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Journalism of Courage
The dream of a comprehensive international climate treaty has survived to live another day. After last two days of almost round the clock negotiations at this Mexican resort city,the 193 countries of UN Framework Convention on Climate Change managed to agree on a weak and general set of Cancun Agreements that has left almost all the important issues to be resolved at a later date.
But most significantly,the talks did not break down,as was being feared,and the countries agreed to carry the process forward to next year. That alone was able to bring widespread cheer at the meeting venue and earned the conference president Mexican foreign minister Patricia Espinosa loud and prolonged applause from countries for ensuring a mutually-agreed outcome despite the antics of Bolivia which tried its best to scuttle the consensus till the very end.
The next climate change conference will be held in Durban,South Africa. The negotiations will,however,continue through most of the year.
This is a very significant result for the future of multilateral negotiations. It might not be the best deal for climate,but at least the multilateral process has survived. We will continue our efforts to find and equitable and balanced climate agreement next year, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said. India played a lead role in negotiating the Cancun Agreements and most of its concerns get reflected in the 32-page package of decisions that was adopted in the wee hours of Saturday.
The Cancun Agreements are expected to re-energise the climate talks which had suffered a major setback in the highly surcharged conference in Copenhagen last year. Copenhagen Accord,the political document that had emerged in the Danish capital,had not been approved by every member country a necessary requirement under consensus-driven UN process and resulted in a sharp divide and deep mistrust between nations.
Civil society organizations offered a guarded welcome to the Cancun Agreements,saying while they will restore confidence and trust into the talks,there was a serious lack of environmental integrity and the decisions fell way short of what was needed from the environment point of view.
The countries have left open the possibility of reaching a legally-binding outcome in future,agreed to create a Green Climate Fund in which rich and industrialized countries will mobilize 100 billion annually by 2020,and brought in a stricter regulations for ensuring transparency of actions of both developed and developing countries. See box for important decisions.
On the other hand,all contentious issues have been deferred for the time being. The delicate issue of continuation of the Kyoto Protocol for a period beyond 2012 something which Japan and Russia have ruled out has been addressed with some ingenuity in language. The countries agreed to ensure that there is no gap between the first and second commitment periods of the Kyoto Protocol. The first commitment period comes to an end in 2012. Japan welcomed the decisions.
There is no quantified target for global emission reductions by the year 2050. A reference to at least 50 per cent reductions in this time-frame compared to 1990 levels was removed at Indias insistence. No peak year the time by which the global emissions should peak and then start coming down has been defined.
