| 13/12/2010 | Work Remains After Cancún Conference's Modest Success
Myles Estey
One thing is certain about the COP 16 climate talks in Cancún, Mexico: The summit was not the disaster of last year's affair in Copenhagen.
Though binding agreements were never on the table, even critical observers such as Global Witness, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and Greenpeace expressed measured optimism as the conference came to a close at 4 a.m. Saturday morning.
"We hope countries can go back from [Cancún] with momentum to take national action, and with a sense of renewed purpose," said Tara Rao of WWF.
Rao nevertheless cautioned that the final agreement was far from perfect. While agreeing with conference organizers and Mexican President Felipe Calderón that sincere progress had been made, she noted that a lot of work outside the conference remains.
"What we do need now . . . is some significant leadership, which has to gain momentum," she stated. "That [must come] from the EU on one hand, but also India and China, in order for us to see a more firm legal form to what we will get out of South Africa." The next global conference on climate change will be held in Durban, South Africa, in 2011.
However, the Cancún conference represents a significant step -- and a surprising one, considering the heel-dragging and pessimism that dogged the conference since its inception. Participants and observers across the board echoed these sentiments as drafts of the final agreement circulated between evening negotiating sessions on Friday night.
Bolivia stood out as the final agreement's main detractor. In a press conference before the final discussions, head Bolivian delegate Pablo Salón made it clear that his delegation would fight to block several key aspects of the final document. True to his word, Salón subsequently spoke out forcefully against the agreement, arguing that it does not require sufficient changes from member states.
"Bolivia does not want to make a reservation or a footnote," Salón stated, amid a series of speeches from other nations approving the text. "Bolivia wants to state that it does not support the text, and that the text does not have consensus."
Bolivian spokespeople focused on a few main points that, while made in part by other nations during the focus groups and meetings leading up to the final day's session, had been accepted as part of the inevitable compromises bound up in United Nations process.
The Bolivian criticism focused on a few key areas: that carbon was allowed to become a marketized commodity in forest protection; that the World Bank should have any role in distributing funding for climate change efforts; that the emissions targets mentioned by the document will result in a 3-4 degree rise in temperatures (not the 2 degrees that it claims); and that the language calling for renewal of the Kyoto protocol when it expires at the end of next year is not strong enough.
At one point, it looked as though a Bolivian veto would block the process, leaving Cancún without a deal. Ultimately, COP 16 President Patricia Espinosa declared that the voice of one country so late in the process could not be allowed to derail all that had been accomplished.
Despite acknowledging the accuracy of many of Salón's points and agreeing that more needs to be done, observers from civil society whispered urgently that this was not the time to hold out for more. Delegation members, who looked increasingly agitated as the night wore on, were visibly relieved at the sound of Espinosa's gavel.
"We should not see this conference as the end, but as a beginning," Espinosa declared in her final words.
Many observers believe that although the Cancún conference resulted in no binding agreements, it put the infrastructure in place to reach meaningful ones in Durban, South Africa, next year. The document calls for countries to bring its non-binding guidelines back to their legislatures, and to take actual measures to follow up on them. That means actually cutting emissions, developing technologies to deal with changing climates, taking significant steps to curb deforestation and -- for richer nations -- putting aside funds to assist developing nations through all of this. How much of that work actually gets accomplished before the Durban conference will prove crucial.
The U.S. kept a low profile during this year's talks, letting countries like Japan, Canada and Russia take the public relations hits for their opposition to various measures. Nevertheless, the U.S. was almost universally viewed as the major impediment to progress. Its refusal to sign the Kyoto protocol and failure to follow through on domestic emission-reducing or financial pledges still rankle. And its ongoing dispute with China over who is the worse polluter is seen as a waste of precious time.
That final point should be a moot one, according to a senior U.N. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Both countries emit more than 20 percent of overall emissions, and should thus bear the costs of channeling resources and technologies that will assist developing nations adapt to climate change, the official said late in the final afternoon of talks.
However, for the Cancún conference to truly be the cautious success that observers describe it as, China and the U.S. must now take sufficient steps forward, along with those taken by the European Union and India. If not, the consensus is that global climate change negotiations will be back at square one: no Kyoto protocol, no legal regulations on emissions, no cooperative forestry protection, and a rapidly rising climate.
**Myles Estey is a freelance writer and photographer currently based in Mexico City. From 2008 to 2010, Myles lived in Liberia, working as a media trainer and a freelance multimedia journalist. His work has appeared in Global Post, VBS, and CNN, as well as many other news outlets. For six years prior to that, he was editor-in chief of the Vancouver-based Capital Magazine and co-director of its affiliate multimedia projects. Myles runs the blog the Esteyonage.
World Politics Review (Estados Unidos)
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