Fossil of the Day

Posted by: Anna McGinn

At the end of every day at the COP, the Climate Action Network hosted Fossil of the Day which is an event to recognize "who did the best at being the worst, and who did the most to do the least." It is a short (and comedic) ceremony to shed light on which countries are preventing negotiations from moving forward both inside and outside the COP.

As you can see in the picture on the left, a member of the Climate Action Network dresses up as a "fossil" and hands out trophies on platforms to "representatives" from the countries receiving the award. While they are providing much needed comedy at the end of extremely busy days of following negotiations, another goal of the ceremony is more serious-- to share broadly which countries are stalling the agenda for this COP. The hope is that countries note this embarrassing award and try to do better during upcoming negotiations.

For Thursday, the third place Fossil of the Day award went to Kuwait. The countries make a concerted effort to allow at least some non-countries groups in the room to observe negotiations, but yesterday Kuwait made a motion to close an important meeting on Loss and Damage (see earlier post for explanation of this) to all observer parties. This is of concern to the observers because it decreases transparency of the negotiations.

Second place today went to Japan. During Trump's Asia trip, Japan and the US forged a deal on energy, and the Fossil of the Day award goes to Japan for participating in this deal without arguing for provisions on renewable energy. Read more about this deal here, as it is not the focus of work here at COP23.

Finally, first place for today went to all the developed countries of the world for their lack of support for taking action on climate change before the year 2020. There is plenty of preparation taking place to prepare for efforts under the Paris Agreement which really get into gear in 2020, but many of the developing countries argue that there is a great need for ambitious action on the part of all countries in the intervening 2+ years. This pre-2020 ambition represents one of the major negotiation points for many of the developing country groups.

To follow fossil of the day throughout the COP, you can check out the Climate Action Network's Fossil of the Day website where you can watch the video of the ceremony and read a description of the awards. This is a creative and interesting way to track what is going on here (or not going on) at COP23.


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