NGOs suspicious of 'green room' diplomacy at climate talks

Meena Raman of the Third World Network said that key issues such as mitigation targets were being discussed in these informal sessions, while more technical aspects such as a "Monitoring Reporting and Verification" were being left for the official channels.

"Text based negotiations are not happening and you have other kinds of forums that are taking place," said Raman, referring to the negotiating texts that delegates are supposed to follow. "This is really non-transparent."

Delegates here, however, said that there was nothing wrong in holding informal consultations with their counterparts and it was easier to flesh out differences and speak freely in smaller settings.

They stressed that no secret draft was being prepared at these "green room" meetings, which are not listed in the daily programme of work available to the public.NGOs, however, insist that even the existence of such a group is reminiscent of backdoor dealings that were detrimental to negotiations during Copenhagen.

"There is also a lot of confusion among the negotiators themselves about how the work they are doing in the drafting committee relate to the work of the informal consultations," Raman said.

"You have one set of negotiators who are actually supposed to be negotiating," she said. "We understand the party driven text is actually not being looked at."
Delegates attending these informal talks have said the group is representative and countries such as Cuba and Venezuela that were left out of the meeting between the US and BRIC countries (India, China, South Africa and Brazil), which led to the Copenhagen Accord, have also attended the talks.

Raman, however, said: "We don't know if its representative and as civil society this is what our concern is how is the actual discussion happening. None of this is known to any one of us."

On Friday, however, Venezuela walked out of the "green room" and its delegate later told reporters that informal discussions were tilted against the Kyoto Protocol.

"If there is no second period of commitment, it would be very difficult to have a balanced package in this negotiation," said Venezuelan negotiator Claudia Salerno.Delegates, however, rejected the insinuations of hatching secret deals.

They pointed out that Mexico's Special Envoy for Climate Change Ambassador Luis Alfonso De Alba had briefed the Group of 77 developing countries about the meeting.
On Friday, buzz of a secret text being prepared by Mexico and a handful of other countries caused some excitement here but these rumors were firmly refuted by the UN as well as delegates