A NEW ROUND of United Nations (UN) climate talks got under way last Monday amidst growing appeals for action and compromise after the squabbles that drove last year’s global summit in Copenhagen close to disaster.
UN climate chief Christiana Figueres made a spirited call for consensus as she outlined the tasks facing the 12-day conference in the Mexican resort city of Cancun.
“A tapestry of holes will not work – and the holes can only be filled in through compromise. A richer tapestry of effort is needed,” she said.
Although the Caribbean hurricane season has just ended, the ongoing Framework Convention on Climate Change, (UNFCCC) is not expected to create much of a stir simply because of the general indifference about these issues.
At least this year, there is little expectation of radical policy changes for effective climate control. A little weary from last year’s Copenhagen Summit, this year’s participants are reportedly looking at more realistic goals.
The conference is part of an arduous process to craft a post-2012 treaty for curbing carbon emissions and channelling hundreds of billions of dollars in aid for badly-exposed poor countries.
These talks are seen in some quarters as the last chance to restore faith in a process battered by finger-pointing and nit-picking. It comes almost a year to the day since a stormy summit in Copenhagen, where a last-minute, face-saving compromise was lacerated by critics as a betrayal.
That trauma, coupled with the global economic crisis, caused climate change to almost disappear off the political radar screen, with the only prompts for action coming from the record heatwaves in Russia and recent floods in Pakistan.
Environmental statistics are dismal and demand remedial measures to be adopted immediately. It is therefore not surprising to find that both developed and developing countries point fingers at each other on carbon emissions and the impact of industrialisation and development on economies.
Initial reports from the UNFCCC suggest that negotiations have switched from a big vision to securing visible progress in small, practical steps and the focus is now on securing agreements, at least in principle, for setting up a “Green Fund” to help poor countries.
This would be a major step forward.
As long as developed states and developing economies do not hammer out a consensus, the status quo will remain.
It is high time that the two sides reach a consensus based on certain benchmarks set forth by the UN.
It is our fervent hope that Cancun bears more fruit than Copenhagen in showing the way forward and each country realises it has to make sacrifices to help
