Poznan
Perspective
By Dan Shepard
Monday, 1 December 2008
Climate Change Convention Opens
10 a.m.--The sun rises late in Poland at this time of year, at close to 8:00 o'clock, but that still provides plenty of daylight for the 10,000 participants of the Climate Change Convention in Poznan to arrive at the Pozan International Fair in time for the 10 a.m opening. Fleets of trams, buses and taxis converge at the meeting site, the largest conference center in Poland .
There is a light frost on the ground, the air is cool but hardly frigid. Poznan itself is decked out in holiday regalia and festooned with climate change billboards. At the conference center, the NGO WWF, greeted the throngs hurrying for the opening with some key points for "Cracking the Climate Nut,"and illustrating the point with a jumbo-sized nut cracker. But the throngs had to cool their heels once inside the center, where long lines for security awaited the participants.
Noon--Tradition dictates that the president of the previous climate change conference opens the present conference, so Rachmat Witoelar, the Indonesian Environment Minister who presided over the 2007 conference in Bali opened the meeting. He quickly handed off the presidential duties to Poland's Environment Minister, Maciej Nowicki, who told the conference that the specter of increased floodsand cyclones, tropical disease pandemics, a dramatic decline of biodiversity, that could cause social or even armed conflicts, was “not a science fiction--it can come true if we continue business as usual.” 
IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri wondered aloud whether people had actually read last year’s IPCC report. “Climate change is still seen as distant and undefined,” he said, adding that there was a wealth of information in that report that should spur immediate action. Significantly more people will be affected by rising sea level, 20-30 percent of assessed species could become extinct, health risks will increase in the poorest countries and small islands will be extremely vulnerable, he said. Most of the growth in greenhouse gases, he reminded the participants, has taken place since 1970, and that the world’s record on mitigation is “weak. "
4 p.m.--So what is supposed to happen in Poznan? Poznan, after all, is the mid-point of the process that started in Bali last year and that will finish in Copenhagen next December. There was real drama in Bali, where the Bali Road Map was agreed to after an additional day of intense negotiations. No one is forecasting such a conclusion for Poznan, but most agree that what happens here will profoundly impact the results next year.
For starters, negotiators here will be looking at an 82-page document that may well serve as the basis for the Copenhagen outcome. This document is a distillation of 715 pages of proposals made by the various parties to the Convention, and it is likely that it will shrink considerably yet. And then there is the idea of a "long-term vision," a statement that Ministers will discuss on how they see the world addressing the problem of climate change. There are also hopes that negotiators will reach some decisions that can be put in place right away, such as putting a fund to help developing countries cope with the impacts of climate change into operation as soon as possible.
Financing for climate change action is a major concern. Yvo de Boer, who heads the Climate Change Convention, says "this is not the time to go to finance ministers." He sees a system that relies heavily on private resources in order to make addressing climate change self-financing. This system borrows from and expands the use of the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism.
No one is expecting that decisions here in Poznan will come easily. As de Boer notes, the financial crisis will have a huge impact. And while some may see a silver lining as emissions may be reduced at a time of lower economic activity, de Boer is mindful that it is the poorest of the poor will suffer the most. And lower oil costs, he notes, will provide less incentive to invest in renewable energies such as solar and wind energy.
