Sleepless in Copenhagen

In the final two days of the negotiations at the Copenhagen world conference on climate change, delegates have been staying overnight at the Bella Center to participate in seemingly endless hours of final negotiations that last into the wee hours of the morning.

On the eve of the final day of the UN climate talks, Yeb Saño of the Philippine delegation gets ready for another all-nighter of climate negotiations. At this point, the only thing keeping him awake may be his hopes for a fair and effective outcome in Copenhagen.




Video interview by PIA FAUSTINO

Excerpts from the video interview follows.

Pia Faustino (PF): How much sleep have you gotten this week?

Yeb Saño (YS): This week? I can honestly say that I had less than six hours of sleep since Monday. So that's one hour per night.

PF: Why does it have to go into the night? Hindi nyo ba pwedeng gawin ito (Can't you do this) first thing in the morning? I mean, bakit ang haba-haba? (why so extended?)

YS: It drags on into the night mainly because first of all, there are deadlines. And our practical deadline for all of this in Copenhagen is tomorrow afternoon. If nothing happens by tomorrow afternoon then Copenhagen would have been a failure. And that's our deadline. And working backwards, anything that you do that would jeopardize yung pag-beat mo ng (your having to beat the) deadline tomorrow, we should avoid anything that would jeopardize that. So if it means having to work throughout the night, then so be it. Right now we have less than 24 hours left, and we still have a lot of things to cover.