General instructions

The general instructions, provided to all participants, are below:

1) At a minimum, please review the general and individual instructions and the key simulation documents (subsection 3.1) as well as the rules of procedure for the MEA associated with your role. The remaining material is for refer-ence/use as needed, but should not be overlooked.⁸

2) Each participant will be assigned a role as a representative of a party official and will be asked to rotate into a Secretariat support role at least once in the exercise.⁹ Additional confidential individual instructions will be provided to each participant.

3) Participants representing parties have been sent with full credentials from their governments to participate in the meeting of the AHJWG, using their con-fidential individual instructions as a guide.¹⁰ Parties should do their best to achieve the objectives laid out in their instructions. They should develop a

7 Cam Carruthers (ed.), Multilateral Environmental Agreement Negotiator’s Handbook, University of Joensuu – UNEP Course Series 5 (2nd ed., University of Joensuu, 2007), available in English and French at

<http://www.uef.fi/en/unep/publications-and-materials>.

8 See also ibid, in particular sections 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, 3.6, 2.4, 4.3 and 5.

9 There are no IGO or NGO roles in this exercise, based largely on feed-back from participants in other simulations who indicated that they found such roles very limited.

10 Confidential individual instructions have been developed without reference to actual country positions, and it is not necessary for this simulation that participants attempt to follow positions in the real nego-tiations.

strategy and an integrated rationale to support their positions. Do not share your confidential individual instructions with other participants. Do not concede to a fall-back position without a serious effort to achieve your pri-mary objective (and not on the first day!). If possible, consult with others before the session, to identify and coordinate with those who have similar instructions, and even prepare joint interventions. You should build alliances and try to support anyone with a similar position who is out-numbered. You should try to identify participants with opposing views, and influence them both in formal negotiations, as well as in informal settings. At any time, you may re-ceive supplementary instructions. Participants should, of course, always be respectful of each other’s views and background.

4) All participants will temporarily play the role of a Secretariat official to sup-port the parties, Co-Chairs, Vice-Chairs and rapsup-porteurs, including in both plenaries and drafting groups, as appropriate (only in a support/advisory role). Participants will rotate into a Secretariat role based on time ‘Slots’ set out in the table of roles in section 2.3 and in the schedule for the simulation annexed to these instructions (participants may agree among themselves to switch slots – for instance, if elected as Chair). Secretariat officials keep speakers lists, take notes and intervene as needed to respond to parties. They generally focus on matters of procedure and organization of work, as well as issues related to secretariat resources and capacity, but are required to main-tain neutrality on issues where there is a divergence of views among parties.

When in a secretariat role, participants retain the same convention affiliation areas as when they are in a party role. Participants temporarily in a secre-tariat role may also switch roles and intervene in their party representative role as a last resort if necessary to maintain their position (when acting as a Secretariat official they should use a secretariat flag; when as a party, their party flag). There is no intended link between a participant’s role as a party representative and their temporary functions as a secretariat official.

5) Simulation Coordinators may, as needed, act as senior UNEP officials and/

or a designated senior government official in a state’s capital authorized to provide supplementary instructions to their delegations. Coordinators will remain as far as possible outside of the simulation and should not be con-sulted unless necessary. Questions on procedure, etc. should be addressed to the Co-Chairs, drafting group facilitators or Secretariat officials.

6) In the AHJWG plenary, the Co-Chairs sit at the head of the room, with Secretariat officials beside them. Parties will have the opportunity to select a

‘flag’ or country nameplate (fold it twice, so the name is in the mid panel).

To speak, raise your ‘flag’ and signal the Secretariat official keeping the speak-ers’ list. Secretariat officials will also have name plates.

7) The AHJWG will begin work in plenary. As explained in subsection 1.4, the AHJWG will establish four drafting groups (Groups A-D).

8) The first task for parties is to elect two Co-Chairs for the AHJWG and three Vice-Chairs, one from each of the conventions. The usual practice is that

developing county parties and developed country parties are equally repre-sented as Co-Chairs. For this exercise, given the fact that no voting rules have been adopted under the AHJWG (see subsection 3.2), selection should be based on informal consultations, and decided by consensus.

9) When the AHJWG breaks into the four drafting groups, please join the group identified in your individual instructions. The groups will operate much like an informal drafting group (see the MEA Negotiator’s Handbook).

10) The four drafting groups must reach agreement on what to report back to the plenary. Each Vice-Chair will act as a facilitator in one of the drafting groups to manage the meeting. Each group will select a rapporteur to com-pile a report of the discussions (see the MEA Negotiator’s Handbook on draft-ing, especially use of brackets).

11) Once elected, Co-Chairs and Vice-Chairs/facilitators must play their roles throughout the negotiation simulation exercise, and generally refrain from openly taking positions, and only do so when explicitly indicating that they are ‘taking their Chair’s hat off’.

12) Please use only the materials provided, as well as advice and information from other participants, and don’t be distracted by internet resources or use any precedent found there or elsewhere (even though this is often a good idea in real life!).

13) The exercise will take place over a two-day period. Participants are encour-aged to consult informally before the exercise for nominations to the Co-Chair/Vice-Chair positions and in the evening of the first day to form alli-ances and broker solutions (as in real life).

2.3 Twinning

Participants in the Joint Contact Group were listed, along with their ‘twins’ for the exercise, each numbered with respect to their individual instructions.

Each participant was assigned a role as a representative of a party and was eligible to be chosen to play the role of Co-Chair, Vice-Chair/facilitator or rapporteur (see above subsection 2.2); and, in addition, each participant was responsible to play the role of Secretariat official for one time period (see paragraph 4 of the General Instruc-tions in section 2.2). Participants were asked to represent a party that is from a dif-ferent negotiation group, bloc or region than their own. In order to help them ef-fectively represent this other country, they were ‘twinned’ with someone from that country, group or region. Accordingly, each participant also had to play a com-pletely separate role as a member of the delegation of their ‘twin’, providing back-ground information on their country group or region, to help their twin develop the rationale and rhetoric to support their positions. Participants were asked to separate completely this delegation support role for their twin from their own individual instructions and their role as the representative of their twin’s country, group or re-gion. Twins were not expected to have their countries allied, nor to work together in

any way in the simulation. Participants were only asked to draw on personal experi-ence and relevant substantive knowledge related to national economics, society, ge-ography, culture, and environmental context, but not on any knowledge they may have of official governmental policy. Participants were encouraged to consult their

‘twin’ or in some cases twins, in order to draw on their perspective and knowledge to put their negotiation instructions in the context of the country they had been asked to represent.

As noted above, the positions of parties in this exercise were not intended to reflect the actual positions of any state. Accordingly, participants were asked not to seek information or advice on actual positions or political views of governments, but rather to seek advice and support for their hypothetical positions by drawing on any relevant cultural, economic, environmental, geographic orsocial information their twin could provide. Twinning was also intended to promote general understanding of how different perspectives may affect approaches to both substantive and process issues – and to add some depth and dramatic interest to the scenario. Because of the asymmetrical distribution of participation among countries, groups and regions, some participants had more than one twin (though such participants were in the minority).

Participants were encouraged to draw on a cultural reference, local saying or an an-ecdote from their twin to illustrate a point related to the substance or process of the negotiations (as negotiators often do), and were reminded to always be respectful of each other’s views and backgrounds. In addition, all participants were provided with

‘flags’ or nameplates for use in the formal meeting. Participants in the role of govern-ment officials were instructed to select the flag of their ‘twin’ or the flag of a country from the same region or negotiating group (if known). Individual instructions were developed without reference to actual country positions, and it was not necessary for this simulation that participants attempt to follow such positions. It was suggested, however, that participants develop their positions and interventions with the interests of the regional group of their twin in mind.

The intention was to have each participant twinned with another whose background or experience was different. As many developing country participants as possible were to take on a developed country role and perspective, and vice-versa. Instruction sets and roles were otherwise assigned randomly, but were adjusted for regional, gender and sectoral balance. Participants were ‘twinned’ and assigned roles and positions based on instruction sets numbered 1–35 (depending on actual course participation, and some roles were re-assigned on the day of the simulation itself).