Yvo de Boer

What characterises a good President and a good Presidency?

Firstly, the host country must make a very clear distinction between the role of the President and the interests of their country. The process has become so political that national interests can begin to interfere with the role of the COP Presidency.

One way to address this is to have separate teams and political leadership for the national delegation and the Presidency. I think that's one critical aspect. 

Another critical aspect is that the whole Presidency team is unified and sings off the same song sheet. That’s incredibly important for a Presidency. 

Similarly, if your Presidency is part of a regional economic integration organisation, you need to make sure you maintain a good understanding of what that group is doing and wants to achieve so you don’t find yourself being attacked by your own constituency.

As you get closer to the endgame and to the political balance, the deep understanding of the substance becomes a little less important, and an understanding of the politics of the process becomes increasingly important.

Secondly, the President has to be neutral. At the end of the day, the outcome has to be one that has the support of all parties. Not everyone can be happy with everything, but you get a good result when everyone sees something in the final pie that is of their interest, and therefore, they’re willing to swallow other slices that might be less palatable to them. 

Thirdly, transparency is incredibly important. It’s about ensuring that decisions are taken in a transparent manner and that people have opportunities to engage. If processes get stuck, the Presidency can use inventive means like sending off little groups to try and come to a solution.

As you get closer to the endgame and to the political balance, the deep understanding of the substance becomes a little less important, and an understanding of the politics of the process becomes increasingly important.

Have you seen COP Presidencies effectively deal with countries blocking negotiation progress? 

There are lots of people with quite sincere, climate-unfriendly interests in the process. Given the nature of the process, they still need to be accommodated and, at the very least, respected.

I’ve always felt that it’s very difficult to be a prophet in your own country. It’s much easier, for example, for G77 Presidencies to put the EU under pressure than it is for an EU Presidency.

I always tried to make sure that I had good relations with the difficult people. There are certain countries that are just there to throw sand in the machine, and it's a matter of making sure that you have good relationships with the people they rely on for their alliances to fly, so the ‘sand-throwing gang’ doesn't get too big.

I’ve always felt that it’s very difficult to be a prophet in your own country. It’s much easier, for example, for G77 Presidencies to put the EU under pressure than it is for an EU Presidency. So that’s also an aspect — where you come from, what you represent, and how you deal with that. 

What are the benefits of good personal relationships with others in the process?

When you know people, you can go to them confidentially to find out what will and won’t work. Personally, I always went quite far in developing those relationships.

Near the end of negotiations, I used to informally meet with top diplomats in different delegations — from G77 and China to the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) — to ask questions like: “This is the draft package we have in mind for finance across the whole spectrum of issues. Do you think that would fly?”

That helped me get a sense of whether the text was something they’d be happy with (preferably) or could live with (if necessary).

Let me give a specific example of a time a personal relationship helped me. After negotiating some text, we would go around the table counter-clockwise to get the parties to approve it. The Japanese negotiator, who was asked first because she sat immediately to our right, kept rejecting our proposals. 

I had a strong relationship with that negotiator’s right-hand man. Our understanding was so good that he felt comfortable coming up to me in the corridor during a break to tell me that the negotiator’s brief from her Minister was to go along with the consensus. Because we asked her first, she had no consensus to go by and defaulted to “no”.

Once we found this out, we simply went the other way around the table so she was last. That solved it. So little things like that can make a big difference in process management.

How can the COP Presidency and the UNFCCC Secretariat work together to bring the negotiations to an ambitious compromise? 

First of all, the Presidency and the Secretariat should develop a shared understanding of what the COP could achieve. 

For that, I always used to prepare three scenarios: The first was a best-case scenario of what we would ideally like to achieve. The second was a worst-case scenario on what we must avoid. The third was a middle scenario of what a realistic and balanced outcome could potentially look like. We went into considerable detail on all the aspects which relate to different countries' interests, of what a final package could look like and what the event could achieve.

A good Presidency understands what countries’ interests and positions are in relation to each particular topic so they can manage the process accordingly.

To do that, you need a good understanding of what the different parties need and where compromise is possible. Parties have a really broad variety of interests: from finance, forests and agriculture to disappearing islands, indigenous peoples and alpine landscapes.

A good Presidency understands what countries’ interests and positions are in relation to each particular topic so they can manage the process accordingly.

How have the roles of the UNFCCC Secretariat and COP Presidency changed over time?

Overall, I’d say the Secretariat’s substantive and political engagement have gone up, in waves, over the years. 

The Secretariat’s involvement depends on the extent to which an Executive Secretary wants to engage and feels he or she can engage, as well as on the Presidency’s capacity to manage the process. To illustrate, we would provide briefing books saying, "turn the page over now" at the bottom of every page. Some COP Presidents would actually read that out. So the capacity varies.

Often, the person who takes on the COP Presidency is a politician who doesn’t have a deep understanding of the process. The Secretariat’s role will vary depending on the President’s level of understanding and engagement.

The variation is fine as long as the Secretariat, the President, and the people around the President are really clear on where their respective roles and responsibilities start and end.

What can the UNFCCC process learn from other negotiations?

I’ve always felt that we could have learned more from the Montreal Protocol than we did. We could specifically have learned from their arrangement for a financial mechanism and direct financial support for countries to take industrial policy in a desirable direction.

More broadly, we need to keep being aware of what happens outside the UNFCCC process. 

I underestimated the impact of the financial crisis in the run-up to COP15 in Copenhagen. I thought there was such a huge momentum behind making a decision that I didn’t pay enough attention to the economic crisis that was happening in the background and making the Europeans more lacklustre.

It’s a reminder to take off the blinkers and look outside the process.