You Could Have It All – Day 5 and Report of OWG12

by khristian méndez // The 12th session of the Open Working Group on the Sustainable Development Goals has come to an end. At 5pm on friday, co-chair Kamau wrapped up the informal session of negotiations of the OWG, and opened the formal consultations, to be wrapped up 30 minutes later. During all of Friday, we heard the positions from 20+ member states on the final proposed SDG: Means of...

Heat in the Room – Day 4 OWG12

by khristian méndez // Temperature has risen in New York City, both on all of the concrete and glass surfaces of this giant man-made complex, as well as in the negotiation rooms. Everybody can agree that we need to eradicate poverty, have access to food, education and health, but as we descend down the list of goals, the views become more and more heated. Divergence on Biodiversity This morning...

The Game of the G77

By Lara Shirley The negotiating strategies employed by the G77+China are very interesting. They are a political entity, and thus have to be highly conscious of the image they project not only to their fellow negotiators but to the wider global community of civil society and media. The G77 negotiators tend to use precise and sophisticated language, often being the only ones to explicitly...

Green economy: the square ball that negotiators struggle to roll

by Adrian Fernandez Jauregui There is frustration and irritation revisiting, once more, the hallways and negotiating rooms of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD). Despite the commonly used rhetoric about “moving forward” and “streamlining the text", progress is slow and the outcome is uncertain. In Working Group I negotiations (section three and five of the zero draft), the...

What They Forgot to Mention

By Clara de Iturbe The preceding day felt way too long and the tension in the air you felt when entering the ECOSOC room the morning after said a lot about what was coming next. Lengthy discussions of the Food Security thematic area—whose title has not yet been agreed upon—demonstrated that the North and the South have very specific agendas and that they are not ready to cooperate in certain...