Ethiopia's advantages on the horizons of climate negotiations are subject to how deep, quick, and thoughtful the nation plays the game in the global playground, no matter its size. Common sense dictates that Ethiopia's position gives it more advantages than other countries grouped with it as the former Kyoto giants like China, India, Brazil and South Africa, a club of nations called the BASIC Block, have been moved into their own group.

We have established nearly adequate indigenous intellectual prowess in every sector, requiring only intellectually open minds to cope with the ever-changing jargon, emerging opportunities, positioning for the transfer of technical know-how, and, at times, discovery of new technology ourselves. Likewise, we have enormous resources, broad plans and an encouraging political will to follow a low carbon development path in electricity, energy, transportation, construction, waste processing, industry, land use and forestry.

What remains is communicating the exact details of what we want to achieve and how.

An enormous chunk of funds from private and multilateral sources are being established nearly every week for such potential mobilisations to deal with climate change. Nearly three billion dollars was already established last December, 2009, through an array of multilateral and public funds. Investors representing 13 trillion dollars met in New York last week and "urged policymakers to act swiftly" to quickly embrace the Copenhagen Accord and clearly put their political will to action in the form of ambitious nationally appropriate mitigation actions (NAMAs).

They say they are ready to invest in mitigation actions and projects primarily where there are participatory NAMAs, transparent desire, and relevant policies. The IMF annex in the accord expects NAMAs to be a list of specific project activities, an economy wide but sector specific policy of mitigation actions, or a general list of nationally allowed economic actions relevant for mitigation. For the most elasticity, proposed actions under NAMAs from developing nations, including least developed countries (LDCs), cannot be too specific (as at the project level), and the envisaged actions may not be restricted to implementation by a specific body at the time of its submission (unless national law does so).

Given that mitigation under the accord is voluntary for LDCs and that it does not have details on mandatory global cooperation for mitigation, cooperation would more likely be driven by factors such as the location of an action, economic attractiveness for the fund provider, and operational flexibility under proposed NAMAs.

Aiming to tap global market opportunities and, of course, tackling dangerous climate change through implementing NAMAs, countries are rushing to decide whether they will formally endorse the Copenhagen Accord, and, if they do, to comply with the deadline for January 31, 2010, for the submission of economy wide emissions reduction targets. It has emerged that some countries have so far announced their intention to be party to the accord. But many are not willing to put emission reduction targets on the table.

BASIC countries, the most advanced of the developing nations, met last Sunday, January 25, 2010, over such decisions and have shown an interest in signing the accord. Though, some of them argued that the date of submission for NAMAs is too short to come up with farsighted and educated lists of mitigation actions.

Their concern is clear and simple. Economic activities that would otherwise release those targeted emissions during business as usual are vast and burgeoning, and a month is too short to address all such sectors and sub-activities in each sector listed under NAMAs, they argue. Moreover, the implementation of these mitigation actions is best envisaged as a combination of public and private, multilaterally or bilaterally driven NAMAs. Given that BASIC nations are quite advanced and quickly developing further still, we may find that submitting NAMAs in the letter and spirit of the accord is a tricky venture and is worth some well-informed thought.

The most tricky part is that there is no bold administrative body named in the accord - as in the case of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat for Kyoto - to request accurate clarifications on the "do's" and "do not's" of the submission. The UNFCCC is best situated to assume such a position right after a good number of nations endorse the accord, in a pure chicken and egg fashion.

Just as there are global targets, numbers, and mechanisms, there is a demand for the same level of detail locally, and just as there are emerging modalities, champions, and financiers for global low carbon cooperation, there is a demanded for the same level of appropriate playing field details locally. Each sector relevant to mitigation actions requires wider thought in every respect, the participation of all viable indigenous stakeholders working out exact details subject to periodic amendment, and engagment in a continued daily watch of global opportunities.

Such moves would avoid repeating the kind of low regional participation that LDCs exhibited in Kyoto mechanisms.

Planning for mitigation action demands the mopping up of every sector and lifestyle with these concepts. Expert analyses suggest that our advantages are not largely in the dirt of the baseline emissions of our core economic sectors; it is rather in the potential of meeting the demand that we are yet to experience through innovative thinking to produce low carbon emissions in nearly every sector. A fresh thought may include brainstorming over whether it is still desirable to keep a single national electric grid or not. After an elementary mathematical exercise, one can deduce find that the Ethiopian grid releases only about 0.0034tn of carbon dioxide for each megawatt of power generated in an hour, a number too low for any new grid connected renewable energy project to argue that it reduces pollution from business as usual.

A desirable mitigation action in the power sector would therefore be demonstrated through either off grid exercises, a decentralised grid, or by increasing the grid's capability to meet future economic development plans. The later requires a sound and articulate engagement in global methodological negotiations in terms of changing the existing methodological tools, which are feared to have provided perverse incentives to industries in China and India.

Such options as the later would even have validated Kyoto eligibility through our recent, famous and fresh hydropower success stories. An alternative or a dual advantage may be secured through designing mitigation actions in complementary sectors benefiting from a carbon neutral grid.