President Obama and Ben discuss the menu of options before negotiators at the climate talks in Copenhagen. Photo courtesy the Adopt-a-Negotiator program.

For a big chunk of the past year, American enviro-writer Ben Jervey has been "tracking" U.S. climate treaty negotiators. "If you look at the average US climate activist, they wouldn't really have a sense of what the US position is here," Jervey said. "We're trying to give them that information."

Over the past 18 years of international climate talks, the United Nations process has become hidden behind a wall of impenetrable jargon, as well as the often bewildering behavior of professional diplomats.

This is why the “Adopt-a-Negotiator” program sponsored 13 “trackers” over the past year from as many countries — including Brazil, Canada, China, India, and the United States — to follow the key national delegations, and then report back about their positions and actions during climate treaty meetings.

President Obama and Ben discuss the menu of options before negotiators at the climate talks in Copenhagen. Photo courtesy the Adopt-a-Negotiator program.

“We try to serve as a portal, to convey what our negotiators are doing in the talks to concerned citizenry back home,” US tracker Ben Jervey told me.

I caught up with Ben, a 30-year-old environmental writer and editor from Brooklyn, NY, for a brief interview about how and why he tracks the U.S. delegation. We talked on December 18, during what turned out to be the ultimate evening of the Copenhagen talks.

(Full disclosure: Ben and I both write for New York-based OnEarth Magazine. Ben was working on the night of this interview out of the Fresh Air Centre in central Copenhagen, a non-profit media center that sponsored me for my U.N. press credential. [[Thank you.]] And several years ago I was editor to Ben’s contributor for the now-defunct blog Worldchanging NYC. )

Emily Gertz: What, exactly, do the negotiator trackers do?

Ben Jervey: Our job is to really follow these talks, from the June talks in Bonn, through Bangkok, Barcelona, and now here in Copenhagen.

We attend the meetings, we get to know our negotiators. We help communicate back to the civil society base at home [on] where our countries respective positions stand.

EG: What has that meant on the ground here in Copenhagen?

BJ: How that works practically is, I spend a lot of time following the statements and comments and interventions of Jonathan Pershing, the lead negotiator for the United States.

He used to work at World Resources Institute, and interestingly was one of the lead authors of the very chapter of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report that famously declared that developed nations needed to cut their emissions 25-40 percent by 2020. Something that the position that he’s pushing here in Copenhagen falls far short of. So there is a difficult paradox there.

EG: What is a typical day for a negotiator tracker?

BJ: A typical day, you come to the Bella Center, the conference center, pick up the morning program, and try to figure out which meetings are going to be important.

You’ll sit in a plenary or a contact group meeting, wait for the US to speak up, or for anything to be said that would affect the US position. Go to the press briefings and the NGO briefings. Try to get some time in the hallway with key members of the State Department’s delegation, and try to gather whatever sort of intelligence we can.

And at the end of the day, try to write it up into something that makes sense to normal people who don’t speak this UNFCCC [United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change] language.

EG: Is the delegation aware it’s being tracked?

BJ: Yes, absolutely. I have a pretty transparent and open relationship with the delegation, and they’re aware of my project. I know that they check it out. I’m not sure if Pershing checks it every day, with his [New York] Times headlines, but there are people in the delegation who have made a lot of comments on it.

They might actually use it as some sort of barometer of civil society opinion, and where the concerned, activist advocate space might stand.

EG: How has tracking affected the work of the negotiators?

BJ: I’ve got to be honest and say I don’t think it affects the negotiators very much. They are under pretty clear mandates from the State Department; I think the position that they’re supposed to be negotiating around is set pretty firmly.

And as we’ve seen in the past several days, most of the stickiest issues in these talks are above the level of State Department negotiators. The crucial tripping points that we haven’t solved, those are heads-of-state decisions.

By all accounts the negotiators themselves don’t have a lot to do today. [Because Friday was the day the heads-of-state took over the negotiations among themselves. -- Emily]

EG: So if the reality is that tracking doesn’t have a big impact on what the negotiators do, what’s the goal?

BJ: I would really like people back home who care about climate change, or consider themselves climate change advocates, to better understand what’s happening here.

If you look at the average US climate activist, they wouldn’t really have a sense of what the US position is here. We’re trying to give them that information.

EG: So you’ve gotten to know the people on the delegation. Does that provide you with inside information as things happen?

BJ: They speak very candidly with me. If there’s any real type of inside access information, I can get a head’s up to what meeting might be really important that day.

EG: Have you gotten paid to do this?

BJ: It has technically been a volunteer gig. We have been flown here and put up, and have a per diem. And the access is enormously valuable, obviously.

EG: You’ve had to take a lot of time out from making money, and your personal life. Has it been worth it?

BJ: Yeah, definitely. It was a conscious decision. I felt the need to be more directly involved with this process. Considering the potential importance of these Copenhagen meetings, I was willing to sacrifice to work on it.

EG: It’s safe to assume that whatever comes out of here is going to require another meeting next year, maybe more than one. Will you continue to participate as a tracker?

BJ: To be determined. The fate of the TckTckTck campaign and the GCCA [Global Campaign for Climate Action] at large is all up in the air right now, as is this tracker program.

We had certainly hoped that this would be the end game. But I don’t think anyone was so naive as to think the battle would be completely over.

So we will circle back with each other in January, and figure out where we go from there.

Still, the Accord marks the first time that developed countries agreed to specific amounts of short-term and long-term finance to support developing countries in their efforts to build up their resilience (or adapt) to climate change, and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

A group of developed countries and emerging economies agreed to a “Copenhagen Accord” in the final hours of COP 15 late last week. While the deal is far from what’s necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change, it signifies a step in the right direction as world leaders came together in an unprecedented effort to address this global crisis. Millions of people in the US and around the world mobilized for climate action during the talks. Their hopes will continue to drive this process forward.

The Accord was disappointing in that it is only a political agreement; as it stands now, countries will not be required by international law to meet their emissions reduction targets and finance commitments. In the coming year, it will be critical that the US work with the rest of the world to establish a more comprehensive, legally-binding treaty that includes all nations as signatories. In addition, some developing countries did not support the Accord, which makes the outcome of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long Term Cooperative Action (AWG-LCA) — the negotiating track that was established two years ago in Bali to reach a fair and equitable long-term climate agreement — that much more crucial.

Still, the Accord marks the first time that developed countries agreed to specific amounts of short-term and long-term finance to support developing countries in their efforts to build up their resilience (or adapt) to climate change, and reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. In the 2010-2012 timeframe, $30 billion will be delivered to developing countries, with adaptation funding prioritized for the most vulnerable developing countries. Developed countries also set a collective goal of mobilizing $100 billion per year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries.

These dollar amounts provide a foundation from which we must build to reach more meaningful and concrete commitments from developed countries. But there are some areas that need further clarity. In its current form, the agreement does not clearly state how much money each country will contribute, how the money will be generated, and how the money will be delivered to the most vulnerable people. There is a particular need to ensure that money offered thus far does not come from existing foreign aid commitments that have been established to support essential services for the world’s poor people, such as food, water, and medical care.

We must now turn our attention to US climate legislation where we will build on the momentum for climate action generated in Copenhagen. The US Senate must strengthen and deliver on the commitments President Obama made in Copenhagen; they must provide the administration with a clear mandate to reach a stronger, legally-binding deal. The climate and energy bill that passed the House of Representatives in June 2009 included funding from the sale of emissions allowances to provide resources for international adaptation, international clean energy technology, and reduced deforestation programs. The resources generated provide a good start, but more is needed in the Senate and there is no time to waste.

The Senate’s top-priority must be to pass climate legislation in early 2010 that includes aggressive emissions reduction commitments and generates funding for those communities around the world, which have done the least to cause climate change, but which are already suffering the most from its impacts.

Oxfam will work with our supporters in 2010 to make climate legislation the top priority in the US Senate; we will push the Obama administration to continue to prioritize climate change and to build upon the work started in Copenhagen. The job is not yet done.

Heather Coleman is a senior policy adviser for Oxfam America.

"The US and other countries made progress by saying that financing for developing countries to weather climate impacts and adopt low-carbon development should be $100 billion a year. But it is still unclear how this money will be generated and delivered to the most vulnerable people."

With news breaking that a climate deal has been reached in Copenhagen, Oxfam America released the following statement: The framework unveiled in Copenhagen today pulled us back from the brink, said international organization Oxfam America. David Waskow, climate change program director for Oxfam America, said: "This political agreement must be the floor and not the ceiling. We must now urgently get back to the table and finally make the hard decisions needed to deliver a fair, ambitious and binding climate deal." "Millions of people in the US and around the world have mobilized for climate action. Their hopes must drive this process." "The US and other countries made progress by saying that financing for developing countries to weather climate impacts and adopt low-carbon development should be $100 billion a year. But it is still unclear how this money will be generated and delivered to the most vulnerable people."

Photos: Emily Gertz

"...in your hands, you hold our future, our life."

People are looking weary around the conference center at 9:00 pm, but the mood feels pretty even. I think the reason is that if the heads of state are still confabbing, which they are, it means that the 2009 climate talks have yet to crash and burn completely.

In the main hall, I caught sight of youth activist Christina Ora, from the Solomon Islands, being interviewed for TV. My very first report here from Copenhagen, the weekend before the climate talks began, covered my conversation with Ora at Council of Youth.

Ora is still energetic and articulate two weeks later, despite knowing that the deal likely to emerge here won’t meet the key demand of small island nations. The small island countries want the industrialized nations to hold mean global temperature growth below 1.5 degrees Centigrade by 2010, a level more likely to stave off catastrophic sea level rise, instead of the 2 degrees C target that they’ve established over the course of this year.

It’s not clear that this number will make it into the final draft of the “Copenhagen accord.”

Ora described to me what she’s been doing at the climate talks, how she feels now, and what she plans to do next. She’s not giving up on attaining climate justice: the preservation of her home, and help with adapting to the inescapable impacts of global warming.

Ora has a message for “the top people with the power,” the negotiators, ambassadors, and heads of state carving out a new climate treaty:

“If you happen to be reading or hearing this, we wish for you to listen to the voice of Pacific Islanders, to listen to the vulnerable countries. Because in your hands, you hold our future, our life.”

About President Obama, still present in the building at this writing, Ora said that if he happened to walk by, she’d try to get him to stop and sit with her for a cup of coffee. I’m sure that even with the rock star president, teenage Ora would bring her impressively well-spoken self to bear and give Obama something to think about during the remainder of these negotiations.

Photo: Ainhoa Goma/Oxfam International

Last night the Oxfam "big heads" arrived on the scene in Copenhagen to remind world leaders of the importance of negotiating a fair, ambitious, and binding global deal.

Photo: Ainhoa Goma/Oxfam International

Last night the Oxfam “big heads” (last seen playing football at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh) arrived on the scene in Copenhagen to remind world leaders of the importance of negotiating a fair, ambitious, and binding global deal.

Dressed as President Obama and other world leaders, the Oxfam campaigners stood in line as though waiting to have their mug shots taken. Each held a sign reading “History will judge me”–a reminder that the actions they take today will carry far-reaching consequences.

Check out the photo slideshow below: