Saudi Arabia gets Fossil of The Day award at Bali

Bali, Dec 5 - Climate Action Network (CAN), a coalition of over 400 NGOs worldwide, gave Saudi Arabia the Fossil of The Day award here Wednesday for 'being the country that has done worst in the day's negotiations' at the UN climate change conference.

As some of the 10,000-odd delegates from 187 countries attending the Dec 3-14 summit looked on bemusedly, CAN announced that Saudi Arabia was getting the award for 'having said at the main plenary session that the 'Kyoto Protocol had an unfair focus on carbon. At the same time, they supported CSC (carbon sequestration and capture) and then said there should not be any economics associated with the fight against climate change.'

The second prize of the day went to Japan 'because it complained about CSC and nuclear technology not being included in the talks'.

The third prize went to the European Union for 'endorsing the GEF (global environment facility) to be the administrator of the adaptation fund,' meant to help developing countries cope with climate change.

Each award was a bag of coal on which the flag of the country being 'honoured' was placed.

CAN has been holding the award ceremonies every day since the start of the conference Monday. Saudi Arabia won the 'top prize' on the first day too, while Japan won it the second day. The first two days, the US and Canada bagged second and third positions.

Richard Graves of the US Youth Delegation - a member of CAN - said that he had led a group Wednesday to meet the US government delegation 'because there were reports that the US was trying to derail the Bali negotiations and we don't want more of the same old stuff'.

Graves said the officials denied they had done anything to derail the climate change talks and had told him 'nothing was off the table'. The NGO announced that since the position of the US government delegation was not up to their expectations, 'we are now the real delegation from the US'.

Graves said he had read news reports that 'the US was trying to use back channels to India and China to get a commitment from them to derail the Bali process. But I have no information suggesting that any of those countries responded positively'.

According to Graves, the US officials denied this completely when he asked them about it, 'Though they agreed they do talk to India and China'.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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