[governance] APC - Forum draft?

[William Drake]

Hi,

> From: governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org
> [mailto:governance-bounces at lists.cpsr.org]On Behalf Of Vittorio Bertola

> I'm specifically concerned by the fact that we all seem to agree on 95%
> of the substance for what regards the Forum, and yet we can't manage to
> come up with a consensus document. I'm not sure whether we can do
> anything in that regard.

That happened because we went back and tried to reinvent the wheel at a
greater level of depth and got into points about steering groups etc on
which people disagreed.  We could have just agreed to use the text we
previously agreed for the WGIG response, as I, Adam, Wolfgang, and I can't
recall who else suggested.  We could still do that; it's slightly awkward
that the same words appear in the APC doc but so what, the APC piece
specifically states that the relevant passages are from the caucus
statement so there'd be no real contradiction.

As I've said before, probably to the point of being boring, as far as I
know, the idea of the forum came from within the caucus.  At least, I
don't recall anyone else advancing the idea 2-3 years ago when some of us
were talking about it and put the observatory language in the CS
declaration at Geneva.  I doubt it'd have been picked up and run through
the WGIG process either but for us; the private sector certainly wasn't
enthused, and the  governments represented in WGIG were relatively
indifferent and focused on other priorities.  Don MacLean was particularly
helpful in this regard as a credible bridge etc. So it's not hubris to say
that this is a definable CS contribution to the process (there are
others), one that has now been embraced by governments and is likely to
happen.  As such, I think it would be nuts for the caucus not to submit
its own language supporting onr og its own main contributions.  All we'd
have to do it take the WGIG response text and add a few words to put it
into the form of "we resolve to create" and we'd be done.  We could do
this on the spot Sunday.

If, despite any differences on particulars, the caucus also wants to
'endorse' the APC paper either in spoken interventions or some text, fine.
 But what's really needed here is proposed freestanding text for
incorporation into the intergovernmental agreement.  We should be putting
forward something on the order of 3-4 paragraphs max in the style they
need.  With some small on site tweakings of our previously agreed text, we
could have that, and if we don't go far beyond what was previously agreed,
it presumably wouldn't be too problematic for those not in attendance.

One final point---my conversations with government and IO people would
suggest that in terms of the numbers discussion between Anriette, Vittorio
and others, there's a pretty strong consensus for it being a completely
open, y'all come forum modeled on the WGIG open consultations (as
suggested in the WGIG report), not a smaller selected group.  The latter
would probably politicize the process to the point of killing it.  But of
course, there'd have to be a smaller 'start up group' to design the thing,
as there is for the Global Alliance.  Probably there could not be
agreement that this team would then morph into an ongoing steering group
or whatever, there's a pretty strong normative barrier to such things,
which is part of why the WGIG report was careful to say that it wasn't
proposing the forum as an extension of the WGIG.

Best,

Bill

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