Cup fever infects UN climate talks
Saturday, 12 June 2010
BONN, June 11 (AFP): Enthusiasm for the World Cup spilled over at the UN climate talks Friday, where South African football shirts flowered among business suits and talk about footy displaced jargon about carbon emissions.
UN climate haggles are notorious for going beyond their scheduled time and into the night and beyond.
But hopes were high that the 12-day negotiation round in Bonn would break with all precedent and wrap up in the afternoon so that delegates could enjoy the opening joust.
The final plenary of the 194-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was scheduled to finish by early afternoon, giving enough time to settle points of order and textual nit-picking.
"We have been pushing for this," South African negotiator Alf Wills told AFP.
Wills, like others in his delegation, swapped a suit for the yellow-and-green shirt of Bafana Bafana, South Africa's national team.
The colourful garb was also adopted by Yvo de Boer, outgoing executive secretary of the UNFCCC.
UN climate haggles are notorious for going beyond their scheduled time and into the night and beyond.
But hopes were high that the 12-day negotiation round in Bonn would break with all precedent and wrap up in the afternoon so that delegates could enjoy the opening joust.
The final plenary of the 194-nation UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was scheduled to finish by early afternoon, giving enough time to settle points of order and textual nit-picking.
"We have been pushing for this," South African negotiator Alf Wills told AFP.
Wills, like others in his delegation, swapped a suit for the yellow-and-green shirt of Bafana Bafana, South Africa's national team.
The colourful garb was also adopted by Yvo de Boer, outgoing executive secretary of the UNFCCC.