Culture Change Correspondent at the United Nations and International Editor

December 17, 2003

This year the dates were December 1-12, 2003, which included the weekend Saturday December 7 and Sunday December 8. As the meetings were held in Milan, by coincidence, this was a very special weekend. Milan celebrates its patron saint, December 5-8, with a street fair surrounding Piazza Saint’Ambrogio. The fair is called Oh Bej! Oh Bej! and is said to have come from the delighted squeals of children who, upon beholding such a marvelous fair, once cried in Milanese dialect “Oh, how pretty! Oh, how pretty!”.

During the 3rd century A.D., Milan was the second largest city of the Western Empire, after Rome. In 313 the Emperors Constantine and Licinius issued the Edict of Milan which formally gave freedom of worship to Christianity. In 374, an Imperial official, Ambrose, was elected Bishop of Milan - he left such a mark on the Church of Milan that it was called the Ambrosian Church. The Basilica of Saint’Ambroglio was begun in 379, consecrated in 387, and St. Ambrose was buried there in 397. It is viewed as the centerpiece of Christianity history in Milan, thus for years synonymous with Milan history. It is also therefore no wonder that the opera season at the La Scala Opera House - the cultural centerpiece of Milan, would start on December 7, the high point of the Saint’Ambroglio celebration. The 2003-2004 season started on Saturday December 7 with “Moise et Pharaon, ou le passage de la Mer Rouge”, the French opera by the Italian Gioachino Rossini based on “Mose in Egitto” written for Naples in 1818. This is the musical and visual presentation of Moses leading his people out of Egypt. This was the environment into which happened COP 9 and my own imagination was pulling at me with the question — who will be the Moses that will release humanity from the enslavement in Egypt, or the oil industry, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq — use your own imagination, please.

The official meetings are halted for the weekend. Only working groups still toil all day on Saturday and even the night, but Sunday the building is closed and people rest or become tourists. Traditionally, the host country organizes also field trips. The historic La Scala building is closed for renovations for two years, will reopen on December 7, 2004. In the mean-time performances are held in a new specially built theatre, the Archimboldi in the vicinity of the new university. The performances were Sunday the 7th, opening of the season, Wednesday the 10th, and Saturday the 13th. It was impossible to get any tickets for the first two performances of the four and a half hour long virtuoso opera, but I was lucky to get a ticket for the Saturday, which turned out ideal also for my digesting and understanding of the needs for leadership on the issue of Climate Change.

The Sunday of December 7th saw me on a field trip of the Joint Research Center (JRC) Kyoto Experiment of the European Commission Directorate-General to the UNESCO Biosphere Reserve “Parco Ticino” near Zerbolo, in the Province of Pavia in Tuscany. The station is billed as a Kyoto Observatory in the sense it measures CO2 emissions from forests — be those natural forests or plantations. The place is in the vicinity of the only leftover natural forest in that part of Italy, and it was declared a UNESCO nature reserve. Also in the area one finds fast-growing-rotation poplar plantations. Most Italian furniture wood used to come from here, now it is pulp material and construction material. It is important to see if regenerating natural forest can be proven superior to the plantations when it comes to capturing CO2. The collection of such data,for Europe is done at this Observatory. We saw the equipment, listened to the scientists’ data, and got away with lots of questions about the potential of sequestering CO2 via wood plantations. Seemingly the long process of restoring the natural forest gives much better long term results.

When I got back to town, I spent a few hours at the Saint’Ambroglio fair and contemplated the idea of a Moses leading us away from the commercial interests.

December 10th and 11th were the so-called three High Level Round-Table Discussions, and it is fair to assume that the six co-chairs were considered as the central figures at the meeting.

Round-Table 0ne: On Climate Change, adaptation, mitigation and sustainable development, co-chaired by Ms. Yuriko Koike from Japan and the Minister from the Marshall Islands representing the Small Islands Independent Developing States (the SIDS). This panel had a lot to discuss on mitigation that is needed now in order to avoid drastic adaptation in the future. This means the need to start using less energy in the developed world — NOW — in order to allow orderly increased use of energy in the developing world. In this shuffle, the concept of Sustainable Development is all but forgotten in favor of old style squandering development still favored by the south.

Round-Table two: On Technology and Transfer of Technology co-chaired by US head of delegation, Ms. Paula Dobriansky and Mr Muhammed Valli Moosa, Minister of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, South Africa and former Chair of last year’s Johannesburg Summit. At this panel, the US stressed the importance of technology, South Africa stressed the existing technologies to be implemented by the private sector and Ireland (next office holder of the European Presidency) stressed renewables. Saudi Arabia seemed to reject the whole process by saying that the UNFCCC’s aim is not to reduce oil dependency.

Round-Table three: On Assessment of Progress made, co-chaired by the Minister from Mexico speaking for the south and Mr. Juergen Tritin from Germany. At this panel, the European Commission said that the issues require political will and that emissions can be reduced at low cost using existing technologies. Turkey and Yemen announced their accession to UNFCCC with Yemen also ratifying the Kyoto Protocol (KP). The Netherlands declared that they will proceed without Kyoto as if the Kyoto Protocol was actually in place and working.

Friday, December 12, was the last day and working groups continued to press for results to the last moment. The end results are actually better than expected considering that there were no realistic prospects that Russia will ratify the KP. Among the agreed-upon documents there is now in place an agreement on Aforestation and Reforestation Modalities, important for Clean Development Mechanism projects (CDM) that are the mechanism that the Europeans and some further countries, including even States within the USA, will be using under direct arrangements, even without Kyoto. The Europeans will have their full legislation in place to do so starting 2005. The only blemish in the agreed upon text is that it allows for GMOs or genetically modified plants. Minister Tritin, in a press conference pointed out at this and said they had to accept this in order to make it possible to proceed with the CDM. He hopes that this will change eventually because of opposition to specific credit buying.

Further agreements were on National Communications from parties included in Annex I (the developed countries), but no agreement was reached on the non-Annex I countries or the developing countries. These nations are afraid that obligatory reporting will lead to their having to take upon themselves responsibilities that they were allowed to escape in the Kyoto Protocol. This is clearly untenable and not even all members of the G77&China group believe that this situation can continue.

On the Question of Creating the Special Climate Change Fund and the Least Developed Countries Fund, a last minute agreement was reached for a $410 million annual assistance to Developing countries to adapt to the impact of global warming, ranging from floods to draughts and storms.

Also, it was agreed that COP 10 of the UNFCCC will be held November 29 - December 7, 2004 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Now back to Moses. He is needed more then ever to the Climate Change Convention folks. Moses, in our context, had his people worship the King of the Universe, the provider of the ageless ecology, and not some self-interest or regional ruler. For the sake of the environment, and life on earth, the unforgiving king is the king of the universe. The regional king is some special interest, destructive and untrue. Now who will be the Moses that takes us out of Saudi Arabia ? It will not be President Bush. Could it be Ms. Yuriko Koike from Japan because of the Japan interest in Kyoto? Perhaps it could rather be Mr. Juergen Tritin, the Green Minister from Germany. He was active in Milan and despite his refusal to disavow expressed hope for waiting for Putin, he actually said that he is ready to proceed without Kyoto as if Kyoto were in place already. Perhaps, when considering the reality, he would be ready to see that despite the tremendous investment in time and effort in the Kyoto process, actually Kyoto was never needed.

The Global Commons is outside any National sovereignty. The Global Commons, among its four components, includes the atmosphere and the oceans. What is needed is an Administration of the Global Commons that has the power to sell pollution permits and apply penalties for illegal pollution, pollution including also the Green-House Gasses emissions. This proposed Administration could then reinvest the funds thus created in the developing countries and achieve all what was envisioned in Kyoto without being tied into this 55% constraint that we took upon ourselves in Kyoto. Details of this Global Commons approach can be found in the web-site of the Centre for UN Reform Education at www.unreformcenter.org under “A Promptbook on Sustainable Development for the World Summit in Johannesburg, August 2002″. The important context in this approach is the fact that pollution migrates and the air and water pollution originating in the territory under National sovereignty migrates to the Global Commons and is thus under the jurisdiction of the Administrator. The concept is not strange to the UN as it has already dealt with nodules of minerals and migratory fish found in oceans outside national waters. In those cases bodies were established for rule making. Having ruled in those cases, the world body can see how to deal also on issues of climate change.

Would Moses throw his stick at this issue? In the opera I saw, the text was complicated, many side issues, but Moses had no Stick — he used the power of persuasion instead. He was sure to say and do the right thing.

(This article was first posted on CultureChange.org)

REPORT III