Rhetoric offers glimpse into low hopes at UN climate summit

By Chris Cermak Nov 30, 2010, 17:43 GMT

   Cancun, Mexico - Government negotiators may be highly skilled in diplomatic speak, but it doesn't take a trained linguist to see that the bar has been set low at the start of this week's UN climate change summit.

   Governments and environmentalists were falling over backwards Monday to put their best spin on just how, well, mediocre their expectations are for the latest round of talks in the Mexican resort city of Cancun.

   'It's not the moment of the Creation. We know that,' said host Mexican President Felipe Calderon on the opening day of the two-week summit, also noting there would be no 'parting of the mountains.'

   Calderon then turned to American football to make a slightly more optimistic point: 'We're not going to get a touchdown. But we are going to get a very good 1st and 10, with a very good pass.'

   For those not well-versed in the game, the point here: Don't expect any grand bargains in Cancun that will lead to a new global treaty on confronting the threat posed by climate change.

   What the world can expect, however, are decisions on key side issues that are still critical to helping the world reduce emissions of greenhouse gases and keep global temperatures at a manageable level.

   Optimists expect the summit to establish a 'green fund' to help poor countries adapt to global warming. Deals are also likely on an incentive programme to help developing nations end deforestation, and setting up a network of technology centres to help countries exchange know-how.

   Those small hopes could not be more different than the much-vaunted Copenhagen summit last December, when more than 100 world leaders met in the hopes of reaching a legally binding climate treaty. The talks collapsed, with no global deal reached.

   For many, the expectations - and metaphors - got out of line in Copenhagen, as all sides set expectations far too high for negotiators who always knew that finalizing a treaty would be exceedingly difficult.

   'We realize that the expectations generally for (Copenhagen) were so great that the result disappointed everyone, and we are trying to avoid that problem,' said Calderon, who hopes memories of Cancun will be different.

   Indeed, governments and environmentalists seem to have learned their lesson this year, using their best metaphors to portray Cancun as an exercise in trust-building and smaller steps to confront global warming.

   'We think that Cancun can be the calm after Copenhagen's political storm,' said Tim Gore of the aid group Oxfam International.

   Danish Climate Minister Lykke Friis went for a little self-effacing humour at her country's failure to broker an agreement: 'Let's show the world that climate change was not put on ice in freezing Copenhagen. Let's show the world that Cancun can.'

   Despite the lower expectations, environmentalists still hold out hope that Cancun can begin to rebuild a process that will one day lead to a new global climate treaty, perhaps as early as the next climate summit in South Africa in late 2011.

   On the opposite end, the failure of Copenhagen and the lack of ambitious goals at this year's summit has some warning that the United Nations process itself could be in jeopardy if the talks were to collapse in Cancun.

   Or, in the words of Friis: 'If we make a belly flop in Cancun, nobody wants to jump back into the pool.'

   US deputy climate envoy Jonathan Pershing sought to counter these fears with a little help from the always quotable author Mark Twain, who once famously wrote about rumours of his own demise: 'Reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.'