Bonn - MRV- The Umbrella group has put forward a proposal on Measuring, Reporting and Verification for developing countries, which involved lots of demands for developing countries and no talk of developed country compliance. So the BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, China, India) countries are all up in arms and throwing their toys out of the cot They then, in turn, annoyed the US by putting Copenhagen language into square brackets (who would have thought grammar could be so controversial). Apparently the US are the main blockers of progress when it comes to compliance within developed countries- most other developed countries are willing to support more compliance measures.

At the bottom I will include the YOUNGO Bonn update if you want more info.

What else is going on in the world?

- New Zealand has released its draft energy stategy, which it will be consulting on. Theres a few good points here about whats wrong with it.

- China is piloting a carbon trading scheme!

- Here is a good article about linking science in with politics.

- A massive chunk of arctic glacier in Greenland has broken off……. oh dear.

- Here is an opinion piece about the dire nature of where we are at globally - a tad depressing. Interestingly, the writer cites geo-engineering as the only workable solution at this point to the climate crisis, which is refuted in this next article:

- Here is a really interesting article link Paul forwarded me about the Zapatistas and what they have to teach us about the climate crisis. Its also a pretty good explanation of what climate justice means to a lot of people.

YOUNGO Bonn Update
As yesterday the YOUNGO met for our daily morning meeting and I got to
learn new names since more of us had arrived the talks. After the
meeting Greenpeace gave some of us a work shop on how to do actioning,
so there will be one in the following days. Sébastian and Julie also
met the secreterat today.

Just after the morning meeting I attended AWG-LCA (Convention-track)
contact group on item 3 (item 3 = everything). The meeting was more
than one our delayed and it was most of the time allocated on
formalities and also talking about something happening at one of the
late meetings yesterday. The issue was lack of transparency. So, seen
together with the lack of progress yesterday (which Seb P. wrote
about), it has been a rather slow start for the negotiations. The
contact group ended on establishing four drafting groups, not open for
observers, which is going to look closer to different parts of the
text prepared by the chair. This groups are focusing on (1) shared
vision, (2) mitigation, (3) climate change adaptation and (4) a group
looking on issues conserning finance, transfer of technology and
capasity building.

At the afternoon I attended two of the AWG-KP (Kyoto-track) informal
contact groups, open to observers. The ones on Annex 1 (rich countries-
ish) parties’ emission redutions and the one on legal matters. The
first one didn’t, in my wiev, highlight any new issues or come to new
conclusions. The second one, the one on legal issues, discussed the
possibility of a gap beween the first and the second commitment period
of the Kyoto-protocol. The first period is ending at the end of 2012.
There is a potential that a possible gap (some parties, including the
EU, are saying that this is not an issues worth negotiation since our
overall target is to aviod a gap) can have effects on the trading
shemes of the protcol, and also that rich counties for a certain
period can operate without emission targets. This group is going focus
on the legal mattes on how to aviod such issues. The challenge is that
a second commitment period, and other changes of the protocol in
relation to this (and in general), need to be ratified by 75 % of the
parties. This is a process taking place. Most of the time today was
used on presentation by this paper by the secreteriat and by questions
regarding the document. The negotiating of this text will start
tomorrow. Tomorrow the contact group on LULUCF, land use and forests
in Annex 1 countries, will start as well.

Jon and I are meeting the Norwegian delegation tomorrow, so if you
have things that you want us to forward please send me an e-mail or
comment.

Hepp.
Frikk and Jon, Changemaker Norway.