Cancun climate summit opens with warnings against delay

By Chris Cermak Nov 29, 2010, 20:07 GMT

Cancun, Mexico - World governments aimed to unclog the long-stalled talks on climate change as they opened a two-week United Nations summit in Mexico on Monday, warning that the dangers of global warming were already becoming a reality.

After the UN summit in Copenhagen last December, where talks on a new treaty to tackle global warming collapsed, negotiators said they hoped the Mexican resort city of Cancun will be the site of some concrete progress that could restore trust.

'You are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change,' said Christina Figueres, the UN's climate head. 'The UN climate process needs to remain the trusted venue for rising to the challenge.'

Negotiators have made clear there will be no new global treaty agreed in Cancun, but they expect deals on side issues like deforestation, the sharing of technologies, and creating a fund for developing countries to deal with the impact of climate change.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon said the effects of climate change were already felt, citing the most severe hurricanes on record in Mexico in 2010, flooding in Pakistan and a record heat wave in Russia. Aid group Oxfam in a report Monday found that 21,000 people died so far this year due to extreme weather events, more than twice as many as in 2009.

'Climate change is already a reality for us,' Calderon told the opening gathering. 'Climate change is beginning to make us pay for the fatal errors we as humanity have committed against the environment.'

Yet optimism ahead of the Cancun summit has been measured, and only about 20 world leaders are expected to attend. Some fear the international talks could still be hanging in the balance.

'It's crucial for the international community to prove that Cancun can deliver progress: if not, I fear that some parties would lose patience in the UN process,' European Union climate commissioner Connie Hedegaard said in Brussels Monday before departing for Mexico.

In the cross-hairs are the United States and China, which together emit about 40 per cent of the world's greenhouse gases and whose deep divisions have scuttled previous climate conferences.

US President Barack Obama has seen his climate policy thwarted by the failure of the US Congress to pass legislation forcing cuts in industrial emissions, and a stinging loss in legislative elections this month to Republicans that are more skeptical of global warming.

China has won praise for investing heavily in alternative energies in the past year as it overtook the United States as the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases. Yet the emerging Asian power has remained reluctant to accept demands that it sign up to a binding global treaty on cutting its pollution.

Martin Kaiser, director of international climate policy for Greenpeace in Germany, suggested governments needed to plow forward on an ambitious agreement and warned against using the lack of US action as an excuse for moving slowly.

'The United States will be blocked for many years, and that is why one should really continue negotiating without them,' Kaiser told the German Press Agency dpa. 'We can't hide behind the United States, otherwise we will see deadlock for many more years.'

Environmental groups are urging governments to get international talks back on track before it is too late, warning that global warming continues unabated as countries fail to live up to their commitments.

'At this point there is a clear disconnect between the stated goal of limiting global warming and international commitments in mitigation and finance,' said Gordon Shepherd, who heads the World Wildlife Fund's climate policy.

There is another element of urgency in Cancun as the Kyoto Protocol - the first global climate treaty - is set to expire in 2012, with no agreement currently in line to take its place.

A starting point for the two-week talks will be the Copenhagen Accord, a non-binding document thrashed out in the final days of last year's summit. The accord saw more than 130 countries lay out their national plans to help curb global warming, but the document was never agreed to by the entire UN plenary.

Governments expect the accord will be part of a 'balanced' package deal in Cancun that could be adopted by all countries and keep the international talks alive. It is hoped that UN members will accept the accord's commitment to keep global temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.