77 LEADING THE PARADE TO A STANDSTILL:

Poor and Emerging States Stall Climate Negotiations (JOHN M. BRODER, 12/17/09, NY Times)

The Group of 77 is a group in name only. Made up of 130 countries, it represents tiny island nations like Vanuatu and advanced middle-income states like Argentina. Its nominal leader is Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, a Sudanese diplomat who speaks on behalf of the group and who led a walkout on Monday, saying the developed nations’ offer of $10 billion in “quick-start” financing after completion of a deal here was wholly inadequate.

Many developing nations have united under the group’s auspices of because there is strength in numbers, and because they can take advantage of the far greater negotiating power and resources of countries like China and Brazil. Many small countries have neither a big enough delegation nor the organizational structure to negotiate effectively on their own.

China has been a natural godfather to many of the Group of 77 countries because its government has extensive investments in Africa and Latin America, often involving lucrative deals to bring oil and minerals home.

The coalition is united on a few central issues. They include making sure that industrialized countries keep the emissions reductions pledges they made as part of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and that the Copenhagen conference produces enough money for poorer countries to adapt to climate change, said María Fernanda Espinosa, Ecuador’s minister of cultural and ecological patrimony.

But the group is neither a tight negotiating unit, nor particularly well organized. While larger countries like Brazil and China have well-appointed headquarters in one part of the Bella Center, where the negotiations are being held, the Group of 77 office itself is made up of two spartan rooms equipped with two computers, where some delegates from the poorest African nations sat Wednesday morning drinking soda and nibbling biscuits.

“The G-77 is an incredibly diverse group,” said Michael A. Levi, a climate change specialist at the Council on Foreign Relations who is attending the Copenhagen meeting. “Its richest countries are 50 times as wealthy on a per-capita basis as its poorest ones. All of this makes a common yet constructive position very difficult. The easiest thing to agree on is to obstruct action.”