Why is the Cancun summit so important?

In theory, the Cancun summit will provide the last opportunity to put in place a global agreement in time to succeed the Kyoto Protocol’s first implementation phase which ends in 2012.

Countries had agreed (in the Bali Road Map of 2007) to put a successor agreement in place by the end of 2009. This would have allowed governments to integrate the treaty into individual national initiatives.

But time is running out. Yvo de Boer, the outgoing executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) said that a comprehensive deal at Cancun is unlikely but countries could possibly agree on an implementation architecture for the treaty.

Preparing a new climate change agreement in BonnCOP 16

Copenhagen’s climate conference yielded incomplete results, so UN Climate Change negotiators are preparing a new global agreement that will be discussed in Cancun in November 2010.

A series of preparatory meetings are being held between June and August in Bonn, Germany. On 11 June, 5,500 participants from 185 governments announced the first agreement on a text that will guide discussions leading to an eventual treaty on reducing greenhouse gases.

If the draft text is adopted, the Kyoto Protocol will end in 2012 without a legally binding successor instrument. Negotiations in Cancun therefore need to target a legally-binding agreement to prolong the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period.

Yvo de Boer said in a press release on 12 June, “The progress made during the two weeks opens the way for Cancun to deliver the full package of operational measures that will allow developing countries to take faster, stronger action across all areas of climate change.”

At the end of June, de Boer stated that 76 developed and developing countries had made emission reduction and limitation pledges.

All industrialised countries have pledged voluntary actions to limit their greenhouse emissions; however Yvo de Boer said that those pledges fall well short of the minus 25% to minus 40% range of CO2 reductions that need to be made by 2020 in order to keep the global temperature rise below 2° Celsius (3.6° F) by 2050.

Yvo de Boer said, “Take all current pledges and plans from all countries and we will still not stop emissions from growing in the next 10 years … the pledges made by developed countries so far add up to about 12-19% of needed emissions cuts (over 1990 levels) by 2020.”

We hope that the meetings between now and November in Cancun will provide enough opportunities to advance any official future agreements.  An agreement needs to be in place as it will provide clear goals and objectives for businesses and the private sector.

What did the Copenhagen Accord set out to do?

• Set a 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) temperature limit with a
  provision to review this target by 2015.
• Allocate US$30 billion for developing nations to combat climate change
  up to 2012 with industrialised nations pledging to mobilise US$100 billion
  per year by 2020.

The private sector’s role:

Copenhagen did not provide the clear policy that the private sector was hoping for. The private sector needs to play a key role to ensure that climate targets can be delivered.

So where does it leave us, greenies and more importantly, where does it leave the planet?  Call me pessimist but in this day of economical recession, I dont believe for a second that Cancun will be any different from Copenhagen and by this I mean: a complete FAILURE!