John Lanchbery, RSPB Principal Climate Change Advisor, at the Bonn UNFCCC conference
It is warm, sunny day here at the UN climate talks in Bonn. It is less warm and sunny inside the main meeting room, however, where Russia has just finally stalled one of the two main technical sessions, the Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI). This fuss has been going on for a week now as Russia tried to get retribution for the humiliating treatment it feels it received at the climate COP last year in Doha - but more of this later.
In the meantime the rest of the climate talks continue rather better than expected because of the time and space freed up by the SBI not having meetings. The process for negotiating the new agreement for 2015 (the ADP) continues to make progress, if not as fast as we would like but with no big hiccups.
The other main technical body where all of our main interests lie has made up for time lost last year and is moving more rapidly than expected. Indeed, the Subsidiary Body on Science and Technology (SBSTA) has managed to cover all seven of the topics concerning reducing deforestation in developing countries (REDD+) and is making progress on most. We have also had workshops on REDD+ finance and on institutions to govern REDD+ in future.
Returning to the fracas with Russia, with support from Belarus and the Ukraine. This is mainly an issue about pride for Russia, if not for Belarus and the Ukraine, but all three countries feel that they were unfairly gavelled down and refused permission to speak by the Qatari COP chair in the concluding session in Doha. Although this is what did indeed happen at the very end, the chair first asked all countries if they could live with the final texts. I was there and there was a very long period of silence in which nobody raised anything - and the Russian negotiator was present, I saw him. He did not look happy but he did not speak. It was only later when passing through individual agreements that Russia chose to interject, too late.
Now Russia says that it wants to talk about rules of procedure in the SBI. Almost everyone would like better rules of procedure but Russia et al tabled the agenda item too late for inclusion, again, and anyway most countries think that the rules should be discussed elsewhere, etc, etc. All very complex and countries are now playing to the gallery rather than making much sense.
So, no SBI at this session but the silver linings are that the 2015 agreement talks are unaffected, and forests and land use have had more attention that they otherwise would.