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.”

La playa se hunde y la arena se va en el "paraíso" de la zona hotelera de Cancún- Crédito: Diana Cariboni/IPS

Por Diana Cariboni, enviada especial *

CANCÚN, 11 dic (Tierramérica/TerraViva) – “Somos el país más frío del mundo…, así que el calentamiento global es bueno para nosotros. Cuanto más tibio, más cosechas… Se habla de detener la deforestación de las selvas tropicales para combatir el cambio climático, pero nosotros no tenemos selvas tropicales”.

La franqueza del legislador ruso Viktor Shudegov expuso una verdad “incómoda”: la aún escasa conciencia sobre el calentamiento global, en una reunión paralela a la conferencia de cambio climático que tuvo como anfitrión a México entre el 29 de noviembre y el 11 de diciembre.

Shudegov sintetizó lo difícil que resulta para la opinión pública de un país como Rusia asumir el desafío del cambio climático, pese a que, según los científicos, se trata del problema mundial más serio que afronta la humanidad en este siglo.

Esa dinámica, en la que predominan los problemas domésticos “urgentes”, como la crisis económica que afecta a casi todo el mundo rico, hace patinar una y otra vez los intentos de adoptar una norma mundial y obligatoria para reducir la contaminación climática.

La 16 Conferencia de las Partes de la Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (COP 16), que tuvo como sede la ciudad turística mexicana de Cancún, no fue la excepción.

Una de las fuerzas motrices de la negociación que conduce la Organización de las Naciones Unidas busca atraer desde hace años al sector privado, ofreciéndole cada vez más oportunidades de negocios en la todavía enclenque “economía verde”.

La inclusión de los sistemas de captura y almacenamiento de carbono entre los mecanismos financiables para reducir la emisión de gases de efecto invernadero es una muestra de esa tendencia.

Se trata de extraer el dióxido de carbono, un gas invernadero, y depositarlo en “sumideros”, que pueden ser océanos, bosques o el subsuelo. Quienes inviertan en estos negocios estarían en condiciones de comerciar derechos de emisión en el mercado de carbono.

Para ambientalistas y científicos, impulsar ese mercado de carbono es una fuga hacia adelante.

“Esta tecnología no ha sido probada, no está lista para ponerse en práctica. Es otra forma de alejarse de las energías renovables y de las acciones de mitigación”, dijo a Tierramérica el nigeriano Nnimmo Bassey, presidente de la red ecologista Amigos de la Tierra Internacional.

“¿Qué es enfrentar el calentamiento? Reducir el lanzamiento de dióxido de carbono a la atmósfera. Entonces, ¿por qué no dejamos el carbono adonde pertenece…, en el suelo?”, cuestionó Bassey, que acaba de recibir el Right Livelihood Award.

Los gases invernadero se liberan por la quema de petróleo, gas y carbón, la deforestación, la agropecuaria, la conversión de suelos silvestres en agrícolas y la producción industrial.

Los grandes contaminadores, encabezados por China y Estados Unidos, no consiguen ponerse de acuerdo sobre una meta mundial de reducción de gases que permita mantener el aumento de la temperatura media en menos de dos grados.

Si se cruza ese umbral, dicen los científicos, el clima planetario llegaría a un “punto de quiebre” que desataría cambios catastróficos.

Adoptar una economía verde, o baja en carbono, implica sobre todo modificar la forma en que buena parte de la humanidad concibe la actividad económica.

A primera vista, resulta más fácil empezar por frenar la tala de las selvas, responsable de 18 por ciento de las emisiones mundiales de gases invernadero.

La iniciativa REDD+ (Reducción de Emisiones de Carbono Causadas por la Deforestación y la Degradación de los Bosques), que despertó enorme atención en la COP 16, prevé que los países ricos financien estas acciones efectuadas en naciones en desarrollo, beneficiando a los actores locales, sobre todo comunidades locales campesinas e indígenas.

La REDD+ atrae tanto “a países ricos como a naciones con bosques” a un tipo de “intercambio de carbono” que permite a los ricos “seguir contaminando” y a los países con bosques “obtener algo de dinero”, describió Bassey.

No es verdadera conservación, sino una forma de “reducir emisiones”. Cuando una selva sea incluida en este mecanismo, se impedirá a las comunidades locales utilizarla como lo hacían para su subsistencia, “pues sea quien sea que esté en ella deberá asegurarse de que retenga el carbono, que será medido y evaluado”, describió.

La clave está en establecer un sistema de controles claros, afirma la abogada Adrianna Quintero, del Consejo para la Defensa de Recursos Naturales (NRDC por sus siglas en inglés), una organización ecologista estadounidense.

Para cumplir la “meta de conservación es crítica la supervisión y la transparencia, lo mismo que para asegurar el respeto de los derechos de indígenas y campesinos”, dijo Quintero a Tierramérica.

Pese a todo, el sistema de negociaciones en las Naciones Unidas sigue siendo el único posible. “El proceso diplomático es un poco lento”, pero ¿de qué otra forma se pueden tomar en cuenta los intereses y posiciones de los 192 países de la Convención?, preguntó.

Para Quintero, en la COP 16 las posiciones se han acercado mucho para llegar a un terreno común que sirva de base a un tratado amplio. Y buena parte del avance obedece a la forma en que el gobierno anfitrión, México, condujo las negociaciones no sólo en Cancún, sino durante todo el año.

Un pilar de ese terreno común es la entrega de fondos a los países pobres para hacer frente a las nuevas realidades meteorológicas, adoptar nuevas tecnologías y solventar las enormes pérdidas causadas por desastres naturales.

En esto, nuevamente, se enfrentan intereses. En la COP 15, realizada hace un año en Copenhague, se prometió la entrega de al menos 30.000 millones de dólares por año, y “ni siquiera esta suma se cumplió”, recordó Bassey.

“Los países ricos hicieron todo lo posible para movilizar dinero, ya comprometido como ayuda, a préstamos como forma de lucrarse de la miseria de los países pobres golpeados por el calentamiento”, describió.

No se trata de buscar dinero, sino de que los ricos “paguen su deuda climática”, indicó. Las naciones europeas “colonizaron durante años la atmósfera con sus emisiones de carbono”, dijo.

Entre la justicia climática reclamada por Bassey y el camino de “lo posible” que siguen las negociaciones oficiales hay una enorme brecha.

Y la cuestión central –cómo frenar la contaminación climática–, sigue siendo inabordable y deberá esperar otro año, hasta la COP 17.

“Las naciones más poderosas no prestan atención a la física ni a la química”, dijo en un pronunciamiento el fundador de la campaña 350.org, Bill McKibben.

La sociedad civil no es “lo suficientemente grande para derrotar a la industria de los combustibles fósiles y sus aliados, pero estamos creciendo”, señaló McKibben.

“¿Cuál es el sentido de estas reuniones de dos semanas?”, cuestionó Bassey. “No vamos a ninguna parte. Y esto muestra la falta de reconocimiento de la gravedad de la crisis”, añadió.

“Cuando los impactos se multipliquen más allá del punto de quiebre, ni siquiera los ricos escaparán al desastre”, advirtió.

* Publicado originalmente por la red latinoamericana de diarios de Tierramérica.

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)

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, 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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