On Behalf of My Delegation

This book was updated in November 2023, see the second edition here.

This document pays a tribute to the negotiators from the South who have, under very complicated circumstances, bravely negotiated the extremely complex climate change issue on behalf of the region. It responds to the expressed needs of Southern negotiators over the last 10 years. Individually many are of excellent calibre and highly respected (see the excellent reviews of Ambassador Estrada's performance in 1997 by Mwandosya 1999; and Oberthür and Ott 1999). At the same time, there is a constant surge of new negotiators who are actually primarily meteorologists, environmentalists, policymakers and scientists, who have to don the garb of a "negotiator" at the negotiations. The implicit understanding in many developing countries is that these experts must learn on the job. In the meanwhile, the negotiations continue at an unrelenting pace, making no allowances for the unprepared negotiator.