What Must Happen In Cancun At COP16
That Can Make It A Success?
By Marianne de Nazareth
24 July, 2010
Countercurrents.org
With the exit of the charismatic Yvo de Boer as executive secretary recently, Christiana Figueres was appointed as the new Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on 17 May 2010. The appointment was endorsed by the Bureau of the Convention.
Ms. Figueres has been involved in climate change negotiations since 1995. She was a member of the Costa Rican negotiating team and represented Latin America and the Caribbean on the Executive Board of the Clean Development Mechanism in 2007, before being elected Vice President of the Bureau of the Conference of the Parties 2008-2009.
To set the tone for the coming COP16 slated to be held in Cancun, Mexico, Ms Figueres in a statement said, “ Last year, we saw the emergence of high level political will to tackle climate change as the defining challenge of our times. Today I want to address two issues with you: First, why governments need to make further progress now .. and …secondly, what next steps are not only possible but essential.
First, to the role of governments:
Only governments, working together, can mobilise the human ingenuity, innovation and initiative to set free the full power of societies, science, and business to meet the climate challenge.
Governments must set full sail ahead to capture the powerful winds of change that humanity is wanting to release.
In Cancún, governments can set those sails higher. They can capture pledges they have made and begin to implement them … fully appreciating that what is agreed may not be at the level which science demands … but that it is the next essential step in the right direction.
Governments have both the opportunity and responsibility to build on past efforts in five key areas.
First, they need to resolve what to do with their public pledges to cut emissions.
All industrialised countries have made public pledges to cut emissions by 2020 … and in addition, 38 developing countries have submitted plans to limit their emissions growth.
The industrialized country commitments amount to a range of between 12 to 19 percent cuts in their emissions by 2020.
That is, as you know, still well below the 25 to 40 percent cut which the IPCC says gives us half a chance of staying below a 2 degree average global temperature rise. There is no doubt that industrialized countries need to raise their ambitions to cut emissions.
To progress, governments must also have a more serious conversation about the Kyoto Protocol … the only existing international agreement with legal status to verify emission reductions. Governments need to address divisions over a second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol after 2012, not least for clarity on the future of the carbon market.
Second, governments seem on track to agree to a comprehensive set of ways and means to allow developing countries to take concrete climate action. This includes adapting to climate change, limiting emissions growth; getting adequate finance; boosting use of technology; promoting sustainable forestry; and building up the skills and capacity to do all this. All developing countries need help to take these actions, but the poorest and most vulnerable among them need the support most urgently.
Third, industrialised nations can turn their pledges of funding into reality.
Last year, they promised 30 billion dollars in fast-track financing for developing country adaptation and mitigation efforts through 2012.
Developing nations see the transparent and real allocation of this money as a critical signal that industrialised nations are committed to progress in the broader negotiations.
Industrialised countries also pledged to find ways and means to raise 100 billion dollars a year by the year 2020. The Secretary-General's Advisory Group on Finance is looking at possible sources of this funding and will report to governments at the end of October.
Fourth, countries want to see that what they agree with each other is measured, reported and verified in a transparent and accountable way.
It's called MRV in the negotiations and it's not complex. Countries simply want to know that what they see is what they get. Progress here will be a gauge that countries are moving to common ground.
Fifth, and last, governments agree that pledges need to be captured in a binding manner. But they still need to work out how to do that.
Binding agreements among governments can be on an international level, on a national level, or can be based on compliance with rules and regulations. They could also involve a mix of all three, and governments are currently considering them all.
It's important to note that the combination of the last two elements, accountability and binding action, is essential for societies, science, and business to be confident that clean, green strategies are being pursued and will be rewarded globally, as well as locally.
The challenge governments face is not a small one. What's at stake here is the long term, sustainable future of humanity.
We know the milestones science has set -- by when and by how much emissions must drop to have a chance of avoiding the worst. It requires nothing less than an energy revolution both in production and consumption.
A transformation like this is built by grasping the politically possible at every step … turning countless, diverse and sometimes conflicting interests into the common good.
Governments have been building common ground since the UNFCCC began in Rio in 1992, and then, consecutively, in Berlin, Kyoto, Marrakesh, Bali, yes! Copenhagen … and now Cancún.
The idea that a single magic, global agreement could solve all climate issues does not do justice to the crucial steps already achieved and, most importantly, dangerously ignores the need to keep innovating.
In Cancún, governments can harness the politically possible in order to achieve concrete and unmistakable progress,” she said.
In a recent press conference held in Bonn she replied to several vital questions posed to her by reporters from across the globe. An extract of some questions and answers: there is news that the UN’s climate secretariat is now preparing for a plan B in the event that we don’t see a replacement treaty to the KP by 2012. So does this mean we are preparing for the end of the Kyoto Protocol in general? Is this the first death knell? 
Christiana: As I have said, governments need to have a serious, honest and franc conversation about the Kyoto Protocol. Governments requested from the secretariat an analysis of the legal options that are available to them in order to avoid the gap between the first and second commitment period and the secretariat has actually produced a legal document that looks at all of the options available to Parties to avoid any regulatory gap. What Parties will decide to do, which of these options they may decide to take on board or what combination of options is completely up to the Parties. What is important here is that that analysis has been requested, which we can take as a sign that governments are ready to have that conversation.
Q: With regard to the document released on Monday, called the Kyoto gap. If there is a gap, what does this mean for the carbon market and what do countries need to do to avoid the gap?
Christiana: As I have just said, Parties are considering in fact how to avoid the regulatory gap and the paper produced by the secretariat looks at the various options on how to avoid the gap. One of the elements that are an integral part of the Kyoto Protocol is the international carbon market and certainly in looking at how to avoid the gap, one of the interests of the Parties and governments is to not interrupt the international carbon market. Having said that, I should also emphasize that the carbon market is not necessarily linked to the Kyoto Protocol and Parties could perfectly well, if they should so choose to, institute a carbon market within whatever agreement or whatever regime they choose to put forward in the post 2012 period.
Q: I have a very simple question about finance. How important do you think it is, if any progress is going to be made in Mexico bearing in mind all the suspicions of developing countries and so on, that the position on fast-track financing is absolutely clear and transparent with genuinely new and additional money having being committed in a verifiable manner?
Christiana: I have often referred to the fast-track financing as the golden key to Cancun. The reason why I feel it is the golden key is because while it has been a pledge that industrialized countries have made, it has been taken by developing countries as a signal that industrialized countries are really committed to this overall package on climate change over the next years. In addition to that, the fact that fast-track financing was committed for the years 2010, 2011 and 2012 means that by the time we get to Cancun, which is the end of 2010, it is very evident that developing countries expect not only plans and identification of where it’s going to come from in the budget, but they expect actually real allocation of that fast-track financing having already occurred for the year 2010, and in addition they expect that to be divided between mitigation and adaptation. Somehow, we tend to forget adaptation and the fact is adaptation needs to be put front and centre into the next chapter of the climate regime. So fast-track financing is absolutely critical for the productive engagement of Parties in Cancun.
Q What must happen in Cancun that you can say afterwards that it has been a success? What is the minimum requirement ?
Christiana: At Cancun, governments can take the next necessary steps. They can certainly harness what is politically possible in order to achieve concrete and unmistakable progress in these negotiations. Exactly how the form of how governments will want to do that is up to gov’s. What is clear is what the contents of that agreement is going to be and that is mitigation, implementation of adaptation, technology and forestry, financing, both fast-track and long-term, accountability, the MRV issue, and the final decision on how to package and what legal form those elements are going to take.
Q: Bearing in mind the significant work that still needs to be done in the various working groups, how likely is it that Parties will have to resort to legal options to avoid a gap, such as extending the current Kyoto targets after 2012?
Christiana: Yes, you may have not heard my answer to that before. It its entirely up to Parties how they choose deal with to the challenge of avoiding the regulatory gap. Countries have been struggling with that for a while, but they did request the secretariat at the last session here in June to do a legal analysis of how to avoid that gap. The secretariat has produced that analysis and has laid before the parties several options that they may consider in order to avoid the gap. Which of these will be taken on by Parties is entirely their decision.
Q : Another question: How likely do you think it is, given your position, that Parties will need to resort to one of those options.
Again, that is up to the Parties to decide. What Parties are focusing on is how is how to avoid the gap and then what they have in front of them as a menu of options. And they are going to have to choose either one or a combination of those options.
Q: In your introduction you talked about industrialized nations, do you include China and India in industrialized nations?
Christiana: I make use of that word in the context of the Climate Convention, that divides industrialized nations from developing nations and describes very different responsibilities to those two groups of nations.
Q: What do you think will happen if in Cancun conclusions are made but they are not put into a legally binding form? We know from other international conferences, for instance from UNCTAD, that we can be talking for decades and making conclusions and conclusions, but still nothing happens?
Christiana: What I expect in Cancun is that the UN negotiations will take one more step in the process that was already started in 1992 to deliver increasingly robust and effective climate agreements. In Cancun they can take the next climate agreement and let me be clear that will not be the last climate agreement. It will not be the last global climate agreement. The fact is that humanity needs to continue to innovate. We need to remain smart. We need to grow much smarter, we need to grow much quicker in the way that we are addressing climate change and governments will be taking step by step, but there will not be one final agreement that solves that. So let’s look at Cancun as a very, very important step, but not the final solution.
Q Last week in Canberra, in Australia, a group of scientists and parliamentarians suggested to institutionalize a form of international parliament to support your processes. What do you think of that, could that help further the issue of climate change?
Christiana: There are many additional avenues to the UNFCCC negotiations. That is, I think, a very constructive suggestion. Parliamentarians do hold a important key and they could bring some fresh ideas and some fresh air. As you know climate change is discussed also in the context of the G20, of the G8, of the MEF, and all of these I find very, very helpful and very welcomed venues, because they provide governments with the opportunity to speak perhaps with more frankness, more honesty and sometimes also with much more creativity. And many new ideas are born in those other venues. However, ultimately all of those very good ideas and suggestions do need to come back to the UNFCCC negotiations, because governments wish that to happen. Governments are calling for more inclusion and there is no other avenue that allows all governments to participate as does the UNFCCC negotiations.
(the writer is a media fellow with the UNFCCC)
