UN climate summit walks fine line for balanced deal

By Chris Cermak Dec 11, 2010, 11:34 GMT

Cancun, Mexico - The world's governments have answered the obituaries written of the UN process for tackling climate change, managing to find just the right level of give-and-take to reach an agreement at this week's UN summit in Mexico.

Virtually all sides agreed the deal reached in Cancun was far from perfect. The agreement papered over many questions, such as how to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, and pushed into next year major decisions on what any future global climate treaty could look like.

But the vagueness over a future global treaty paved the way for setting up some key support mechanisms to help developing countries build up their responses to climate change, including setting up a Green Climate Fund as well as adaptation and technology committees.

With expectations low heading into Cancun and trust shattered after world leaders failed to agree a global treaty at last year's Copenhagen summit, most environmental groups declared themselves happy, and some even surprised, by the breadth of the Cancun outcome.

'I think there was a real recognition that what we needed to do was stop spinning our wheels and start moving forward,' said Stewart Maginnis of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature in an interview.

'Balance' had been the buzzword throughout the two-week summit in Cancun, at times threatening to pull the process apart as countries demanded progress on their own priorities before moving forward on others.

Japan refused to back an extension beyond 2012 of the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that only limits the emissions of industrial nations and was never ratified by the United States. The aim was to pressure the US and China, the world's two largest polluters, to sign up to a single global treaty to cut emissions.

But developing countries including China, demanded a clear sign that wealthy countries would continue Kyoto, the lone global climate treaty currently curbing their emissions, before they signed up to any deal.

The United States meanwhile blocked a deal on setting up a climate fund and other initiatives for the poor until major emerging economies signed up to greater international checks on whether they were living up to their pledges to curb climate change.

The walls slowly began to come down over the final 24 hours. China agreed to greater transparency, allowing the US to unblock its hold on other support mechanisms.

Maginnis said governments seemed to realize that 'it wouldn't be possible to just cherry pick a couple of successes. This had to be a balanced mix.'

In the end, the divides over greenhouse gas emissions were resolved simply by weakening much of the language, leaving many decisions for next year or beyond. Countries in the Kyoto Protocol agreed to work toward an extension, but left open whether that extension would be legally binding on countries.

Similarly, the US and China signed onto a separate text that said questions of 'legal form' for any future global climate treaty would be worked out over the coming year.

'We should not see this Cancun conference as an end,' said Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa, who chaired the talks. 'We should see this rather as a beginning.'

No timeline was set for reaching a final, comprehensive deal on a global climate treaty, though many ministers pushed for a more comprehensive deal by the next year's UN summit in Durban, South Africa.

But Elliot Diringer of the US-based Pew Center on Global Climate Change told dpa that governments were right not to formally set Durban as the conference that would achieve a breakthrough.

'Any near term deadline would be a mistake,' he said. 'It would be setting up another Copenhagen.'