Cancun UN agreement 2010

Reflections on the Cancun Agreements

One's view of the 'Cancun Agreements', the outcome 16th UN Climate Change Conference, will depend on whether one is a 'glass half full' or 'glass half empty' person.   The ensuing vitriol of the climate change deniers suggests anyway that the process is back on track after the cobbled-together chaos at Copenhagen.  As Chris Huhne, Climate Change and Energy Secretary, who had worked hard for deal, said: 'We've made much more progress than anybody expected only weeks ago.”
But what has been achieved?  Well, if you go to the Climate Change Secretariat (UNFCCC) web-site you will find an up-beat press release.  You will also find an 'advance unedited version' of a dense and sober 30 page document entitled  “Outcome of the work of the Ad Hoc Working Group on long-term Cooperative Action under the Convention” supported by a large number of more specific documents (well worth reading).  In broad outline, it was agreed that global warming is a major problem, that every country must cut its greenhouse gas emissions (including protecting forests) and that the rich must make substantial financial contributions to help the poor achieve this.
Of course, we knew all this before the conference, but the significant fact is that everybody signed up.  Correction.  Bolivia alone stood out against the agreement on the grounds, it is reported, that the cuts proposed were not enough to prevent dangerous warming and that poor countries had been bullied into accepting it.  Undoubtedly Bolivia has a point; the really tough negotiations go on behind closed doors where rich and poor alike are fighting for their own interests.  Importantly, however, all are now signed up to the fact that controlling climate change is in their own interests.
If you will pardon two cliches, (1) the road to (climate) Hell is paved with good intentions and (2) the devil lies in the detail.  (1) The agreement is full of good intentions (mitigation, adaptation, finance, technology development & transfer, capacity building . . .) with some sensible if voluntary targets.  (2) Much of the detailed pre-conference disagreement had revolved around the successor to the Kyoto protocol.  Developing countries wanted a continuing focus on developed countries (historically responsible for the majority of the excess CO2 in the atmosphere) but developed countries wanted developing countries brought on board because they are by now major emitters.  As The Independent newspaper observed: the text of the agreement has such Byzantine subtlety that a decision can be put off, probably until the next summit in Durban in a year's time.  But then?
The extent of the horse-trading is indicated by what is missing.  The target (which some of us think too modest) of a 50% global cut in emissions (relative to 1990) by 2050 is replaced by 'substantially reduced emissions'.  The Green Climate Fund, for adaptation by developing and underdeveloped countries, is sort-of underway; the 'goal' of $100 billion per year by 2020 remains, but without any clear indication of how the money can be raised.  The target of a median mean temperature rise of no more 2 oC above the pre-industrial average remains on paper, but there is no date for global emissions to peak to achieve this. ('as soon as possible' is hardly a SMART target.)   Aviation and shipping escape for now and no-one has grasped the nettle of embedded (or embodied) carbon in our imports from China et al.  The good news is that a median 1.5 oC rise may be considered (in 2015) if a scientific review justifies it. (Tell that to king Canute.)
Our task is to plead the cause of the poorest and most vulnerable people and of the other species that share God's world.  It would seem that enough has been offered at Copenhagen (e.g. inadequate and not binding 'pledges' to cut emissions) and Cancun (e.g. Adaptation Framework, Green Climate Fund, Technology Mechanism and, of course, continuing dialogue) to keep the governments of nearly all developing and under-developed countries on board (which is more than was achieved in the world trade negotiations – referred to obliquely).   
Choose your metaphor.  We should be thankful that we are back on the tracks, but it will be a long hard road before there is even a 50:50 chance of 'saving the climate'.  The negotiators need all our encouragment and all our prayers.                         Charles Jolly