Visa bars poor nations from UN climate talks

Visa problems have prevented representatives of some of the world's poorest countries from attending the 12-day UN climate change conference, which is to be concluded on Friday in Poznan, Poland.

This has compromised the global event’s role as a half-way stage for the formation of a new climate framework next year in Copenhagen to replace the outgoing Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

It reflects badly on the worldwide determination to tackle climate change, which poses the biggest threat to poor countries.

This occurred despite the host country and the Schengen region having a full year to prepare its consulates, according to a latest news release by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED ).

There are only three Polish Embassies in sub-Saharan Africa; in South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria. This means that most African delegates have to travel to these countries to obtain their visa or fly into another European country before heading to Poland with a Schengen visa. A Malawian government representative was denied entry on arrival in Europe and had to return to Africa.

Delegates from many of the world’s least developed countries and small island developing states had also faced similar problems in obtaining visas. One Climate Change Media Partnership (CCMP) journalist in Pakistan was denied a visa outright.

However, the IIED news release failed to offer an exact number of delegates whose travel plans had been affected. It also did not give any reasons as to why Poland and other Shengen nations delayed or rejected visa applications.

"We feel very frustrated, and think the delay for our delegation to attend the fourteenth session of the UN Climate Change Summit will gravely affect us," said Ben Donnie, head of Liberia's five-man delegation which was held up in Nigeria for a week before the Polish Embassy there granted them visas.

"Surely, this will affect our representation. We want to be there ourselves for all the sessions. Although, as head of the delegation, I have been receiving e-mails about what is happening in Poznan from the summit secretariat, this is not enough. We should have been there from the beginning to make our input and meet with colleagues."

Saleemul Huq, IIED’s climate change head, said: "The first week of the conference includes several strands of important negotiations and the absence of media, NGO and government representatives from the countries most vulnerable to climate change has meant that their concerns have been slipping from the agenda."

"We have lost count of the number of people from such nations that have been unable to attend the full two week conference because of the excessive time taken to process their visa applications,” Huq said, adding that “if this happens again at next year's meeting in Copenhagen, it will be a serious impediment to getting a deal that is fair and equitable."

As a response, Thomas Becker, Denmark's chief negotiator said that: "There are some things we are not in control of but at least the visa we can handle. There won't be any barriers for that. I hope no-one will be sitting back at home because of visa or travel barriers."

There was another ironic scenario. A recent protest by climate change activists forced the closure of London's Stansted airport and left some delegates heading to the Poznan conference stranded.

Jeremy Hinton was due to travel from Stansted to the UN conference, but his flight was cancelled. "It's easy to sympathise with what they're trying to achieve, but [I have] no sympathy with the way they're going about achieving it," he told the BBC.

A BBC environment correspondent, Richard Black was also delayed by the protest and was unable to report from Poland until the following day.


Copyright Dongying Wang

Read the Chinese version of this article on Global News Watch