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THINGS TO LOOK FOR TODAY AT UNCED
PRE-CONFERENCE CONSULTATIONS:
The second session of these consultations will begin this morning. The delegates are expected to complete the remaining outstanding items on the agenda. Issues to be resolved include the following:
- Election of Officers: : Once the African and Asian groups submit their final list of nominees, the entire list of 39 Vice Presidents can then be forwarded to the Plenary for approval on Wednesday. The Rapporteur-General, who is expected to be Ahmad Djoghlaf of Algeria, and the Chairman of the Main Committee, who is expected to be Tommy Koh of Singapore, will also be nominated today.
- Signature of Conventions: : One of the outstanding issues pertains to the registration process for the signing of the Biodiversity and Climate Change Conventions. Delegations want to be able to register in advance for specific time slots to ensure sufficient time to make the necessary arrangements for media coverage when their Heads of State, Government or Delegation sign the Conventions. Since this information was not available on Monday, discussion had to be postponed until today.
- Concluding Events: : The delegates must decide the format for the closing ceremonies as well as the form of the final documents to be signed by the Heads of State or Government. The question is whether the Heads of State will sign a package containing Agenda 21, the Rio Declaration and the Statement of Forest Principles or, rather, a statement that simply refers to those documents.
- Credentials Committee: : One of the rules of procedure provides that a Credentials Committee of nine members be appointed at the beginning of the Conference and that its composition be based on that of the Credentials Committee of the UN General Assembly. The current composition of the Committee consists of the following States: Belgium, Belize, Chile, China, Lesotho, Singapore, Togo, Russian Federation and the United States. At UNCED, the Credentials Committee is expected to deal with a number of issues including: the accreditation of Heads of State; whether ministers or vice presidents can speak on behalf of their Head of State during the Summit portion of the Conference, if their Head of State is not present; and potential problems regarding country representation at the Summit (i.e., where the geo-political nature of a country is in question, as in the case of Yugoslavia).
LIKE-MINDED COUNTRIES' DECLARATIONS:
The governments of Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland have privately circulated separate "Like-Minded Country" declarations that would commit signatory countries to reduce emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases that are not controlled by the Montreal Protocol at 1990 levels by the year 2000. These targets, combined with stronger reporting measures, are intended to show that some countries intend to go beyond the Climate Change Convention that was agreed to in New York last month. These three declarations are currently being integrated into a single declaration that will be finalized at a luncheon on Wednesday. Although the exact mechanisms have not been worked out, this declaration will probably be available for signing by Heads of State alongside the Climate Change Convention during the Conference. This initiative has support from the Small Island states.
IN THE CORRIDORS:
During the closing days of PrepCom IV, while Conference Services was overloaded with documents awaiting translation, one document slipped into the system and only emerged one week after PrepCom IV concluded. This document may play an important role in the financial resources negotiations to begin this week. A/CONF.151/PC/L.75 is the draft text on financial resources submitted by Andr‚s Rosenthal, the issue coordinator from Mexico, during the final week at PrepCom IV. This document was the product of discussions that were carried out during the final week under PrepCom Chair Tommy Koh and Rosenthal. These discussions began with representatives from some of the EC countries, the Nordics and Japan, who were later joined by representatives from the G-77. As a result of disagreement between the G-77 and the EC over the GEF, talks broke down on the last Thursday evening of PrepCom IV. The G-77 insisted that because discussions at PrepCom IV failed to produce an agreement, negotiations on financial resources in Rio would have to resume with the original G-77 and China text, PC/L.41/Rev.1. This text was mired in seemingly intractable negotiations during the third week of PrepCom IV. L.75 appeared at the Japanese Eminent Persons meeting, to many people's surprise, and at the Kuala Lumpur meeting, to the disdain of many developing countries. Many observers suggest that if the negotiations on financial resources are to proceed quickly at UNCED, then discussions will have to be based on some form of the L.75 document. Many countries, including several members of the G-77, maintain that resuming negotiations on L.41/Rev.1 could undermine the advances made during the waning days of PrepCom IV.