What is the Cancún COP16 climate change summit?
From 29 November to 10 December, environment officials and ministers will meet in Cancún in Mexico for the UN climate change conference to continue efforts towards an international deal on cutting carbon emissions. They will work on a global agreement to succeed the Kyoto protocol – which came into force in 2005 and commits rich countries to cut their emissions by 2012 – after the talks at Copenhagen last year failed to reach any reasonably pervasive deal to replace it.
However the Copenhagen Accord, an Obama led effort to create a basis and a platform for further talks, started taking shape with many nations - 79 so far – having committed to reduce emissions and Carbon Intensity by set amounts…
The COP16 conference, will be held at the American Tourist Zone of the Carbbean vacation spot, and mostly inside the Moon Palace hotel and the Cancun-messe as the UN zone.
The whole COP16, will run for two weeks, and is the major annual meeting in a series of UN conferences aimed at co-ordinating international action to tackle climate change.
What does COP16 stand for and who is taking part?
COP16 is the official name of the Cancún summit, which is the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The COP is the highest body of the UNFCCC and comprises environment ministers from 192 countries who have met once a year since the 1992 Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro. COP15 was held in Copenhagen, which saw thousands of diplomats, advisers, campaigners and journalists in attendance, along with heads of state including 136 Prime Ministers, Premieres, Presidents and other heads of states along with UK’s PM Gordon Brown and US President Barack Obama.
By comparison, Cancún is expected to be much more subdued. No heads of state are expected to attend. The top US negotiator, Todd Stern, has said the meeting would revert to the level of ministers and senior foreign ministry officials.
What was the outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference? After two weeks of exhaustive talks, world leaders failed to deliver a legally binding commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions, instead producing just a two-page self styled Copenhagen Accord. A document that was just saying, that future temperature rises should be limited to 2C. It was merely “recognised” by governments. Significantly, there was progress on a scheme to pay developing countries for keeping their forests to reduce emissions, and $30bn (£19bn) in climate was promised for 2010-2012, rising to $100bn (£63bn) annually by 2020.
What are the hopes for the Cancún meeting?
Expectations for the meeting’s outcome are very low…
Several key players have gone on record saying they do not expect a binding deal this year, including UN secretary-general, Ban Ki-moon; the EU commissioner for climate action, Connie Hedegaard; and lastly and most spectacularly the executive secretary of the UNFCCC and official leader of the COP16, Christiana Figueres who went on record saying that she does not expect to see a Climate deal in her own lifetime.
Pretty pessimistic statement from the COP leader, either about her own life span or about the intelligence of the Human Species.
Even Figueres’s predecessor, Yvo de Boer, said in March that the challenge for Cancún would be to transform the Copenhagen accord into a “functioning architecture”
So it appears and is hoped the negotiations will set the basis for a new climate change treaty at further meetings in 2011. It is hoped that piecemeal progress will be made in the areas of transferring financing and technology from rich to poorer countries… but nothing else.
Are we being set up to Fail?
Because it seems that way to me…
What are the key sticking points?
One of the major issues is still that of “burden-sharing”.
The least-developed countries, small island states and African countries, will need to feel confident that an agreement is going to help them. Wealthier nations are expected to take responsibility to help fund developing nations to advance green technologies and a sustainable infrastructure. Industrialised countries will also need to show leadership by reducing their emissions at home.
Of course after the Credit crunch and the Worldwide banking crisis and depression over the Economic Recession, delivery of any funds is doubtful. Placing further jeopardy over the funding landscape, the debate over funding administration, corruption and transparency issues arose above the critical question over the governance of the Climate Aid funds. At Copenhagen, developed nations pledged to provide $30bn (£19bn) in financing by 2012 to help poorer nations solve the problems caused by climate change, with a total $100bn (£63bn) by 2020. Developing countries set to receive the aid will want to hear at Cancún that the money will be channelled through the UN, rather than the World Bank. There are also continuing concerns over enforcing the Copenhagen promise that climate aid will be always separate from the existing international aid.
Are there any reasons to feel optimistic?
Very few…
Negotiators may well benefit from a subdued tone at Cancún. As leaders have been working to temper expectations, envoys will be under less pressure to deliver dramatic outcomes. Negotiators from the developing world look poised to make the most of the talks.
For example, “Redd” forestry talks have been progressing and this will help fund safeguards to prevent further deforestation in the Amazon and rainforests elsewhere if defined right. Ofcourse it can also spell the death of ancient forests everywhere if the REDD definition of forest, isn’t differentiated from new plantation forests. Those plantation forests allow dishonest governments to destroy their ancient Biodiverse forests and get compensated by the UNFCCC credit mechanisms for CDMs, for this by creating mono culture crop forests for the production of Biofuels and Palm oil.
Destroying ancient rainforests or classical first growth forests for Biofuels and such… is a crime. Getting paid for it with Climate Aid is a major crime against humanity.
Who are the key players to watch out for?
Christiana Figueres, the executive secretary of UNFCCC. Why Figueres is in this position is unknowable and rather defeatist towards any possibility and hope for a deal, because as she publicly states, she believes that, ”A single, definitive and all-encompassing deal is unlikely to happen in her lifetime.”
Go Figure…
Mexico’s chief delegate, Fernando Tudela, is hoping for a “spectacular breakthrough” after some tequila rounds of shots…
The influential “Basic” bloc (Brazil, South Africa, India and China). A gravitation of countries to Basic could undermine the G77, whose Yemeni chair, Abu Bakr al-Qirbi, is seen as weaker than his Sudanese predecessor, Lumumba Di-Aping.
Dessima Williams, who chairs the Alliance of Small Island States (Aosis) and Bruno Tseliso Sekoli, spokesman for the Least Developed Countries (LDC) bloc.
Connie Hedegaard, EU climate action commissioner, who is “not too optimistic” about the state of negotiations. • Xie Zhenhua, China’s lead climate official, who wants to see developed countries “do more and do better”.
Todd Stern, the US special envoy for climate change. The biggest carbon polluter, the US has been unable to pass domestic legislation committing itself to any cuts whatsoever, and wants to build on the Copenhagen accord.
What will happen after Cancún?
The Indian environment minister, Jairam Ramesh, jumping the gun, announced in September that the focus was already post-Cancún and de Boer said that he thinks an agreement cannot be made at COP17, which will be held in South Africa in December 2011 but maybe later on… He of course now works for the Big clients of PWC, oil companies and the like.
And of course both these men speak for the interests of their industrial Energy and Fossil Fuel intensive Economies and Business partners to whom they are beholden body and soul.
Maybe Figueres is there too, with Ramesh and De Boer, but one thing is for certain:
With a host of powerful Business interests, all descending in Cancun to celebrate their not paying anything to drown your children in smog, and to be feted for saving the world through Greenwash and PR, while drowning it in CO2 emissions and making money over fist we are indeed set for a showdown.
Business people like to make money. That is a given. Stealing from the Ecosystem, the Environment and the Atmospheric commons is another given. Of course they have to be forgiven for thinking their particular industry, be it the Transport sector and the Airlines, or the Power and Utility industry, or the primary Energy sector, or the Military, or National Security, or their Mama’s patch, whatever, they have to be exempted from paying anything for their emissions.
But we beg to differ…
Because through the public bailouts of the banking and Finance business this impression has been created. And of course they demand a public bailout every day they go about to conduct their businesses. That is what happens when we don’t charge them for treating the atmosphere as an open sewer. We have caused them to be conditioned to believe that capping carbon is somebody else’s business… and that they can go on polluting the Commons at will.
But perhaps things are changing…
The very public capping method of the French Revolution was called the guillotine. Similar public Carbon capping methods might be coming back in the future if the Business leaders insist on behaving like Marie Antoinette in the face of the very existential crisis for billions of folks across this Earth.
The iliterati glitterati and the super rich and famous Greenwash ”Saviours of the World” will strut their stuff at the Ritz Hotel on December 4th and 5th with their PR chicks and aggressive male cheerleaders. Reward them freely – please.
Watch for them at the Ritz hotel in Cancun at the World Climate Summit, arm yourselves with old Cream pies and yoghurt and offer them a taste, face first.
This ancient foodies extraordinaire Belgians and their technique of confectionary appreciation, wearing cream pie on the face, is much in vogue in Brussels and now has to make it’s debut in Cancun.
Because these callous folks forget that by lobbying hard for exemptions from carbon Tax legislation and emissions reductions, they are smoldering the chances for any success of regulatory efforts to curb carbon. This in turn is the real plan of course but the insistent Greenwashing of the Corporate cheerleaders convinces the targeted masses of their propaganda, that any action is unnecessary since these successful people know better. Ignorance is Bliss again here.
But for the Business Leadership to be celebrating Ignorance and Dishonesty, is the antithesis of Enterprise. As a matter of fact it is the point around which we all actively agitate. Business has been the brake against any Climate legislation. Just look at America and it’s Palin tea party style celebration of ignorance and hate. Is this what the Business leaders want? TYo smolder our common human future? And this is exactly what they are doing in Cancun in their high falluttin’ meetings and they save the world once more with caviar and bubbly. And by doing this they are smoldering your children head first, having us end up with the wolves once more guarding the sheep.
Furthermore, any potential deal struck in the future in South Africa in Brazil, in Bali or in the Moon itself, would be unlikely to be a magic bullet for tackling climate change, having lost the threshold of time necessary to reverse course and find a common sense approach to our warming Planet woes.
Yours,
Pano
PS:
Figueres believes a single, definitive and all-encompassing deal is unlikely to happen in her lifetime, but is unwilling to relinquish her chair for someone else who might not be that depressed and who could be an Optimist Leader to bring about a Climate Deal…
Ultimately, governments may need to address divisions over the question of extending the Kyoto protocol if no new treaty is reached by its 2012 expiry.
If a new treaty and an extension of Kyoto fail to materialise, it is quite possible there will be a period without any global commitment to cut emissions.
