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I was reading an article in yesterday’s Guardian about the pending climate brouhaha in Copenhagen. It dealt chiefly with how unfair the “show” is and how they will spend endless hours debating even the minutest points in what appears to be a war of attrition. The richer you are, the more people you can throw at the negotations and thus wear your opponents down. Despite the topics being global and not bound by our arbitrary borders the article leaves me with the impression that all the rich nations are trying to dodge as much responsibility as possible.

But that is not what this was to be about. Reading about the various levels of representation got me thinking. Is there a way of doing this that levels the playing field and gives even the poorest of nations a voice? It seems blatantly unfair that we (in a Western sense) can dominate and control the entire negotiations because we can afford to. Where is the morality of letting those affected get a say too?

My first idea was just to give everyone the same amount of negotiators. Say 10 pr. nation. In one fell swoop you eliminate the “more money, more people” aspect. But it immediately also raises other points of representation. Is it fair that a 1+ billion Chinese are represented by the same amount of people as 5,5 million Danes? Perhaps not. At the same time many developing nations struggle to even send two people so they would still be left high and dry (or rather low and wet if we’re to believe science).  While equal numbers might seem a leveller you still then have to contend with the difference in behind-the-scenes resources and the level of education of the negotiators.

My second idea was to make a matched system instead. Everyone is free to bring as many negotiators as they like. But for every person you bring to negotiate or act as behind-the-scenes specialist you have to bring another one which you lend free of charge to the poorest or least represented nations to help them get a fair chance in the proceedings. In this way the 450 European delegates would be matched by 450 helping the 50-odd nations who can only send one or two people (and those who can’t even afford to send one).

There are obvious pitfalls in this idea. Not least about where people’s loyalties lie. Can you demand that they represent another nation than their own and can they do it fairly? How do you avoid bias? Will you be able to claim fair proceedings in this way?

In the long term there is an alternative. We pay for their education. Have the Maldivians represent themselves, but their education and expenses is paid for by one of the rich nations in a matched system. That way you might minimize the problem of representation and loyalties but the downside is that it is going to take many years before the first “bunch” is ready to be cast out into the sea of diplomatic negotiations.

Using the above system you could then turn the whole concept on it’s head and decide that the nations most affected by climate change got the most negotiators. I can think of several “fair” additions to this system, but the problem is, that because everybody is looking out for themselves you risk that major players withdraw from the negotiations because they loose control and thereby become vulnerable to changes being wrought upon them rather than dictated by them.

Another very important point the article raises is about language. All the negotiations are in English which is fine for the US, UK, Canada and most of the major European countries. Not so for the poorest nations for whom two people might be all they can muster and English might be their second or third language – again it conveys an unfair advantage on the rich. Here there is a fairly straightforward solution. Negotiations must be held in a “neutral” language. Why not decree that it has to be in Esperanto (or Klingon for that matter)? If we choose Esperanto it will mean that nobody has a language advantage (once everybody has learnt Esperanto) and puts them at an equal disadvantage (for a while at least).

The easiest solution to it all is obviously that we all come together as one world and start thinking about surviving as a species rather than who can wangle the biggest CO2 quotas and dodge the most responsibility in the name of “progress” and “economics”. That scenario is unfortunately best left to the more starry eyed sci-fi writers and dreamers.

But maybe a way forward could be a combination of the matched negotiators and “neutral” language. It is an idea, a good one methinks. I am sure that it can be improved though. Who is with me? Who wants to help improve my idea?

Happy Remembrance Day,

Alex.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 8th, 2009 at 11:45 and is filed under current affairs, deep thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.