NSA shennanigans

Snowden revelations of NSA 

spying on Copenhagen 

climate talks spark anger

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden show NSA kept US negotiators abreast of their rivals' positions at 2009 summit

the Guardian,

30 January, 2014

Developing countries have reacted angrily to revelations that the United States spied on other governments at the Copenhagen climate summit in 2009.

Documents leaked by Edward Snowden show how the US National Security Agency (NSA) monitored communication between key countries before and during the conference to give their negotiators advance information about other positions at the high-profile meeting where world leaders including Barack Obama, Gordon Brown and Angela Merkel failed to agree to a strong deal on climate change.

Jairam Ramesh, the then Indian environment minister and a key player in the talks that involved 192 countries and 110 heads of state, said: "Why the hell did they do this and at the end of this, what did they get out of Copenhagen? They got some outcome but certainly not the outcome they wanted. It was completely silly of them. First of all, they didn't get what they wanted. With all their hi-tech gizmos and all their snooping, ultimately the Basic countries [Brazil, South Africa, India and China] bailed Obama out. With all their snooping what did they get?"

Martin Khor, an adviser to developing countries at the summit and director of the South Centre thinktank, said: "Would you play poker with someone who can see your cards? Spying on one another like this is absolutely not on. When someone has an upper hand is very disconcerting. There should be an assurance in negotiations like this that powerful players are not going to gain undue advantage with technological surveillance.

"For negotiations as complex as these we need maximum goodwill and trust. It is absolutely critical. If there is anything that prevents a level playing field, that stops negotiations being held on equal grounds. It disrupts the talks," he said.

The NSA would keep US negotiators abreast of their rivals' positions, the document says. "Leaders and negotiating teams from around the world will undoubtedly be engaging in intense last-minute policy formulating; at the same time, they will be holding sidebar discussions with their counterparts, details of which are of great interest to our policymakers … Signals intelligence will undoubtedly play a significant role in keeping our negotiators as well informed as possible throughout the negotiations," it reads.

The document shows the NSA had provided advance details of the Danish plan to "rescue" the talks should they founder, and also had learned of China's efforts to coordinate its position with India before the conference.

The talks – which ended in disarray after the US, working with a small group of 25 countries, tried to ram through an agreement that other developing countries mostly rejected – were marked by subterfuge, passion and chaos.

Members of the Danish negotiating team told the Danish newspaper Information that both the US and Chinese delegations were "peculiarly well-informed" about closed-door discussions. "They simply sat back, just as we had feared they would if they knew about our document," one source told Information.

British negotiators at the summit declined to say whether their negotiating positions had been informed by US intelligence. "It is a longstanding policy that we do not comment on intelligence matters," said a spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change, the UK government department that led the negotiations in Copenhagen.

Ed Miliband, who as energy secretary led the political negotiations for Britain, declined to comment. However, at the time, he was furious that the Danish text which the US had received advance information about,had been leaked to the Guardian.

But one key negotiator for the G77 group of 132 developing countries, who asked not to be named, said at the time that he strongly believed that the US was eavesdropping on his meetings and would only talk in a secure back room that he thought was not bugged. "I was well aware that they seemed to know what our position was before we did," he told the Guardian.

But Ramesh said that he had no idea that the US was spying on him. "I didn't get a sense that I was being followed. I didn't get a sense that my phones were tapped," he said.

Civil society groups from around the world condemned the US. "The UN climate talks are supposed to be about building trust – that's been under threat for years because of the US backward position on climate action – these revelations will only crack that trust further," said Meena Raman, negotiations expert from the Malaysian-based Third World Network.

"Fighting climate change is a global struggle, and these revelations clearly show that the US government is more interested in crassly protecting a few vested interests," said Brandon Wu, senior policy analyst with development organisation ActionAid in the United States.

US climate activist and founder of 350.org, Bill McKibben, called the spying revelations "insane and disgusting".

US diplomatic cables made public by WikiLeaks in 2010 showed that the CIA had sought intelligence from UN diplomats about the negotiations in advance of the summit, and Snowden documents published last year revealed the US had spied on Indonesia at the Bali climate summit in 2007.

Climate change talks

It says a lot that there was nothing in the media I have been scanning to tell me these talks were going on

Bonn climate talks end in discord and disappointment

Climate crisis is not caused by lack of options and solutions, but lack of political action, says Greenpeace spokeswoman

the Guardian,

25 May, 2012

The latest round of international climate change talks finished on Friday in discord and disappointment, with some participants concerned that important progress made last year was being unpicked.

At the talks, countries were supposed to set out a workplan on negotiations that should result in a new global climate treaty, to be drafted by the end of 2015 and to come into force in 2020. But participants told the Guardian they were downbeat, disappointed and frustrated that the decision to work on a new treaty – reached after marathon late-running talks last December in Durban – was being questioned.

China and India, both rapidly growing economies with an increasing share of global emissions, have tried to delay talks on such a treaty. Instead of a workplan for the next three years to achieve the objective of a new pact, governments have only managed to draw up a partial agenda. "It's incredibly frustrating to have achieved so little," said one developed country participant. "We're stepping backwards, not forwards."

Connie Hedegaard, the EU climate chief, said: "The world cannot afford that a few want to backtrack from what was agreed in Durban only five months ago. Durban was – and is – a delicately balanced package where all elements must be delivered at the same pace. It is not a pick and choose menu. It is very worrisome that attempts to backtrack have been so obvious and time-consuming in the Bonn talks over the last two weeks."

There was also little progress on the key issue of the financing by rich countries of actions in the developing world. Meeting in Bonn, negotiators and officials from around the world haggled over the set-up of a 'Green Climate Fund' that would channel cash from the developed world to poorer countries, to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the effects of climate change.

However, they agreed much of the detail that will be needed to extend the Kyoto protocol – currently the world's only legally binding treaty on emissions cuts – beyond 2012 when its current provisions expire. That extension should be finalised at a conference in Doha, Qatar, this November – but may not be if the EU does not see sufficient progress in negotiations on the proposed new post-2020 treaty.

Chrisiana Figueres, the top climate change official at the United Nations, who presided over the two weeks of talks, said: "Work at this session has been productive. Countries can now press on to ensure elements are in place to adopt the Doha amendment to the Kyoto protocol. I am pleased to say that the Bonn meeting produced more clarity on the protocols's technical and legal details and options to enable a smooth transition between the two commitment periods of the protocol."

However, the only major developed countries that have agreed to continue the Kyoto protocol are those of the European Union. Canada and Japan have dropped out, and the US never ratified the 1997 accord.

The fortnight-long talks in Bonn followed an unexpected last-ditch agreement in December at a meeting in Durban, when countries resolved to spend the next three to four years thrashing out the terms of a new global treaty on climate change and emissions cuts, which would come into force from 2020. Such a treaty would follow on from the Kyoto protocol and from the Copenhagen pledges made at a 2009 summit, in which both developed and developing countries agreed for the first time jointly to curb emissions by 2020. Those pledges do not have the legal force of a full treaty, however, and have been shown in a variety of studies to be inadequate to stave off dangerous levels of climate change.

One of the main tasks for the fortnight-long meeting in Bonn was to flesh out a programme of work towards a new post-2020 treaty. That has been partially achieved, but participants said more needed to be done to draft a clear negotiating timetable. The last major international treaty on the climate that had full legal force - the Kyoto protocol - took five years to negotiate, so the current round of talks will be on a tight deadline if they are to finish in a fully drafted agreement by the end of 2015, as planned.

Countries also discussed at Bonn whether they should try to cut emissions faster than currently planned within the next eight years. That question will be discussed further in the November talks. Green groups were pleased that the possibility of strengthening the 2020 targets was still on the table. However, some participants worried that it could prove a distraction to the difficult task of crafting a whole new post-2020 treaty by 2015.

Celine Charveriat, advocacy and campaigns director at Oxfam, said: "No progress was made to deliver the financial support that the world's poorest and most vulnerable need to deal with the growing impacts of climate change. It is now vital that, at the next UN climate summit in Qatar in November, rich countries commit to an initial US$10-15bn to the Green Climate Fund between 2013 and 2015, as part of a broader financial package.

"At a time when ambitious emission reductions are more urgent than ever, developed countries in Bonn made no progress to close the gap between current climate targets and what is required to avoid the worst of climate change. Developed countries must improve on their current low level of ambition and accept higher reduction targets no later than at the Qatar summit."

Tove Maria Ryding, coordinator for climate policy at Greenpeace International, said: "Here in Bonn we've clearly seen that the climate crisis is not caused by lack of options and solutions, but lack of political action. It's absurd to watch governments sit and point fingers and fight like little kids while the scientists explain about the terrifying impacts of climate change and the fact that we have all the technology we need to solve the problem while creating new green jobs."