G77 Suspend COP15 Talks: "These Negotiations Are A Joke."

Members of the African civil society delegations held a protest in the main hall of the COP15 summit today to support their negotiators' decision to hold up the climate summit talks, temporarily suspending the conference, over the sidelining of the Kyoto Protocol discussions, that were proceeding in parallel to the Long-Term Cooperative Action (LCA) talks in which the US is participating.

"Nothing is being offered by the rich countries," said Negusu Aklilu of Ethiopia's Forum For Environment, "it's just a joke. Climate change is not a joke in Africa, but these negotiations are a joke."

"As we speak now, [Kyoto] is the only binding agreement that we have," said Aklilu. He reiterated the stance that there needed to be a binding agreement, saying that wealthy nations were refusing to engage and were deep in a "politically motivated, 'after you' syndrome."

Aklilu said he'd like decisions to be science-based, and that while a 40% reduction by 2020 is now being discussed, new information from the IPCC suggests limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius would be necessary to save coastal Africa.

And then there's the question of mitigation and adaptation aid.

Going into more detail over something I've heard from several NGO representatives, Aklilu explained that much of the aid being discussed goes back to 1992 aid agreements that called for an ongoing commitment from wealthy nations of 0.7% of GDP. Not only have developed nations not generally kept this pledge, they would now like to repackage the same commitment as climate aid.

Aklilu said they wanted additional aid because climate change was an additional burden on their countries.

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