FRIDAY 7 DECEMBER
The final hours—Today is Friday, a day off for many Qataris and the streets were quiet. Inside the Conference Center, it was also unusually quiet as many of the 12,000 participants had started to leave. The main negotiating rooms, however, were packed, with people straining to figure out how the negotiations will end. Actually, it’s hard to know which hours will be the final hours and the big game, for those still left here, is when the Conference will conclude. The prognosis is for the meeting to end sometime Saturday morning. But the clean-up has begun and parts of the Conference are being dismantled, even as talks continue.
Singing for action—The major landmark in the Qatar National Conference Center is an enormous sculpture of a spider. It is the landmark to meet people and it figures as a backdrop in many interviews. Today it was the focal point a large gathering that was called for on Twitter. It was a large sing-in—almost all the NGOs in the building gathered to sing for the climate, a four-stanza song that implores people “to build a better future” and start right now.
Some more odds and ends—The Dominican Republic announced it commitment on climate change today. It is committing itself to reducing its emissions from 2010 levels by 25 per cent by 2030…At last year’s climate conference in Durban, 2,096,000 sheets of paper were used through the first nine days. As of Day 9 in Doha, only 162,695 sheets were used, a saving of 1,933,305 sheets, or a 92.2 decrease. This is due to PaperSmart, a programme by the UN designed to reduce waste….Lord Monckton was “debadged” after his stunt and was escorted from the Conference Center. He is banned from climate conferences henceforth.
Protesting Inaction—It's no secret that there are many people who believe that the climate negotiations are going too slowly. Some of those voices are official--from heads of state and ministers attending the conference--and many come from the vibrant NGO community including many youth participants. In Doha, youth staged protests in many forms. They stood silently along the peoplemovers that brought people into the conference hall, protesting that their voices were not being heard. The staged song and dance routines outside the negotiating rooms and they gathered under the enormous spider sculpture to sing a song for climate action. They marched along the Doha harbor and they gave out the "Fossil of the Day" award to the countries they felt were hindering progress in the negotiations. And they will be back.
