According to the dictionary a plenary is the following:
Plenary
adj.
Complete in all respects; unlimited or full: a diplomat with plenary powers.
Fully attended by all qualified members: a plenary session of the council.
To be honest, this doesn’t make any sense seeing what I saw today. A couple of people sitting in one big room talking about documents with wonderful titles such as FCCC/CP/2009/4, honestly, it’s hard to make sense of. But after silly discussions about the logo have past and the ‘fun’ stuff is over the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (COP15) gets really serious.
Today a country called Tuvalu made a curious move. After having discussed the above mentioned document, a proposal for an additional document to the Kyoto protocol, the small island state managed to somehow get the session of COP suspended. In theory this sounds like an event that would have stopped the talks continuing. In practice the agenda point was suspended and the negotiations continued with the next agenda point.
Yet what happened over the next few hours can only be described as a movement that arose on the spot. Tuvalu gained massive support from NGOs because of its radical proposal to fight climate change. At 3PM, as COP went back into session protests were started by several NGOs. The blame, however much people would like, cannot be placed with the youth. The as of now unidentified NGOs had made banners beforehand for which the youth simply does not have the resources. Nevertheless, the group of adults was joined by youth present and UN security had to intervene to allow parties to access the plenary.
Sadly this meant that all NGOs were no longer allowed to enter the plenary to observe. Those already present were allowed to remain seated. The entire conference, however, was clearly in an uproar about the event and media was buzzing everywhere, eager to report.
A day that I spend mostly in the plenary ended up being extremely interesting. Despite many confusing factors the day seemed, personally, more productive than any day here so far.
Let’s hope parties are not afraid to speak up like Tuvalu today. The size of a country doesn’t have to matter to make an impact on a day at COP. Let’s just hope the impacts reaches further than that.
