All eyes will be on Cancun, Mexico's scenic and sunny tourist resort and the venue of United Nations Climate Change Conference which began yesterday. It ends on December 10. But it's hardly going to be a holiday for the 15,000 people representing country delegates and officials from UN agencies, joined by non-governmental groups, international environmentalist organisations and the world media, as there's an urgent task at hand for all nations to stop the Earth from becoming hotter by taking action on mitigation, transparency and accountability.
No one realistically expects the Cancun summit to deliver a global agreement but the UN and host country Mexico believe the 194 nations that would be attending the conference can yield significant progress on several key areas on climate change funding, reforestation and promotion of clean technology.
These can in fact be the building blocks into an agreement–maybe next year in South Africa–that can start to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.
A broad agreement on which countries, particularly the major emitters, agree to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions is necessary to reduce global warming.
With such clear-cut expectations in Cancun on these areas which seem to have found consensus among countries, rich and poor, developed and non-developed, Cancun might be spared the ugly debacle that took place at the Copenhagen talks in the Danish capital a year ago.
Instead of agreeing to a post-Kyoto framework, the December 2009 meeting ended with a bare-minimum agreement when delegates "noted" an accord struck by the United States, China and other emerging powers but which fell far short of the conference's original goals.
The key points of the accord included the objective to keep the maximum temperature rise to below two degrees Celsius; the commitment to list developed country emission reduction targets and mitigation action by developing countries for 2020; US$30 billion short-term funding for immediate action till 2012 and US$100 billion annually by 2020 in long-term financing, as well as mechanisms to support technology transfer and forestry. Naturally, this accord is a political agreement and does not have the legal framework which mandates countries that have signed on to it to carry out any of these obligations.
So far, the industrialised countries that pledged the US$30 billion in fast-track financing for developing country adaptation and mitigation efforts through 2012 have not yet demonstrated their commitment towards this as funds still have not been distributed to the vulnerable countries that need it the most.
In fact, as Cancun dawns upon us, industrialised countries could demonstrate their commitment and seriousness towards progress in the broader negotiations by releasing those much needed funds.
Already, the chair of the group of Least Developed Countries, Bruno Sekoli says poorer nations are still frustrated at the pace at which industrialised nations' commitments to deliver US$30 billion of so-called "fast-start" climate funding were being realised.
"The promises (of aid) are there, and they keep coming, but we don't see anything on the ground," he said, highlighting how the issue–which is of critical importance to developing countries–is likely to lead to tensions at the Cancun summit.
Small islands and coastal countries are extremely vulnerable to rising sea levels, coral bleaching and are also witnessing an alarming increase in the number of hurricanes and strengthened wind and gale ferocity.
Recovery efforts running into hundreds of millions of dollars also place heavy burdens on the already limited resources of these developing countries.
Some low-lying islands surrounded by water such as the Maldives are becoming entirely uninhabitable because of the rise in the water and are threatened by being wiped away from the face of the earth.
Executive secretary of the UNFCCC, Christiana Figueres sees Cancun making progress and advancing action to mitigate climate change but warned that there must be compromise in the efforts of all countries.
"Cancun will be a success, if parties compromise," said Figueres, at a press briefing in Bonn, Germany in mid-November. "They have to balance their expectations so that everyone can carry home a positive achievement while allowing others to do the same – that's how multilateral agreements are made elsewhere and it is how it has to happen in climate, too."
Patricia Espinosa, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Mexico and incoming president of COP 16/CMP 6, said based on the extensive consultations Mexico has undertaken, there is increasing consensus on the need to act and to act now.
"There is widespread awareness that delaying the decision-making process increases the cost and the difficulty of achieving our goal of stabilising the world's average temperature at a level that will prevent the worst impacts of climate change.
Thus, I am confident that in Cancun we have a real opportunity to make significant progress," she said.
Most countries, she said, also recognise that in Cancun they can adopt a set of decisions that is comprehensive, balanced, substantive and action oriented that are rooted in the convention and in the Kyoto Protocol.
"We know that Cancun will not be the end of our road to stabilise the global average temperature, but must be a significant step towards that end.
"The set of decisions should include actions in mitigation, including REDD. adaptation; technology. finance and capacity-building, among others, and should ensure transparency and contribute to further trust among countries.
"On the Kyoto Protocol track, the outcome should also be balanced, and provide confidence on the continuation of the Protocol and its mechanisms. We know that there are challenges and that we must be creative to ensure solutions that are balanced and recognize the different views among countries," according to the Mexican Foreign Affairs Minister. At a November 4, Pre-COP ministerial meeting in Mexico City, Figueres identified "two weighty and politically charged sets of issues that need to be brought into balance on the scales of political compromise."
On the issue of mitigation, the UNFCCC chief laid out some provocative questions on how mitigation targets pledged by developed countries can be formalised; how will they be implemented accountably; how will these pledges help to advance negotiations under the Kyoto Protocol and how will developing countries further their own mitigation responses in a manner that is perceived by all to be fair.
On the need to balance three broader issues – again Figueres asked some hard questions:
First, how can the transparency of developing countries' mitigation actions be balanced to the support that developed countries must provide in order to operationalise adaptation, finance and technology?
Second, how can long-term finance be raised in a predictable and sufficient manner and third, how can the impacts of response measures be addressed in a satisfactory way?
In response to her own questions, Figueres said the balances can be achieved if governments are flexible, and work is organised in an effective manner, and texts–areas that have not yet reached consensus–are brought down to a manageable size.
(Linda Hutchinson-Jafari, the Trinidad and Tobago correspondent for Thomson-Reuters News Service and is also the editor of Earth Conscious magazine, will be attending the Climate Change Conference in Cancun, Mexico)