Dear all,

Everybody who works for WWF will have experienced this. You meet a stranger
and one of the first questions is about what you do for a living. “I am
working for WWF”, you answer, and you will often get the same reaction.
“Ah, the World Wrestling Federation”, says the stranger, either being
serious, or with a bit of irony in his voice, looking at you and not really
finding the match.

It’s not that we are not well known, on the contrary. But the athletes with
their warrior names and funny costumes are also well known, and that’s how
a panda is sometimes mistaken for a wrestler.

Usually one would think that there can hardly be two professions that
differ more than wrestler and environmentalist. But somehow the pandas in
Copenhagen have all become wrestlers over the last few days. We are
wrestling with negotiating texts, with square brackets, with stubborn
negotiators, with a lack of sleep, or with a cold, or flu.

After two weeks in the Bella Center, we cannot help but admit that it’s a
bit exhausting.

However, like every good wrestler we are persistent, have a strong will to
win, know all the good tricks, and try to make the right moves.

Today it was a whole new game for us. Civil society participation is
extremely restricted the last two days of the Conference, and with a much
smaller team we first felt a bit short-handed, outnumbered by the army of
negotiators that did not have to accept cuts in badges and access
limitations.

The “work in” action the previous night, where we decided to stay and work
because that’s what we’re here for, hadn’t really worked out: late at night
the security cleared the building and expelled the brave team members that
tried to defy the access rules by just staying inside instead of leaving.
We still have a strong team of lobbyists and campaigners in the Bella
Center, but those inside miss those outside, and the other way round.

But soon we got used to the new way of working, when communication channels
between the Bella Center team and those working from office space kindly
provided by companies like Dell and Ericsson were established. Via email
and phone calls, the team outside stood firmly by the side of those
fighting inside. There was a nice work share going, for example between the
campaigners at the Ericsson office, who drafted our press releases, and
those remaining inside the Bella Center, who pitched them to media.

If you work well together as a team, you quickly loose the feeling of being
short-handed.

Upon arrival in the early morning hours whether to Dell or Ericsson or the
Bella Center, we also had to wrestle with serious frustrations. The Danish
Presidency has really not shown much talent in facilitating these crucial
negotiations, and as a result the whole process was in shambles when we
arrived.

Danish morning papers carried headlines saying the Danish government had
already given up, and media in other countries quoted pessimistic ministers
who also didn’t sound like they’d still believed in a success. Had
Copenhagen already failed before it was really over?

When COP President Rasmussen, the Danish Prime Minister, explained the
outcome of lengthy overnight consultations and outlined the next steps in
Thursday’s opening plenary, it felt for a second like everything could fall
apart. Rasmussen presented his plan for a way forward, asked for objections
and waited a second, before he rushed into the next agenda item.

For a moment it looked like there was agreement, and the talks could
continue smoothly as proposed. Only for a moment, however, because then the
Sudanese G77 chair Lumumba asked for the floor.

The CCTV screen switched to Connie Hedegaard, the Danish minister and
previous COP President, who had been leading the consultations over night.
As if she couldn’t believe that Lumumba would object again, she covered her
face with her hands and shook her head. Over the past two weeks Lumumba,
the Africa Group and the G77 had rejected many Danish plans and proposals –
a true wrestlemania.

It seemed like the Danes trusted their consultation process and the
resulting proposal this time, they had apparently expected that Lumumba
would be on board. And he was, but only after an intense little dialogue
with Rasmussen, who confirmed what Lumumba needed to hear.

As a result, the talks continued on both the LCA and the Kyoto track, even
though Danish newspapers had already declared them dead. After that we saw
a long day of negotiations at delegate and minister level, in almost all
the different areas, and organized in a range of informals and contact
groups.

Good to see negotiators talk about the substance of the future agreement
rather than getting stuck in process discussions. Worrying to see, however,
that the spirit remained bad.

After they had already wrestled with their texts without much success
during the first week, today the same negotiators showed the same
helplessness while discussing the same texts. Apart from a few exceptions,
it felt like they were going nowhere and would create a result that’s even
worse rather than better. This confirmed what we have known for long now:
more time doesn’t necessarily mean more progress in the UNFCCC process.
Game changers have to come from outside the climate talks, and only leaders
– not bureaucrats and experts – have the power to deliver them.

Yes, leaders, like Hillary Clinton. The US Foreign Secretary  paid a
surprise visit to Copenhagen, and delivered a much needed surprise to the
flagging talks. In her morning speech, she announced the US would support a
global fund of $100 billion by 2020, for long term finance support for
mitigation and adaptation in developing countries. This was a totally
unexpected move, and stood in sharp contrast to the rather unhelpful
strategies applied by the US throughout the two weeks.

Suddenly a big new contribution to the global effort was on the table, the
stuff that creates a dynamic and forces others to react.

Sure, like in other cases where countries put forward vague finance
pledges, we have to wait and see how much money the US is willing to
contribute to the fund, where the cash is supposed to come from, and how to
govern and distribute it in the end. But today’s announcement is a start,
and an important boost for the much needed agreement on long-term funding
that we want to get from Copenhagen.

It didn’t take long until the first reactions came in: the Chinese suddenly
expressed increased flexibility in the area of transparency when it comes
to accounting of mitigation efforts in developing countries. And rumor has
is that the EU wants to increase its mid-term emission reduction target,
from 20% cuts against 1990 levels by 2020 to then 30%. These moves are
clearly connected.

Many European Heads of States are already in town, and tonight they are
sitting together over a fancy dinner to come to a joint position. The
desert on the menu could be very special: a 30% target.

This would be the domino effect we mentioned yesterday. No, we will not get
the fully fledged, fair and ambitious legally binding treaty we need from
this conference. But yes, a positive dynamic like this can bring us much
closer to it, and even though we have no time to lose and every delay will
cost lives and jobs, laying a strong foundation is better than being
completely empty-handed.

Now, back to the wrestlers! “No”, we usually answer, “it’s the other WWF,
the World Wide Fund for Nature.” Those who care about the environment often
get excited and won’t let you go before you have told them a bit more.
Those who are more interested in wrestling, however, usually find a quick
reason to walk off. To be honest, they don’t seem to know anything about
the wrestling skills of angry pandas.

And so the fight continues, another day, or two.

Kim & Christian

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Kim Carstensen
Leader, Global Climate Initiative
WWF International