Vigilia por el Protocolo de Kyoto en las escalinatas del Moon Palace. Crédito: Nastasya Tay/IPS

Por Stephen Leahy *

CANCÚN, 11 dic (IPS/TerraViva) – Si el éxito se logra dejando para después las decisiones difíciles, entonces la reunión climática de Cancún fue exitosa porque pospuso la adopción de metas cruciales sobre reducción de gases invernadero, financiación y bosques para la próxima conferencia, dentro de un año en Sudáfrica.

Las negociaciones internacionales para afrontar el cambio climático se desarrollaron a ritmo glacial en el palaciego y excesivamente refrigerado Moon Palace Resort, un recinto de varios hoteles en las afueras de la ciudad turística mexicana de Cancún.

Dos semanas de discusiones se prolongaron en la mañana de este sábado, ante la negativa de la delegación de Bolivia a aceptar un acuerdo débil que “podría llevar la temperatura media mundial a un aumento de más de cuatro grados”, dijo el negociador jefe, Pablo Solón.

Al final, las continuas objeciones bolivianas fueron sofocadas por los aplausos y vítores de más de 190 delegaciones nacionales cuando la presidenta de la conferencia, la canciller mexicana Patricia Espinosa, dio por concluida la asamblea declarando el “consenso sin Bolivia”.

“El texto de Cancún es una victoria falsa y vacía, impuesta sin consenso”, sostuvo Bolivia en un comunicado final.

El gobierno boliviano dijo sustentar su postura en la ciencia. La Organización Meteorológica Mundial sostuvo la semana pasada que la actual será la década más caliente de la historia desde 1853, año en que comenzaron los registros.

Las más de 100 páginas de documentos que conforman los “Acuerdos de Cancún” no harán nada para abatir las emisiones de gases que están calentando el planeta. Pero revivieron las negociaciones en la Organización de las Naciones Unidas, casi extintas en la reunión anterior, celebrada en Copenhague en 2009.

Muchos creen que lo acordado aquí sienta las bases para un tratado real a adoptarse en la 17 Conferencia de las Partes (COP 17) de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático, que comenzará en Durban, Sudáfrica, el 28 de noviembre de 2011.

“No puedo discrepar con Bolivia, basado en la ciencia, este acuerdo así como está significa cuatro grados más de calentamiento”, sostuvo el director ejecutivo de Greenpeace, Kumi Naidoo.

“El texto no es lo suficientemente bueno, pero rescata las negociaciones y quizás nos traiga un tratado realmente justo, ambicioso y equilibrado en Durban”, dijo Naidoo a TerraViva.

“Los gobiernos dieron una clara señal de dirigirse juntos hacia un futuro de bajas emisiones”, señaló la secretaria ejecutiva de la Convención, Christiana Figueres. Los Acuerdos de Cancún representan “los fundamentos esenciales sobre los cuales se construirá una ambición mayor y colectiva”, añadió en una declaración.

“Es patético que la comunidad internacional luche tanto para saltar un obstáculo tan bajo”, apuntó Naidoo.

“Nuestra única esperanza es movilizar un amplio movimiento, con todos los sectores de la opinión pública y la sociedad civil, antes de Durban”, añadió.

El viernes por la noche, en los corredores del Moon Palace el optimismo sorprendía. No sólo las negociaciones no habían colapsado, sino que había acuerdos formales en varios asuntos.

Por ejemplo, el reconocimiento de que las reducciones de gases de efecto invernadero deben dar respuesta a la recomendación científica –entre 25 y 40 por ciento menos de emisiones para 2020 respecto de los volúmenes de 1990—y que el aumento aceptable de la temperatura mundial debe mantenerse debajo de los dos grados, en lugar de llegar a los dos grados, como sostenía el Acuerdo de Copenhague.

Pero Canadá, Estados Unidos, Japón y Rusia consiguieron evitar un tratado vinculante sobre cómo lograr esas metas, presionando a favor del abandono del Protocolo de Kyoto –único tratado obligatorio sobre el cambio climático—para ser reemplazado por una mera promesa y un sistema de revisión, tal como proponía el Acuerdo de Copenhague, según la red Amigos de la Tierra Internacional.

Las promesas que se han efectuado hasta ahora en el marco del Acuerdo implican aumentos de la temperatura de entre tres y cinco grados, según la mayoría de los análisis.

“El pacto logrado es totalmente inadecuado y podría conducir a un cambio climático catastrófico”, dijo el presidente de Amigos de la Tierra, Nnimmo Bassey.

Los países en desarrollo deben reducir sus emisiones en 40 por ciento en el marco de un nuevo período de compromisos obligatorios del Protocolo de Kyoto, que debería regir desde 2013.

La actual meta de Kyoto, abatir las emisiones en 5,2 por ciento respecto de los volúmenes de 1990, debería alcanzarse en 2012. La mayoría de los países desarrollados que son parte del Protocolo cumplieron con sus obligaciones, excepto Canadá, que elevó su contaminación climática en 30 por ciento.

Ese país, Japón y Rusia advirtieron que no aceptarán un segundo compromiso en el marco de Kyoto. Y Estados Unidos se niega a ratificarlo. Esas posiciones casi hacen fracasar la reunión de Cancún, pues las naciones en desarrollo llevan mucho tiempo insistiendo en que los países ricos deben asumir nuevos compromisos en el Protocolo.

Pero la batalla final sobre Kyoto se librará en Durban.

También se adoptó un Fondo Climático Mundial con un compromiso de abastecerlo de 100.000 millones de dólares hasta 2020 y de 35.000 millones en 2012 para asistir a los países pobres en la reducción de sus emisiones y en la tarea de afrontar los impactos del calentamiento.

El Banco Mundial distribuirá los recursos en los tres primeros años, pero la administración y supervisión del Fondo estarán en manos de una junta directiva con participación igual de países desarrollados y en desarrollo, en el marco de la Convención.

La protección de los bosques tropicales es el gran avance que emerge de Cancún. Los gobiernos decidieron establecer un proceso de tres etapas para que los países con selvas frenen la deforestación y sean compensados por las naciones ricas. El acuerdo prevé proteger a las comunidades forestales y la biodiversidad.

Se estima que la deforestación aporta entre 15 y 20 por ciento de las emisiones de gases invernadero.

“Esto es mucho mejor que lo que conseguimos en Copenhague”, dijo Peg Putt, del grupo conservacionista estadounidense Wilderness Society.

“Hubo reconocimiento formal de los múltiples beneficios de la integridad de los bosques y ecosistemas”, dijo Putt a TerraViva.

Pero se necesita aún mucho trabajo para fortalecer las salvaguardas ambientales y sociales y definir los detalles del nuevo instrumento financiero para la Reducción de las Emisiones Causadas por la Deforestación y la Degradación de los Bosques (REDD).

La REDD sigue siendo polémica, Se objeta sobre todo que no se trate más que de un camino para movilizar entre 10.000 y 30.000 millones de dólares por año para proteger selvas mediante la venta de créditos de carbono a las industrias, en lugar de que éstas reduzcan sus emisiones.

“Siento que es un buen pronóstico para los bosques”, sostuvo Putt.

Muchos grupos indígenas y ecologistas rechazan de plano la REDD si ésta permite a las naciones ricas eludir las verdades reducciones de su contaminación mediante este sistema de compensaciones.

“Nos negamos a las falsas soluciones, como los mecanismos de mercado de carbono de la REDD”, dijo Tom Goldtooth, director ejecutivo de la Red Indígena Ambientalista.

La REDD entraña un nuevo conjunto de derechos de propiedad comercializables, basados en los árboles y otros servicios ambientales, dijo Goldtooth a TerraViva.

“Si vamos a salvar el clima, debemos centrarnos en soluciones reales que aseguren que los bosques no se talen y que los derechos de los pueblos se respeten”, agregó.

Si bien la postura de Bolivia será muy comentada, más de 500 organizaciones no gubernamentales reunidas en la Red de Acción Climática eligieron nuevamente a Canadá como el país más obstruccionista del mundo.

El gobierno derechista de Stephen Harper obtuvo el “Premio del Fósil Colosal” del año, por sus persistentes intentos de bloquear un acuerdo, en defensa de su sector petrolero, dedicado a la explotación de las arenas empetroladas.

“El sector de las arenas empetroladas de Canadá forma parte de la elite mundial, las cinco estrellas de la contaminación de gases invernadero”, indicó la Red. “Pese a su generalizada futilidad climática, los canadienses pueden tener la seguridad de que al menos hay una cosa en la que su país es muy, muy bueno”.

CANCÚN, Dec 11, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – If success is measured by delaying difficult decisions, then the Cancún climate meeting succeeded by deferring crucial issues over financing and new targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to the next Conference of the Parties meeting a year from now in Durban, South Africa.

Indigenous rights protestors bundled away from negotiations by police. Credit: Nastasya Tay/IPS

International negotiations to address climate change proceeded at a glacial pace in the palatial, over-air-conditioned Moon Palace Resort in Cancún. After two long weeks, final talks dragged on into the early hours of Saturday morning, with Bolivia’s refusal to accept a weak agreement that puts the world on a path that “could allow global temperatures to increase by more than four degrees”, said Pablo Solón, Bolivia’s chief negotiator.

In the end, Bolivia’s continued objections were drowned out by applause and cheering by more than 190 national delegations as the chair of the meeting, Mexico’s foreign secretary Patricia Espinosa, gaveled the meeting to a close declaring “a consensus without Bolivia”.

“The Cancún text is a hollow and false victory that was imposed without consensus,” Bolivia said in a final statement.

Based on the science, Bolivia is not wrong. The World Meteorological Organisation declared last week that the decade will close as the hottest 10-year period on record. The 100+ pages that form the “Cancún Agreements” will do nothing to curb greenhouse gas emissions warming the planet, but did revive the U.N. climate negotiation process after its near death in Copenhagen last year.

And most here believe this agreement sets the stage for a substantive agreement at the 17th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Durban next December.

“I can’t disagree with Bolivia that based on the science, this agreement as it stands means four degrees C of warming,” said Kumi Naidoo, executive director of Greenpeace.

“The text of the agreement is not good enough, but it does save the process and maybe this gets us to a truly fair, ambitious and balanced treaty in Durban,” Naidoo told TerraViva.

“Governments have given a clear signal that they are headed towards a low-emissions future together,” declared UNFCCC executive secretary Christiana Figueres. The Cancún Agreements represent “the essential foundation on which to build greater, collective ambition”, Figueres said in a statement.

“It’s pathetic the world community struggles so much just to climb over such a low bar,” commented Naidoo, whose hometown is Durban, South Africa. “Our only real hope is to mobilise a broad-based climate movement involving all sectors of the public and civil society before Durban.”

Late Friday night in the hallways, the mood was surprisingly upbeat. Not only had the talks not collapsed, there was formal agreement on a number of issues. These included acknowledgement that emissions cuts needed to be in line with the science ­ 25 to 40 percent cuts by 2020 – and the global temperature rise target should be kept below two degrees C instead of at two degrees C as the target in the Copenhagen Accord.

However, Japan, Canada, the United States and Russia successfully undermined any binding agreement on how to reach those targets by lobbying to abandon the Kyoto Protocol and replacing it with a weak pledge and review system as proposed in the Copenhagen Accord, according to Friends of the Earth International (FOEI). Current pledges under the accord translate into global temperature rises of three to five degrees C by most analyses.

“The agreement reached here is wholly inadequate and could lead to catastrophic climate change,” said Nnimmo Bassey, FOEI chair. Bassey is this year’s winner of the Right Livelihood Award – the ‘alternative Nobel Prize’ – for “revealing the full ecological and human horrors of oil production” in Nigeria, his home country.

Bassey said developed countries need to reduce their emissions by 40 percent under a new Kyoto Protocol commitment period with legally binding commitments.

The current Kyoto commitment to reduce emissions by five percent from 1990 levels ends in 2012. Most developed countries are meeting that target, with the notable exception of Canada, whose emissions have soared 30 percent.

Canada, Japan and Russia have declared they will not agree to a second Kyoto commitment. The U.S. refused to ratify the first Kyoto commitment and rejects the second as well. Those positions nearly derailed the talks since developing countries have long insisted rich countries agree to binding reductions under Kyoto. Agreeing to disagree, the final fight for Kyoto has been punted to Durban.

A Green Climate Fund was also agreed to with a $100-billion commitment by 2020, with a re-commitment of $30 billion by 2012 to help developing countries reduce their emissions and adapt to impacts of climate change. The fund will be managed by a board with equal representation from developed and developing countries with funding channeled through the World Bank for the first three years.

Tropical forest protection may be the big breakthrough coming out of Cancún. Delegates adopted a decision that establishes a three-phase process for tropical countries to reduce deforestation and receive compensation from developed countries, and it includes protections for forest peoples and biodiversity. Deforestation presently contributes 15 to 20 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

“This is so much better than what we had in Copenhagen,” said Peg Putt of the Wilderness Society, a U.S.-based conservation group.

“There was official recognition of the multiple benefits of forests and ecosystem integrity,” Putt told TerraViva.

Loopholes have been closed and good progress made on tackling the drivers of deforestation, she said. Much work is left to do to strengthen safeguards and work out the details for a new financial tool called REDD (Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation).

REDD remains very controversial. It is widely touted as a way to mobilise $10 to $30 billion annually to protect forests by selling carbon credits to industries in lieu of reductions in emissions.

“I’m feeling very good about the prospects for forests,” Putt said in an interview.

Many Indigenous and civil society groups reject REDD outright if it allows developed countries to avoid real emission reductions by offsetting their emissions.

“We reject false solutions like the carbon market mechanisms of REDD,” said Tom Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network.

REDD represents a new set of tradable property rights based on trees and other environmental services, Goldtooth said in an interview.

“If we are going to save the climate, we need to focus on real solutions that assure that forests will be left standing and people’s rights are respected,” he said.

Although Bolivia’s stance will be much commented on, the more than 500 organisations in the Climate Action Network (CAN) once again voted Canada’s radical right-wing government as the most obstructive nation in the world. For its four years in power, Canada’s Stephen Harper government has won the “Colossal Fossil for the year” during climate negotiations for consistent efforts on behalf of its huge tar sands oil sector to block an agreement.

“Canada’s tar sands sector is truly among the global elite, an all- star of greenhouse gas pollution,” a CAN spokesperson said in a statement. “Despite an overall record of climate futility, Canadians should rest assured there’s at least one thing here that Canada is really, really good at.”

Manifestantes indígenas en el lobby del hotel Moon Palace. Crédito: Nastasya Tay/IPS

Por Emilio Godoy *

CANCÚN, México, 11 dic (IPS/TerraViva) – “El pan también se puede quemar en la puerta del horno”, fue el comentario del canciller ecuatoriano Ricardo Patiño al referirse al crucial cierre de la cumbre climática celebrada en México.

La frase de Patiño viene a cuento por la atmósfera de incertidumbre que caracterizó las últimas horas de 16 Conferencia de las Partes de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (COP 16), escenificada desde el 29 de noviembre en la sudoriental ciudad turística de Cancún.

Si bien la Convención se encamina a crear un fondo internacional de lucha contra el cambio climático y estipular acciones para combatir la deforestación, asuntos como la suerte de un tratado ambiental global serán resueltos en la reunión de 2011 en la sudoriental ciudad sudafricana de Durban.

Durante dos jornadas extenuantes, los ministros de Ambiente y los negociadores de las casi 200 delegaciones asistentes a la COP 16 discutieron temas acuciantes, como la extensión del Protocolo de Kyoto, que expirará en 2012, el financiamiento a la adaptación y mitigación de los efectos del fenómeno y la lucha contra la deforestación.

“Es indispensable que se establezca y se respete un segundo compromiso del Protocolo de Kyoto. No podemos pensar que quede un vacío legal”, dijo Patiño a TerraViva.

El borrador propuesto por la presidencia mexicana de la COP y discutido el viernes alarga la decisión sobre la continuidad del Protocolo de Kyoto, al tiempo que plantea la importancia de esa decisión, para que no haya una brecha entre el primero y segundo periodo del Protocolo.

Ese tratado, vigente desde 2005, obliga a las naciones industrializadas que lo ratificaron a contraer sus emisiones a un volumen 5,2 por ciento inferior respecto de 1990, con plazo en 2012. Estados Unidos no pertenece al Protocolo.

De la COP 15, desarrollada en diciembre de 2009 en Copenhague, emanó un tratado no vinculante en el que ás de 190 firmantes se adhirieron a compromisos voluntarios de reducción de gases de efecto invernadero, considerados la causa del calentamiento global.

En ese aspecto, el texto insta a los países a reducir sus emisiones según lo que sugiere el Grupo Intergubernamental de Expertos sobre el Cambio Climático (IPCC) entre 25 y 40 por ciento para el año 2020, a partir de los niveles de 1990.

“Nuestro mensaje es buscar un compromiso con el Protocolo de Kyoto. Lo peor es que nos quedemos sin nada”, dijo a TerraViva el negociador boliviano Pablo Solón.

Un grupo de países encabezados por Canadá, Japón y Rusia expresaron su intención de no rubricar un segundo período de compromisos de Kyoto.

“La cumbre tiene puntos positivos, pues se avanzó desde Copenhague. El tema más álgido es la continuidad del Protocolo de Kyoto, pero queda la puerta abierta para un segundo periodo”, explicó a TerraViva Gustavo Ampugnani, de la oficina mexicana de la organización ambientalista Greenpeace.

“Las consultas continúan. Hemos visto un progreso destacado, debemos reconocer que estos textos representan un progreso sustancial. Les pido su creatividad y flexibilidad”, dijo a los delegados la canciller mexicana Patricia Espinosa.

Las partes acordaron virtualmente la instauración de un fondo verde, cuyo manejo interino quedaría en manos del Banco Mundial, decisión rechazada por un amplio grupo de naciones en desarrollo.

“Los mecanismos existentes no han funcionado como quisiéramos. Por eso, debe crearse un nuevo fondo”, apostó Patiño.

TerraViva supo que la Unión Europea está por entregar 10 millones de euros a un grupo de países en desarrollo como señal de que el financiamiento de la lucha contra el cambio climático tiene visos de seriedad. Pero se necesitan cientos de miles de millones de dólares para hacer frente al problema.

Las delegaciones coincidieron sobre la iniciativa de Reducción de Emisiones Causadas por la Deforestación y Degradación de los Bosques (REDD), cuya apuesta principal parece orientarse hacia proyectos de reforestación, una vertiente criticada por los ecologistas.

Mientras, en el cierre de sus jornadas, el foro alternativo Espacio Mexicano – Diálogo Climático, que reunió a docenas de organizaciones no gubernamentales de todo el mundo desde el día 5 hasta el viernes, abogó en su declaración final por la reducción obligatoria de 50 por ciento de las emisiones de gases de efecto invernadero.

“El volumen de reducción de emisiones debe ser definido por la ciencia, bajo el criterio de la salvación del planeta y no el que cada país esté dispuesto a ofrecer. Las responsabilidades y compromisos deben ser proporcionales a las emisiones acumuladas”, sostuvo la Declaración de Cancún, emitida el viernes. (FIN)

Young demonstrators into the bus. Credit: Mantoe Phakathi/IPS

By Mantoe Phakathi *

CANCÚN, Dec 11, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – Drama unfolded outside the Azteca Expocentre of the Moon Palace when police rounded up a group of about 20 youths who were protesting on the slow pace of the climate change negotiations.

The youths, who was chanting numbers from one with the aim of reaching 21,000, which they said represented global climate-related deaths in the last nine months, was cut short by the United Nations police.

“The manner in which the police loaded the youth into the bus was just uncalled for,” said Kumi Naidoo, Executive Director of Greenpeace.

The police just grabbed the young protesters and shoved them into a bus that was used to ferry delegates around the different venues at COP16 in the Mexican city of Cancun.

“This is our future we’re fighting for,” said the protesting youth while trying hard to resist getting into the bus.

This was after 05:00 pm, Mexican time (23:00 GMT) when negotiators were busy finalising the outcome of COP16, not concluded yet.

The drama which attracted a lot of spectators including delegates and the press also saw the arrest of a Reuters journalist who clashed with the police over his confiscated badge.

He was one of the many reporters who were pushing and shoving to get the best shot while police loaded the youth into the bus.

For some unknown reason, a UN police officer ripped his badge and refused to give it back.

“He wants the police to give back his badge because he is only doing his job by taking pictures,” a journalist interpreted to IPS what his Spanish-speaking colleague was saying.

But the police forced him into the next bus which in the company of a police officer, drove away with the journalist who was still protesting inside.

Mexican police agents restrained the crowd of journalists which was preventing the bus security from leaving with their colleague.

“This represents the kind of restrictions that civil society has been subjected to at this COP,” said Naidoo.

He said COP16 did not give a chance to civil society organisations to participate, and the police were making a big deal out of young people peacefully demonstrating at the conference after getting permission.

“The UN police are forgetting that climate change has become an international agenda through efforts of civil society yet now they are throwing us out,” said Naidoo.

The youth organisations requested permission from the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) to demonstrate at the conference venue and were allowed only 30 minutes.

“We want to reach the number 21,000 and that’s going to take us longer than 30 minutes,” said 23-year-old Jenny Bedell-Stiles from the United States, before the skirmish. It was going to take them five hours to finish chanting the slogans – little did she know that the police would pounce on them in no time.

In a last attempt to influence the decisions of COP16, the youth carried a banner with the message: “Climate Justice Delayed is Climate Justice Denied.”

“The climate negotiations have taken way too long and as young people we’ve been watching, and now it’s time for us to demand action,” said Bedell-Stiles.

“We’re calling for a legally-binding document in Cancún,” she said.

CANCÚN, Mexico, Dec 10, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – Civil society organisations here are demanding real progress in talks at the 16th Conference of the Parties on the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Kumi Naidoo of Greenpeace and the Global Campaign for Climate Action. Credit: Nastasya Tay/IPS

Speaking Thursday on the penultimate day of negotiations, the heads of several international NGOs strongly asserted the need for decisive leadership, courage and creativity on the part of country delegates on the final day of negotiations.

At the moment, the biggest barrier to progress is a lack of clarity about what the path forward looks like in terms of the future of the Kyoto Protocol, the Climate Action Network’s David Turnbull told IPS.

“Especially in terms of how countries are going to anchor their pledges into the negotiations in a way that actually allows greater ambitions on those levels,” Turnbull said.

The pressure – and the blame laid for the lack of movement so far – is landing hardest on particular countries.

“Japan’s position has been inflexible and unacceptable since day one,” said Turnbull, “and it’s totally unacceptable.”

But blame does not lie only with Japan. “The U.S .doesn’t have a lot to bring to the table because of the failure of Congress to pass comprehensive climate legislation,” explained Turnbull, “and the U.S. negotiators are feeling very hesitant to move forward on anything, it seems.”

They are even moving away from the Bali Action Plan, but what’s required is a demonstration of good faith, he said.

“We knew negotiations were at a precarious place coming out of Copenhagen,” said Turnbull, “We needed to restore confidence in the process itself.” He believes expectations and levels of ambition going into the talks were realistic, paving the way for progress on several fronts – including concrete decisions on adaptation, technology transfer, and finance.

Talks have reached a point where progress is required to build trust and confidence between negotiating countries – across the developed and developing world divide, said Jeremy Hobbs, executive director of Oxfam International.

“We’ve seen real progress in the last two weeks,” Hobbs said, and “now we’re in a position to see real practical moves.”

However, that does not preclude a repeat of the Copenhagen talks where delegates got into game-playing, warned Hobbes. They must start making concessions, talking to each other, working out solutions, he told the press.

Kumi Naidoo compares the campaign for international action on climate change to his experiences as a young activist during the apartheid regime in his native South Africa.

“However bleak things might be, with inspired leadership, with political will, and thinking about future generations, we can be inspired by the history of winning against all odds,” he told IPS.

Naidoo identifies the biggest barriers to progress as a lack of political will, as well as shortsightedness.

“Developed countries are currently not feeling the effects of climate change, and it is the people in poor countries who are feeling the effects and paying the first and most brutal price,” Naidoo said. “But we know that ultimately we get this right as rich and poor countries, and we secure the future of all our children and grandchildren. We get it wrong and we all go down together.”

“We are strangled by short-term political expediency, and short-term political interest, and election cycles,” he said.

Naidoo bemoans the lack of a legally binding treaty on the table, describing it as a tragedy.

“In Copenhagen, when you talked about a fair, ambitious and binding treaty, you weren’t thought of as a loony lefty, it was considered that you were making a mainstream demand. Here, you’re regarded as a fringe element,” he said.

Naidoo, a leader of the Global Campaign for Climate Action, believes that talks are at a crucial point in Cancún, with high expectations for next year’s negotiations in Durban.

“Leaders need to know they’re playing Russian roulette with the future of our planet. And history is going to judge this generation of leaders – including civil society if we cannot exert pressure and get the result in Durban – extremely harshly,” Naidoo said.

CANCÚN, 9 déc (IPS/TerraViva) – Un rappel de la faiblesse du statu quo alors que les négociations climatiques au Mexique tirent vers la fin: même si toutes les parties devaient honorer les engagements pris dans l’Accord de Copenhague, les réductions des émissions n’atteindraient pas le niveau nécessaire pour éviter le réchauffement catastrophique de la planète.

Civil society is calling on governments to act decisively. Credit: Davison Makanga/IPS

Un rapport du Programme des Nations Unies pour l’environnement (PNUE), évaluant les engagements volontaires pris comme un accord sur un traité juridiquement contraignant échoué au Danemark l’année dernière, montre que le monde n’est pas encore sur la voie vers les réductions nécessaires.

Le rapport du PNUE, intitulé “L’Ecart des émissions”, a été élaboré par 30 scientifiques venus de 25 pays. Il indique que d’ici à 2020, les émissions mondiales devraient être autour de 44 gigatonnes de gaz équivalant au dioxyde de carbone avant d’avoir une bonne chance de limiter une augmentation des températures moyennes à moins de deux degrés Celsius d’ici à 2050.

“Ce rapport utilise l’Accord de Copenhague comme un repère pour évaluer les progrès réalisés à partir des engagements pris il y a 12 mois”, a déclaré le sous-secrétaire général exécutif du PNUE, Achim Steiner.

“Si tous les engagements pris à Copenhague sont respectés dans leur intégralité, y compris les engagements de financement, les émissions pourraient atteindre 49 gigatonnes, laissant un écart de cinq gigatonnes d’équivalent de dioxyde de carbone qui doit être comblé par une action plus grande”, a-t-il indiqué.

“Le rapport qualifie et quantifie les écarts dans l’atténuation des changements climatiques”, a affirmé Juan Rafael Elvira, le secrétaire mexicain pour l’Environnement et les Ressources naturelles.

L’écart entre les engagements actuels et les résultats attendus en termes de changements climatiques, souligne à nouveau l’importance de retrouver l’élan vers un accord ambitieux et juridiquement contraignant au sein du processus de la Convention-cadre des Nations Unies sur les changements climatiques (CCNUCC).

Même une augmentation de deux degrés n’est pas considérée comme un objectif acceptable. Plus de la moitié des parties à la CCNUCC, 100 pays, ont appelé à des efforts visant à définir un objectif d’augmentation des températures de 1,5 degré, a affirmé Dessima Williams, l’ambassadeur de la Grenade pour les changements climatiques.

“Les engagements pris à Copenhague n’ont pas comblé les attentes soutenues par des preuves scientifiques selon lesquelles même avec des augmentations de 1,5 degré, la terre sera toujours confrontée à des effets dévastateurs des changements climatiques”, a déclaré Williams, dont le pays natal, la Grenade, figure parmi ceux qui appellent à un objectif plus ambitieux.

“Cancún ne souhaite pas la baisse des attentes. Nous devons élaborer des politiques qui aborderont ce problème qui fait déjà des ravages dans les pays en développement”, a ajouté Williams.

(END)

Hammer in Vía Campesina march. Credit: Renee Leahy/IPS

By Nastasya Tay

CANCÚN, Dec 10, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – Countries must redouble their efforts, to “travel the last mile to a successful outcome,” says U.N. climate chief Christina Figueres.

“More needs to be done,” Figueres told the press on the penultimate day of climate negotiations in Cancún.

Earlier in the week, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon cautioned against high expectations.

“Don’t expect an all-encompassing global agreement in Cancún,” he said following the opening of the High Level Session of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). There are possibilities for progress to be made, but the negotiations around a climate deal remain “not a sprint but a marathon”.

Ban affirmed the need for progress on all fronts, but highlighted specific areas where he feels important decisions could be made/agreement could be reached.

The Secretary-General also listed mitigation, transparency and accountability, as well as the future of the Kyoto Protocol as additional focus areas.

As the Friday close of negotiations approached, the future of Kyoto remained uncertain. Canada, Japan and Russia were reported to be resisting pressure to accept an extension of the Protocol; many parties see the Kyoto Protocol, which placed a legal requirement on developed countries to cut emissions to five percent below 1990 levels by 2012, as symbolic of a fair and binding agreement.

The argument for extending the Kyoto Protocol is that developed countries should continue to assume a share of responsibilities in line with their historical contributions to global warming. But the group resisting an extension say there’s little point in extending an agreement that does not include the world’s two largest polluters: the United States – which never signed on to Kyoto – and China, who between them produce around 40 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions.

Civil society groups have called for greater political will and creativity on the part of ministers and negotiators in the talks.

The establishment of a global climate fund, with balanced and accountable governance, as well as frameworks for technology transfer and adaptation support would constitute success in Cancún, David Turnbull, the Climate Action Network’s Executive Director, told TerraViva.

However, emissions reductions must also be addressed, Turnbull asserted. “We want see the pledges on the table confirmed and anchored into the negotiations, but we also want to see countries recognise that they are simply not enough, and that we need to see greater ambition to close the gap between what’s currently on the table and what the science is calling for.”

UNFCCC negotiations are due to conclude Dec. 10.

Financing adaptation

Pledges made by countries since the Copenhagen conference are approaching the $30 billion committed for the 2010-2012 period, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said. But the discussion on long-term financing must be advanced further, especially with regards to the additional $100 billion promised annually from 2020 by developed countries.

However, during the High Level Session of the Cancún Conference of Parties, the prime ministers of Kenya and Ethiopia questioned the disbursement of the $30 billion fast-start climate financing pledged in Copenhagen, with Kenya’s Raila Odinga stating that less than 20 percent of the money has appeared.

Odinga bemoaned the air of resignation and despair permeating the meeting, and urged all countries to share the blame, without playing the victim.

He described the protection of forests, support for climate adaptation, arrangements for technology transfer and some elements of finance as areas where measures are “ripe for adoption”.

(END/2010)

CANCÚN, Mexico, Dec 9, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) An entire body of leaders, spearheaded by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, is now looking at REDD+ as a panacea to global warming with multiple benefits thrown in.

Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon addresses the Climate Change Conference in Cancún, Mexico. Credit: UN Photo/Paulo Filgueiras

“REDD+ is the ‘shortest shortcut’ to address climate change; we will do all we can to support it, ” Ban told a packed audience of dignitaries, heads of state, indigenous community leaders, NGOs, forestry organisations and citizens convened by influential US NGO, Avoided Deforestation Partners.Org, on the sidelines of high-level deliberations at Cancún.

REDD+ stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation. It essentially supports developing countries financially and technically to either prevent deforestation or regenerate forests, and is currently not a part of either the Kyoto Protocol or the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

It is, however, being both pushed and deliberated on at the meetings underway currently in Cancún.

“The overall message of REDD+ is that it is progressing well,” said Norway’s Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg. “The personal leadership of heads of state of national governments like Guyana, Brazil and Indonesia has helped. So the main effort is by national governments.”

REDD+ has garnered around $4.5 billion in funds so far through bilateral agreements. Most of the funding currently is from Norway, which is funding both reforestation and avoided deforestation programmes in Guyana and Indonesia.

In May 2010, Norway signed a $1 billion deal with Indonesia, which Dr. Kuntoro Mangkusubroto, the head of Indonesia’s government REDD+ Unit, said was a partnership that is the best way to approach the climate change problem and which he hoped would become a worldwide model.

Kuntoro, however, added that the process of REDD+ needed careful consideration in its implementation.

“From an economy that was based on cutting trees, we are now introducing a new way of managing things without cutting. It needs a whole new paradigm of government change,” said Kuntoro.

Kuntoro’s leadership in the reconstruction of Aceh after the devastating tsunami of December 2005, with 93 percent of funds actually seeing direct results on the ground, has been lauded by the international community.

Norway’s PM Stoltenberg also highlighted the political risk involved in staking money on REDD+.

“It’s hard to win elections by raising taxes,” quipped Stoltenberg, “which is why we too are dependent on the success of Indonesia’s efforts. The concept is simple: we pay per tonne of carbon reduced, measured after a year.”

“Besides,” he continued, “as a political investor, transformation is essential.”

Billionaire-philanthropist George Soros, founder of the Open Society Foundation which has given over $50 million so far to REDD+ efforts, says “REDD+ is a method that can be done, and can be done cheaper than any other method.”

International forestry organisations and prominent individuals like Kenyan Nobel Peace Prize winner Professor Wangari Maathai and U.N .Messenger of Peace Dr. Jane Goodall are in strong favour of promoting REDD+.

In a video message to the group at Cancún, Maathai said she saw REDD+ as an excellent livelihood option, apart from its conservation and climate change benefits, while Goodall said conserving and re-generating forests would help save the world’s rich biodiversity.

But in spite of the high-profile support for REDD+, one of its first executors, Guyanan President Bharrat Jagdeo, highlighted in blunt terms the difficulties in getting the international financial institutions “up to speed” on the matter.

“What I have a problem with is I have x tonnes of carbon saved, Norway is paying, but I can’t get the money,” said Jagdeo. The World Bank, in this instance, has mired the Norwegian aid in bureaucracy so deep that Jagdeo feels political will be lost in using this new tool.

“Developing countries run the risk of the same situation as before: if there is no corresponding flow of finance, political capital will be lost,” he said.

Developing nations have been complaining throughout the talks at Cancún that climate financing, either promised or in general, is unforthcoming.

None of the $30 billion promised till 2012 by industrialised nations at Copenhagen last December for adaptation and mitigation in poorer countries has been remitted so far. A further $100 billion was promised for the same along with technology transfer by 2020.

With official funding through the U.N. framework remaining a serious problem anyway, REDD+’s propagation seems to hold out promise through the market, as in the case of the U.S. state of California.

Unlike its national government, California has a law to reduce emissions by 2020 to 1990 levels, with a slew of features like ‘cap and trade’, energy efficiency, clean cars and low-carbon operations. It now uses this to implement its REDD+ market strategy, while it waits to pass its draft REDD+ law.

The vice president of the Pacific Gas & Electric Corporation, Steve Kline, says the system works only because it is both climate-effective and cost-effective.

“So we have renewables, low-carbon operations and together we have offsets with local California companies. But we had to convince our customers first,” explained Kline.

Significant progress has been made so far at the Cancún talks to formulate a REDD+ strategy with components for local community rights, and gender considerations.

But while the drafts on REDD+ are almost ready at the Cancún deliberations, organisations like CARE International urge caution in finalising all REDD+ drafts.

“The critical issue in a REDD mechanism is to have strong safeguards to prevent it from harming the livelihoods and violating the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities,” says Raja Jarrah, CARE’s REDD Advisor.

“The real test will be how the words unfold into implementation on the ground,” says Jarrah.

CANCÚN, Dec 9, 2010, (IPS/TerraViva) – A rough yardstick for identifying which Asian countries make the biggest ripples in Cancún is the number of journalists who crowd around the spokesperson immediately after a press conference.

India's Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh (right). Credit: UN Photo/Aliza Eliazarov

Top Chinese negotiator Xie Zhenhua does attract a fair crowd, but his popularity is constrained by the fact that he requires an interpreter, which does not allow for repartee or off-the-cuff remarks when there is a volley of questions by journalists thrusting their microphones at him.

Indian Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh has certainly come into his own on this score. As the spokesperson for the BASIC group of countries, which includes Brazil, South Africa and China, he is articulate, well-informed and witty. Journalists swarm around him after a press conference, eager to get him make a scathing remark about another country or group of countries.

This was very evident at a BASIC media meet where he listed, among three “non-negotiables”, the need for fast-start financing. “It hasn’t been fast, hasn’t even started and there is hardly any finance,” he quipped.

Ramesh expressed deep concern about the U.S. offer to reduce carbon emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, which worked out to a four percent reduction from the 1990 levels used as a baseline by Kyoto Protocol parties.

He argued that without domestic legislation, executive action could only achieve 14 percent reduction from 2020 on 2005 levels, which translates to zero percent reduction of carbon emissions from 1990 levels.

“By any standards, the U.S. offer on emission reduction for 2020 is deeply disappointing,” he said. “It’s one thing being ambitious for 2050 when all of us will be dead but the real issue is… are you going to be held accountable for 2020? Mid-term targets are very essential.” The U.S. plans to reduce its carbon emissions by 80 percent from 2005 levels by 2050.

“We would certainly expect the United States to better its emission reduction commitments as well as its offer on fast-start finance,” Ramesh said, pointing out that the lag “did no justice to the world’s pre-eminent economic power”.

He articulated the criticism of the U.S that very many delegates have been saying in the Cancún corridors but not on an open platform. The irony is that Ramesh had been seen, in the build-up to the Copenhagen talks last December, as a politician too close to the U.S.

He wrote a confidential letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, arguing that India voluntarily should accept cuts in emissions, as the U.S. has been asking China and India to do. Opposition political parties pounced on this leaked letter and he had to disown it.

With his present penchant for battling the U.S. and any other opponents of equitable agreements in Cancún, Ramesh has reinvented himself as the representative not only of South Asian negotiators but probably all of Asia. In fact, there is a sense of déjà vu, since India played this role to the hilt at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.

It is not only style that Ramesh has been amply demonstrating in Cancún, but substance as well. In November, he wrote to Todd Stern, U.S. President Barack Obama’s special envoy on climate change, to present a compromise on the contentious issues of developing countries having to monitor, report and verify (MRV) their climate control actions in return for funding, along with international consultation and analysis (ICA).

He proposed that ICA should take place every two or three years for countries whose emissions exceeded one percent of the total. The regime for developed countries would be far more rigorous. Every country would have to submit these to a Subsidiary Body for Implementation (SBI). There would be full transparency on all these reports. At Ramesh’s press conference specifically to explain India’s role on climate issues, copies of India’s inventory of emissions were distributed.

In his press meet, Stern referred approvingly to Ramesh’s draft. He thought that his proposal that developing countries prepare a report which updates the data of their national commissions and includes information on inventories, mitigation actions, pledges and critical assumptions on reducing emissions, and how these were different from business as usual, would be welcome.

However, he referred to how some of these were “very variable concepts”. For instance, China and India had each stated targets by which they would reduce the carbon intensity of their economies, as a percentage of their GDPs, but each country had its own method for calculating their GDP, which presented problems.

But Ramesh, always regarded as a maverick in the staid Indian political class, may be playing a game of his own. On Wednesday, he did a volte face by declaring that India was ready to accept binding emissions cuts, which changes a 27-year-old official position.

This might explain his histrionics regarding the U.S., while actually capitulating to its pressure, along with that of other small island states and fellow South Asian countries, which are in a hurry to receive fast-start financing.

He claimed he was being flexible and wanted to be proactive in breaking the impasse in Cancún. Whether this tactic will work, or will rebound on India, the next few days will tell.

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Climate-driven changes in the water cycle will affect large regions of the world. Credit: Friedrich Böhringer/creative commons license

By Stephen Leahy

CANCÚN, Dec 8, 2010 (IPS/TerraViva) – As the world heats up, continents are drying up, with severe droughts forecast in the future. But negotiators at the climate summit here seem to have forgotten about water in their endless discussions over forests, carbon trading and finances.

“The main impact of climate change is on the planet’s water cycle,” said Henk van Schaik of the Cooperative Programme on Water and Climate, a foundation based in the Netherlands.

“Climate-driven changes in the water cycle will affect large regions of the world,” van Schaik told TerraViva at a side event meeting here at COP 16 in Cancún .

The impact of climate on the world’s water resources is not addressed within the U.N. climate framework, said Anders Berntell of the Stockholm International Water Institute.

“Negotiators here see it as just another sector of the economy but it is a basic element for life. Water is the bloodstream of our planet,” Berntell said.

The global water cycle has already been affected with more intense rainfalls and decline in the evapotranspiration rate over land, according to new scientific research. Evapotranspiration is the term that describes the process of water evaporation and plant transpiration from the Earth’s land surface to its atmosphere.

As the temperature goes up, rates of evaporation are expected to increase. They did until 1998, when there was a leveling off and then a decline in recent years, even though the planet continued to warm, said Beverly Law, a global climate change researcher at Oregon State University.

“Evapotranspiration depends strongly on the amount of water available… the decline seems to be because less water is available,” Law, who led the first global study, told TerraViva.

There is less water because the soils in large areas of the Southern Hemisphere, including major portions of Australia, Africa and South America, have been drying up in the past decade, Law and her colleagues reported in a study in the journal Nature last October.

Not only are soils drying up, since less of the sun’s energy is being used in the evapotranspiration process, more is available to warm the air in these regions, says Law.

Within the next 30 years, large parts of parts of Asia, the United States, and southern Europe, and much of Africa, Latin America and the Middle East could experience serious droughts based on another study also published last October.

“We are facing the possibility of widespread drought in the coming decades, but this has yet to be fully recognised by both the public and the climate change research community,” said Aiguo Dai a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in the U.S. state of Colorado.

“If the projections in this study come even close to being realised, the consequences for society worldwide will be enormous,” he said in a release. Dai’s projections are based on computer climate modelling of the future as the climate continues to heat up.

Although based on models, those projections are fairly “robust”, says Kevin Trenberth, a senior climate scientist who is also at NCAR. Climate experts have long maintained that one of the major effects of climate change is “that places already wet get wetter and places already dry get drier”, Trenberth said in an email.

Water is not only an essential element for life, it is essential for nearly every sector of the global economy, including energy, manufacturing, transport, agriculture and more, noted Laura Tuck, director of the Sustainable Development Department at the World Bank.

“By 2030 in order to feed the world, water use for agriculture will need to increase 45 percent,” Tuck told attendees at the side event meeting.

Energy demands will be 160 percent higher and some of that will have to come from hydroelectric power. Many proposed climate mitigation plans, like reducing forest degradation and deforestation (REDD), or sequestering carbon in soil cannot be accomplished without water, she noted.

“In addition, institutions need to change because they were built in a world when there was no climate change,” Tuck said.

There has been some progress, with consideration being given to including water on the agenda of the next Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice (SBSTA) meeting in June of 2011, reported Berntell of the Stockholm International Water Institute.

“We have to do more to explain the value of water,” he said.

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