from the voices of those at the forefront of the impacts of climate change- namely, Tuvalu; Grenada on behalf of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) and a few others, this morning the US continued to hold to its stubborn, non-negotiable stance which threatened to bring the meeting to a horrible end - ie. no mandate and a total waste of money, time, effort and the poltical will of industralised nations like member states of the EU. South Africa and PNG then made really strong interventions calling on the US to be the leader its been in other arena; PNG told the US that if it could not be a leader, then to get out of the way and leave the space to others.

Sheepishly, the US fell into line. As the room applauded, I did not want to waste my energy applauding because for me as a Pacific Islander, I ask " what took it so long to get to this point and why did it have to be kicked in the rear end to get in line?" I will wait to see what the US gets up to in the coming 2 years. It is the hope of those of us who witness first hand the impacts of climate change that as the will of the people in Australia changed the arrogant government of Howard; that the same will happen in 2008 in the USA.

In the last few minutes - the text adopted under the Kyoto Protocol had the ranges Greenpeace has been fighting hard for (25-40% reductions by 2020 compared to 1990 levels). Australia's support was particularly welcomed with rounds of applause. As a Pacific Islander, this gesture on the part of Australia is much welcomed and we look forward to more positive relations.

This session just ended is the start of a 2 year process which will negotiate the work for the second round of commitment under the Kyoto Protocol. What the Pacific islands need is strengthened capacity to be like Tuvalu, in its tenacity, in continuing to raise its flag and voice in the face of bullying tactics by big industrialised nations like the USA. What the Pacific islands need is real action against climate change. Now!

Posted by Daniel at 9:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Posted by Australian Stephen Campbell at the Bali International Conference Centre

It's been a tough two weeks pushing the new Australian government to finally accept some clear numbers for action on climate change. At the beggining of the week the Prime Minister said that there was no way that Australia would sign up to the negotiating "range" (of 25-40% by 2020 compared to 1990 levels), but here they are, agreeing to it! We have pushed and pushed, and called out for the government to take a principled position, and now it seems like we will get our wishes. We still have a long way to go to start reducing emissions in Australia, but now we have something to shoot for. We couldn't be more happy!

Posted by Daniel at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by Daniel, political advisor at the Bali International Conference Centre

Well, this was fun. After emotional speeches on the need to act - and to act now - against climate change by the likes of the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, Paula Dobriansky for the Bush White House first objected to the "Bali roadmap", the start of comprehensive negotiations for the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol. She was boo-ed. And many delegations, in stark terms not usual in international diplomacy, objected. South Africa said very clearly, that developing countries, especially rapidly industrializing one, are willing to do more (unlike what the Bush administrations keeps telling the world). And Papua New Guinea put it best. They called on the United States to "get out of the way". Well - they did! A potential action plan, to be agreed in 2009, was adopted. This changes nothing about the fact that the Bush administration is to blame that not more was achieved in Bali. That this agreement is not what the science demands. This agreement does, for example, not commit governments to the vital peak in global emissions by 2015. Still: the minimum for what we came here for, we got. (And we still await further decisions later today, especially from all those countries that have ratified the Kyoto Protocol.)
Today we will sleep when this is finally over in another few hours. But tomorrow we start mobilizing for the fight over the next two years. We now CAN get a strengthened global climate treaty in Copenhagen in 2009. But this is by no means a given. It will take political pressure - like the pressure that made the United States cave here today. Thanks for your support! Keep it up!

Posted by Daniel at 6:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Daniel, political advisor at the Bali International Conference Centre

So, we are still here. 9am and governments have just started to meet in plenary. There is a new text - and it is not what the science demands. It lacks clear targets, it lacks the urgency that is needed. The US (supported by Russia last night) seems to have succeeded in destroying a strong agreement, even though the rest if the world was willing to take a giant step forward in Bali. But whether even this deal (which does have some good elements, e.g. on bringing clean technologies to the developing world) will survive the next few hours, we will see. There are still several options on the table. It is unusual to discuss a non-agreed text in plenary. It's a gamble by the Indonesian organizers. Let's see whether it works ...

Posted by Daniel at 1:01 AM | Permalink

Posted by Daniel, political advisor at the Bali International Conference Centre

We are still here at the Convention Centre; and it looks like we will be here all night. The mood is charged. People are nervous, tired, cranky. At midnight, ministers will reconvene and hear back from some sub-groups of negotiators on whether any progress has been made. Then there is likely to be more negotiations. Possibly until 7am. - The main sticking points: - what the United States will commit to - what developing countries commit to - and how ministers will reflect the science of climate change that demands real and drastic cuts. The stakes are getting higher. But the convention centre is also emptying out. The ' carneval of ideas' character of the convention centre corridors is over. Some people are sleeping in chairs. The many booths where organizations from the World Bank to our Solar Generation youth delegation have been ' selling' their ideas to passer-bys over the last two weeks have been dismantled. Which gives the place a bit of a hospital feel now. But at least it also means that some obnoxious people are gone. Like all those fossil fuel and nuclear power lobbyists, that have been pretending to be part of the solution to climate change here for the last two weeks. Like the World Coal Institute.

An institute that loves oxymoron's - like clean coal. An institute that is using the worry of many nations, that they require long term, reliable fuels to sell the most climate-damaging energy-form on planet earth. And, yes, as you might have guessed from the name of the institute. That is coal. Every time I passed the institute's stand, I thought of doing small impromptu "activity". Holding a banner in front of them. Delivering pictures of communities devastated by coal. Covering the stand in coal dust. Ok, that would have been mean. But appropriate ...

Posted by Daniel at 1:56 PM | Permalink

One thing I had thought about blogging before US attempts to turn the bali roap map into road kill, was how much fun listening to the EU press conference was yesterday. These are ministers; they don’t want to have public spats. In particular this is the EU – so it’s all very diplomatic and polite. But the message to the US that we’re not taking any more of your shit, was clear.

Unfortunately, I didn’t get into see Gore but watched him on screen –it was perfect timing. Another reason to be positive about the backlash, and the fact that people are telling the Bush administration where to go.

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Posted by Jo at 6:50 AM | Permalink

Posted by Bustar Maitar at the Bali International Conference Centre

As the final deal is being hammered out among smaller and smaller groups of ministers, life in the plenary hall at the Convention Centre continues as normal. One speech follows another. Which follows another. As tradition has it, when all the government speeches are done, other "stakeholders" get to talk too. So here are the powerful words Bustar Maitar of Greenpeace Southeast Asia spoke to power today on behalf of the Climate Action Network:

Dear distinguished delegates,

When you talk here in plenary, you are bold, visionary and aware of the climate emergency we face and must confront collectively. Here in plenary, alarms have been raised, and you have stressed the importance of the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change. However, in Jakarta, Orchid or Laguna rooms – far from public scrutiny – brave words too often crumble to dust. We see you barter and trade. We hear you put short-term, so-called ‘national’ interest, before the survival of our planet - of even your own people.

Many of you have supported what is necessary to avoid the worst impacts of climate change: a peak in global emissions by 2015, leadership by industrialized countries, by cutting emissions at least 30% by 2020, and cutting global emissions more than 50% by 2050 (compared to 1990 levels). You know, that massive funding must go to the most vulnerable without delay that clean and socially appropriate technologies must be universally deployed, requiring trillions of dollars to avert climate catastrophes.

Some of you – and you know who you are - have done all you can to undermine or mine the process here in Bali. We will remember you and keep watching.

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Posted by Daniel at 4:49 AM | Permalink

After what happened yesterday in Bali, US delegation head, Paula Dobriansky, might not go as far as asking for French fries to be renamed again, it is very unlikely though that she will consider French Ecology Minister Jean-Louis Borloo as the archetype of the French charmeur.

A bilateral US-France meeting ended in a close-to-clash situation and led Borloo to rewrite the speech he was giving 2 hours later to the Conference of the Parties. And his message to the Bush administration was crystal clear: unless the US come with binding reduction targets to the Major Economies Meeting planned to be held in Paris in February 2008, they don’t have to come at all and the meeting will be cancelled. And he was even more precise: anything less than the 25-40% reduction range wouldn’t do it.

Today, the German Minister Gabriel gladly backed up his French colleagues. Gabriel announced that the EU major emitters would stop their participation in the MEM process unless substantive progress was made at Bali. Read: put quantitative reduction figures on the table or you won’t see us in Honolulu!

MEM, a weapon of mass sabotage turned to be a damp squib?

Posted by Martin B at 12:09 AM | Permalink

It’s 2:30am, and I’m just back from the conference centre. Plenty of our delegation and many others will be pulling all-nighters. Was just preparing to leave a couple of hours ago when got a call that the US are trying to insert a completely new text into the mitigation section.

I’m going to just paste in the text and quote from Shane, our political head. It’s pretty techie but I can tell you this much: It is more backward than pre-Kyoto texts, it’s all about voluntary targets for greenhouse gas emissions. Quite frankly, it’s a travesty.

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Posted by Jo at 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Posted by Daniel, political advisor at the Bali International Conference Centre

Everyone is just as tired as yesterday, but the conference centre today is alive with activity and adrenalin. The end game has started. And the shape of the final deal is slowly but surely emerging .... The politics is also getting more interesting: German environment minister Gabriel gave the negotiations a boost by committing to a unilateral, domestic reduction of Germany's emissions by 40% by 2020. I have been working on Germany having such a progressive target for as long as I can remember. (Minus 40% by 2020 was in the position paper I wrote for the climate negotiations in 2000!) Now, finally, we have it! Of course, Germany can only deliver that target, if it stops supporting new coal-fired power plants in Germany ... That's the fight for 2008! - Ministers last night restarted the negotiations on bringing clean technologies to developing countries. (The collapse of which had rightly angered developing countries on Tuesday night. ) We will know soon whether bureaucrats do better this time than on Tuesday ... - Meanwhile, the US is still trying to block everything (and some ministers have been seen looking really depressed, after talking to the US ...). It is clear that they are trying to destroy the United Nations process, something which the rest of the world must simply not allow. Bush does not represent Americans. And whatever comes out of Bali, when government have to sign the dotted line on the future of the Kyoto Protocol in 2009, the President of the United States will NOT be Bush! - So, back to chasing the latest text and fighting like hell that Bali agrees a substantive, real action plan. Wish us luck!

Posted by Daniel at 6:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Wun, Solar Generation delegate from Thailand

Today should be marked for a few reasons. It was today ten years ago that the most essential legally binding agreement to address climate change received its name from where it was founded: Kyoto. It is today that the Kyoto protocol celebrates its birthday for the first time. It is today that one of the Greenpeace International members mentioned to me, "I have never seen so many press at an inside Greenpeace event before." Thus, today is truly a remarkable day for us all.

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Posted by Jo at 9:21 AM | Permalink

While the bureaucrats and ministers slug it out on text insertions and
deletions at the UN conference, the UNFCCC President Mr. Rachmat
Witoelar took a break from the proceedings earlier today to to visit the
Rainbow Warrior docked in Benoa Harbour of Bali to launch Greenpeace
Southeast Asia's 'Energy Efficient Bali' programme.

Witoelar was as excited about the 'Switch off, Unplug, Enjoy' initiative
as he was about visiting our flagship, that has been for last two months
taking direct action to expose and stop climate crimes happening in his
country. Like Gerd Leipold our international executive director pointed
out to him, Greenpeace is not all about direct actions or stopping
crimes, we also promote solutions and Energy Efficient Bali is one such
initiative, the Minister agreed and encouraged all stake holders of Bali's
hospitality industry to participate enthusiastically in the Greenpeace
programme.

The programme incidentally is being run in partnership with Bali Hotels
Association and Bali Tourism Development Sector and will include regular
skill-shares to provide information on cost-effective energy efficiency
measures and modern renewable energy technologies that the hospitality
industry can deploy at their properties; Regular training on energy
conservation, water conservation and waste management for hotel staff;
and of course some Greenpeace style lobbying of the Indonesian
government to provide incentives and subsidies to allow hotels to invest
in renewable energy and energy efficiency measures.

Witoelar was happy that he could get away from the meeting, but we used
the opportunity to impress upon him that we expected that under his
leadership the UNFCCC and all parties at the conference will take brave
decisions to ensure that the outcome of the Bali meeting will meet the
aspirations of the millions of people around the world.

Posted by Martin B at 8:31 AM | Permalink

Posted by Daniel, political advisor at the Bali International Conference Centre

Negotiations limped on on many issues until 2am last night. But this morning, there was tiredness and disappointment written into many faces. Including mine. But especially many delegates from developing countries are not happy. The crucial issue of 'transfering' the technologies developing countries need to deliver energy to their people without ruining the climate hit an impasse. This is bad. This is yet another knot that needs to be broken here over the next three days to deliver the action plan for the climate we need. Today, ministers will be told about how many issues are still unresolved. I doubt they will be happy. I certainly am not. Three more days. Will governments deliver!?

Posted by Daniel at 5:45 AM | Permalink

Posted by Daniel, political advisor at the Bali International Conference Centre

New text again (in the Kyoto Protocol part of the negotiations here). And now the crucial targets are back in. But only as an option. Option two of paragraph two. This text will likely be something that ministers will wrangle about here. It will be the test for how many of them are serious. Canada and Japan have opposed moves by the EU and the China on behalf of developing countries to reintroduce these targets outright. Russia seems to also have been problematic - and Australia still does not seem to be actively supporting what science tells us we need. So as ministers arrive in Bali, stopping dangerous climate change is still an option - option 2!

Posted by Daniel at 7:21 AM | Permalink

By Gavin, climate campaign leader

Sunday was an afternoon on the beach with 500 people, all laying out to spell a message urging action on climate change. Human banner artist John Quigley was on hand to be designer & master of ceremonies, his positive energy encouraging a multi-cultural mass of people. We were working with stepitup, a US ngo whos been doing some great organising over the past couple of years in building a network of people all working to help push climate change up the political agenda. And also Global Green, a US NGO founded by President Gorbachev to encourage green buildings & cities by reconnecting humanity to the environment.

That’s one of the many cool things about this climate meeting in Bali – there are such a diverse number of organisations, all taking a multitude of approaches to the same issue. And all united under the idea that the global problem of climate change needs a global solution, with everyone playing there part.

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Posted by tomD at 8:35 PM | Permalink

Posted by Daniel, political advisor at the Bali International Conference Centre

New text on the negotiations, that all those who have ratified the Kyoto Protocol are involved in. And it is bad news. The key targets - peaking global emissions in the next 10-15 years; reducing emissions in industrialzied countries by 25-40% by 2020; getting global emissions well below 50% by 2050 - they are all gone! There is a reference to a previous decision that includes these targets. But this is still unacceptable. We need clear words and clear signal from Bali. Nothing less. Period.

Posted by Daniel at 7:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Posted by Daniel, political advisor at the Bali International Conference Centre

As more and more ministers arrive in Bali, more and more of the real action is happening informally and behind closed doors. The ministers will give the speeches and get the puplic attention. But the texts will decide whether Bali has delivered - or not - and until tomorrow night at least, these texts are still being negotiated by the buraucrats. As of this weekend, texts are out; documents, that give an indication of what the end result might look like. Papers that governments will now wrangle over for the rest of the week.

Everybody from now on will be asking "Have you seen the text on x?" "What do you make of paragraph 2i of text y?" in the corridors. Our task for the rest of the week is simple (at least in principle): Get bad things out of these texts. And fight like hell for what we like. Such as references to real emissions reductions for industrialized countries of the scale required by science (25-40% by 2020; amounting collectively to at least minus 30%) . These figures are on the table just now - a real result of all our hard work last week. Let's hope they stay there! We will work like hell to make sure they do. Promise.

Posted by Daniel at 5:18 AM | Permalink

By Sven, Renewable Energy campaigner

When I arrived at the harbour to join the media boat heading out to watch the Rainbow Warrior flotilla, it was already pretty busy. Journalists registering at our desk, cameramen carrying heavy equipment - it was just before 9am - but already hot and humid. Our Indonesian team was still fighting paper work to complete permission for the Rainbow Warrior to sail in.

An hour later out at sea with a charter ship - the Warrior appeared on the horizon. More 40 than tiny little fishing boats surround here. It was a peaceful picture, somehow emotional. It reminded me of the less peaceful "welcome" we received just a week ago, when we took action against a coal power plant near Jepara, on the North Coast of Central Java.

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Posted by Jo at 4:21 PM | Permalink