By Matthew Russell Lee
UNITED NATIONS, July 20, updated -- After 6 pm on Wednesday, the German presidency of the Security Council read out a Statement on climate change, eight paragraphs long.
It goes out of its way to say that the General Assembly and ECOSOC have primacy. It asks Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to slip climate information into the reports he already files with the Council. The Council does not remain “seized of the matter.”
An hour before the statement came out, Bolivia gave a speech saying that the Security Council is not the venue for climate change, since the biggest polluters have veto power. Instead Bolivia proposed an “International Tribunal for Climate and Environmental Justice,” to hold polluters guilty for “ecocide.” One Council wag dubbed it the “Ecocide in ECOSOC” speech.
Given the opposition to earlier drafts of the Statement, including Russia “breaking silence” on Wednesday morning, how did Germany get agreement?
A well placed Permanent Representative told Inner City Press that Germany's foreign minister Guido Westerwelle spoke with this Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov to seal the deal. While seeking confirmation, it is significant that is the perception: that a deal was cut.
German Ambassador Peter Wittig was said to be prepared to take question, in connection with an unrelated Council press statement on Serbia's arrest of Goran Hadzic, indicted for war crimes in Croatia in 1991 and 1992. We'll see.
