Cancun, new hope

The UN Climate Change Conference in Cancun began its work – perhaps in a somewhat low-key way – on 29 November. It is due to end on 10 December. The stakes have still to be defined, but the spectre of another semi-failure, like that registered at Copenhagen last year, can be felt in the air. In the new summit now underway in Mexico, amid all the official speeches, backroom deals, confidential negotiations, personal agendas, national interests and far-sighted visions, the basic problem remains: how to curb climate change and its most damaging repercussions on nature and on the human environment? Conspicuous among the most determined positions aimed at reaching a “balanced” and “binding” accord, and limiting global warning, are those of the European Union, represented at the Conference by some of its highest institutional figures.An intermediate stage? At Cancun the delegates are seeking a way forward for post-Kyoto, the Japanese city where the most ambitious international accord on global warming so far reached was signed in 1997. It came into force in 2005 and is due to expire in 2012; it was the follow up to the UN Environment Programme Convention of 1992. Almost all the countries in the world signed up to Kyoto, with the exception of the USA, the world’s largest producer of greenhouse gases. The negotiations to “go beyond” Kyoto ought to have reached a deal in the Danish capital in December 2009, but that didn’t happen. However, the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference did enable a “half deal” to be reached; it received the endorsement of 140 States. So at Cancun the negotiations are continuing to reach the main, but not exclusive, objective of containing the warming of the planet below a ceiling 2°C higher than global temperatures in the pre-industrial era. A document produced by the EU on the eve of the Cancun Conference clarifies various aspects of this goal. “At Copenhagen – it says – the EU was willing to adopt an ambitious, comprehensive and legally binding global framework in combating climate change and is ready to do so in Cancun. However, it is clear that a series of important economies are not”. The EU-27 at least hopes that “Cancun becomes a significant step that paves the way for establishing a global and comprehensive legally binding framework as soon as possible”. The priorities posed by the EU. The new package of decisions that the European Union hopes to see agreed in Cancun “must build on the Kyoto Protocol and incorporate the political guidance given in the Copenhagen Accord”. It ought to take into account the negotiating progress made so far and “establish the main foundations for the architecture of the future international regime on climate”. The EU appeals to its world partners to take courageous decisions that may prevent further delays in combating climate change, in particular in the developing countries, which seem to be the most exposed to, and the most damaged by, the emergencies caused by climate changes (drought, floods, biodiversity at risk, marine pollution…). The EU indicates some particularly urgent measures that need to be taken and that it wants to see addressed in a balanced Cancun package: ‘anchoring’ in the UN process of emission pledges made under the Copenhagen Accord; transparency rules (monitoring, reporting and verification); reform and expansion of carbon market mechanisms; deforestation reduction and forest management accounting rules in the developing countries; adaptation to climate change; governance of the future Green Climate Fund; technology cooperation; capacity-building for the developing countries; and reductions in emissions from international aviation and maritime transport. Single and binding instrument. “The EU – says the document – would prefer a global climate change framework for post-2012 in the form of a new single and legally binding instrument which includes essential elements of the Kyoto Protocol”. But, given the current state of play, the European Union “is ready to accept a solution based on distinct legal instruments for each” of the “trajectories” of the negotiation, so long as “these instruments contain coherent, comparable and legally binding rules”. The EU is also willing to consider the renewal for a second period of the pledges signed up to in the Kyoto Protocol, so long as all the major world economies assume some serious form of commitment to combat climate change. The “technical” and economic stumbling blocks to a future deal are however numerous and complex, and each country (“rich”, recently industrialized, developing or seriously backward) has its own interests to defend. On the other hand, the EU “recognizes that it is up to the developed countries to set an example in combating climate change. It is for this reason that the EU “has pledged to become an economy of high energy efficiency and low greenhouse gas emission”.(1 – to be continued)