Russia & Antigua and Barbuda Earn Fossils, Many Nations Receive Joint Ray
17 June 2011
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 17 June 2011
Contact:
Kyle Gracey
kylegracey@gmail.com
+1 814 659 2405
Russia & Antigua and Barbuda Earn Fossils, Many Nations Receive Joint Ray
Bonn, Germany – On the last day of the United Nations climate negotiations,
countries continued to slow progress toward a fair, ambitious, and binding global
climate agreement, with Russia earning a second place fossil for blocking important
text toward a new climate agreement, and Antigua and Barbuda taking first place for,
on the second day in a row, working to keep civil society's voices out of the
negotiations. On a more positive note, many nations spoke out against Saudi Arabia
and Qatar's efforts to find more ways to be paid for lost oil revenues as the world
moves toward cutting fossil fuels' contribution to climate change.
The Fossils as presented read:
"Russia earns the Second place Fossil. This morning, in the contact group on Shared
Vision and in the LCA plenary, Russia did not accept the Facilitator's note becoming
an INF document. By blocking this note from becoming an INF document, Russia
stopped the negotiations on Shared Vision from moving forward, whereas an
agreement on Shared Vision is a key element of a future legally binding instrument on
climate change."
"Today's First place Fossil award goes to Antigua and Barbuda for standing up, yet
again, against increased transparency and engagement of civil society.
In last night's SBI plenary, Antigua and Barbuda continued to raise concerns about a
number of suggested improvements to transparency. At one point, they even claimed
that because they once couldn't find a seat in a meeting room, they couldn't support
increased openness in this process. Perhaps they should listen to their colleagues in
AOSIS, many of whom stood up to show strong support for NGO participation in
their own statements. Should any delegates from Antigua and Barbuda have difficulty
finding somewhere to sit, any CAN member would gladly give up their seat and stand
in the room, so long as the doors are open.For Antigua and Barbuda's very confusing and extremely disappointing stance against transparency and civil society participation, we award them the First place Fossil."
"The Ray of the Day goes to Cook Islands, Tonga, EU, Australia, Norway, Suriname,
Switzerland, Colombia, Tuvalu, Mexico, St. Lucia, USA, Singapore, New Zealand,
Barbados, Bolivia, Japan, & The Gambia for jointly and strongly rejecting the
demand by Saudi Arabia, supported by Qatar, to have response measures included in
the SBI conclusions on loss and damage. As per the Bali Action Plan and the Cancún
agreements, response measures has its place under mitigation and should not be dealt
with when it comes to adaptation to the adverse effects of climate change."
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About CAN: The Climate Action Network is a worldwide network of roughly 500
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) working to promote government and
individual action to limit human-induced climate change to ecologically sustainable
levels. www.climatenetwork.org
About the fossils: The Fossil of the Day awards were first presented at the climate
talks in 1999 in Bonn, initiated by the German NGO Forum. During United Nations
climate change negotiations (www.unfccc.int), members of the Climate Action
Network (CAN), vote for countries judged to have done their 'best' to block progress
in the negotiations in the last days of talks.
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