Climate talks: Qatar asks countries to bypass negotiations

DOHA: The Qatari hosts, as predicted, have asked select ministers to take over the negotiations and bypass the negotiating process. South Africa and Sweden have been approached by Qatar to lead the negotiations on the trenchant issue of financing climate change action with other ministers. Similarly Norway and Brazil have been asked to soon begin negotiating on the operationalisation of the second commitment period of Kyoto Protocol which is to begin by 2013.

TOI had reported earlier that the hosts would, like some others have in the previous few years, try to short-circuit the negotiations as they get log-jammed and ask two ministers each - one from a developed country and one from a developing country - to take over on the key issues of the negotiations and start negotiating word by word in order to have a final decision by the end of the meeting.

Qatar as hosts is also the President of the UN conference and is required to lead the talks to a conclusion. A failure of talks, and Doha already has the history of WTO behind it, is never considered good for the hosts' image.

Usually the negotiators - all diplomats and subject experts - are expected to reach a conclusive agreement and then pass it up to the ministers gathering at the end of the conference to adopt the decisions. But the wide rift among countries on previous several years has led the hosts to put the official negotiations which are open to all countries regardless of economic or delegation size. It has led to ministers, even heads of (almost always the most influential) states being put into closed rooms to argue and quibble over each and every word.

The short-circuiting has always led to bad blood as it lacks transparency and the negotiating texts that had come out of the open UN process (in diplomatic jargon what is called a party-driven process) often being junked and new formulations being brought out of the blue forcing countries to limit their options. This has been the case in last three years at Copenhagen, then Cancun and last at Durban. The Copenhagen episode ended up being the most acrimonious of the three, when the hosts tried to bring the decisions taken in a small group back to the formal forum of all the 190 plus countries. The decisions could not be agreed upon by consensus then in 2009.

Mexico and South Africa resorted to variants of the same green room process which also left several countries bruised with the results and a push back after the conferences ended though the talks did not fail.

It remained when the hosts would ask the specific countries to begin these green room processes and how transparent they would remain. But sources said previous experience shows it always lead to the balance in negotiations go for a toss as the ministers leading the talks take over-riding decisions even when consensus has not developed even within the smaller group they consult.

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