Cancun Climate Conference: Not with a bang but a whimper

http://www.abc.net.au/environment/articles/2010/11/29/3078938.htm

ONE YEAR AGO, the world was awash with optimism on the eve of a meeting in Denmark that many hoped could save the world from the worst effects of climate change. The cacophony surrounding the United Nations talks in Copenhagen was deafening, yet as the follow-up meeting approaches in Mexico there is barely a whisper.

Twelve months after Copenhagen was nick-named “Hopenhagen”, there is no sign yet of Cancun becoming “Cancan”.

“There was a huge level of optimism and perhaps things got carried away and expectations were unrealistic,” remembers Rupert Posner, Australian director of The Climate Group who was in Copenhagen and will be at Cancun.

“Now people have had that cold shower and realise that this is a pretty complicated thing to try and agree on.”

ABC Environment asked analysts Media Monitors Australia to tally-up the stories in the lead-up to Copenhagen and Cancun.

Covering the month up to two weeks before the start of the talks, the count for Copenhagen revealed Australian-based news organisations produced 3,720 print stories, 5,129 radio stories, 5,082 for television and 3,026 stories on the web: a total of 16,597 stories.

Compare this to a grand total of just 442 stories that have covered Cancun over the corresponding period, with 77 print stories, 173 radio, 50 TV and 142 for the web.

Not only is the media interest and the public’s awareness greatly reduced for Cancun, but so are the numbers of delegates at the meeting.

At Copenhagen, according to the UN, some 3,221 media staff were registered to attend and 847 non-governmental and inter-governmental organisations sent more than 12,500 representatives. A Reuters Institute study of the press coverage found less than 10 per cent of stories were about the science of climate change.

With the deadline passed for permission to attend the Cancun talks, just 1,243 media have registered. The numbers of NGOs are also down. Australia’s official delegation to Cancun is also likely to be fewer than the 98 which travelled to Denmark.

Why the change?

So why, when Copenhagen approached like a thundering steam train, is Cancun tip-toeing almost unnoticed?

Australian conservationist Professor Tim Flannery, who was in Copenhagen, says behind the headlines and hope, there was always scepticism.

“Expectations of a legally binding global treaty to replace Kyoto were looking unrealistic at least from early last year,” he says.

“What we got was a political agreement (the Copenhagen Accord). During 2010, more than 100 nations have adopted the Accord, and the cumulative pledged emissions reductions get us two-thirds of the reductions required to avoid dangerous climate change. This is a substantial achievement, but of course the pledges must be made real, which is not easy.”

Professor Flannery hopes that Cancun will give “more formal recognition” of the Copenhagen Accord and “more rigor around what the commitments actually are”.

“The issue has moved on to a less glamorous stage,” he adds, “but it’s just as important”.

A year is a long time

Since the mostly disappointed climate campaigners shuffled forlornly home from Denmark, much has happened in the global and local landscape. Australia has a new Prime Minister and a climate change committee with a stated aim to put a price on carbon.

In the run-up to Copenhagen, there was also the alleged theft and subsequent leaking of emails and data from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. Accusations were also thrown at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Professor Will Steffen, executive director of the ANU Climate Change Institute and science adviser to the Department of Climate Change, concedes the incidents have lowered support for climate action among the general public, but he adds: “Those debates were largely manufactured. The investigations held since have cleared the UEA and have certainly cleared the IPCC of any serious wrong doing, but that’s not to say that we can’t improve things.

“The observations and the understanding of climate change are that much stronger than they were a year ago. We have a year’s worth of more data.”

In Copenhagen’s final days, Australia’s then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd joined more than 60 heads of state, but there will be no such heady gathering of power at Cancun. This time around the majority of major economies will send their most relevant portfolio head, which means a trip to Mexico for Australia’s Minister for Climate and Energy Efficiency, Greg Combet.

Dr Martin Parkinson, secretary of the Department of Climate Change, in a speech last month to the Asia Climate Change Forum, demonstrated a more pragmatic approach to the UN talks.

“The comparatively modest outcomes many countries are expecting from Cancun reflect a greater awareness in the international community of the essential link between domestic action and international ambition,” he said.

“As such, it will be important not to invest the Cancun meeting with expectations it cannot meet. We need to be realistic, but continue to push ahead.”

Will McGoldrick, policy and research manager at The Climate Institute, says the Cancun meeting is “a real test for the UN system and a lot of governments realise that”.

He says he hopes there will be “steady progress” on key issues including reducing emissions from deforestation and financing climate change adaptation and mitigation in poorer countries.

“They need to demonstrate that they can get back into a more pragmatic and workman-like negotiation and provide a pathway for next year,” he says. “If they can’t demonstrate that in Cancun then the narrative will be somewhat different, and rightly so.”

Rupert Posner, of The Climate Group, says if expectations were too high for Copenhagen, there’s a chance that they could be “unnecessarily low” for Cancun.

“I have always thought that we’ll solve the climate problem not by a global deal, but because companies and countries want to go ahead and do it anyway. We will start to see them competing against each other to be greener.

“I think at Cancun there will be some practical decisions. We won’t get the big global agreement but some of the other issues will get moving.”

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jM9p84FpATXNNTWBq58_wQ1xnEPg?docId=CNG.050a9c8c5fd91a430d7e435fcc325b90.841

Familiar battle lines emerged on Sunday on the eve of a conference to restore the credibility of the UN’s talks on climate change after last year’s near-disaster in Copenhagen.

Campaigners said the interests of the environment and poor countries would not be sacrificed to help boost the faltering process, while the European Union (EU) called on China, the United States and India to agree to “fair” curbs on their carbon emissions.

Nearly 200 countries will take part in the 12-day conference in the Mexican resort of Cancun.

It aims at healing the wounds of the December 2009 UN summit in Copenhagen, where more than 120 leaders failed spectacularly to deliver the promise of a post-2012 pact to roll back climate change.

Instead of grappling for an overarching treaty, negotiators are being asked to notch up progress on half a dozen issues to help revive faith in the UN climate arena.

The European Union’s chief negotiator, Artur Runge-Metzger, said there was “no guarantee” the talks under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) would follow this new, pragmatic, incremental path.

“But what I can hear very clearly over the last weeks and months (is) that all parties want to make headway here in Cancun,” he told a press conference.

“They want to show the world that this process can deliver, it can move the international climate agenda forward.”

Runge-Metzger warned: “If we are not able to do that, then we would really have to reconsider if this process is a process that can address this very important question for humanity in this century.”

The EU looked to China and the United States — the world’s No. 1 and 2 carbon emitters — as well as India to make “firm commitments to do their fair share of reducing global emissions,” he said.

Activists fighting for tough curbs on greenhouse-gas emissions warned they would fight against a sellout in Cancun, while Bolivia said it suspected a backdoor attempt to enshrine the troubled outcome of Copenhagen in negotiating texts.

———-

this is a farce..the first article i reprinted is pure shillery..the stuff we get on out media backed tv news each night..i dont even know why they are having a conference for 12 days..its already decided that this will be “small” victories..heh..all of our leaders have already told us what will happen..go and have a look..all of them have said it will be nothing big..so how do they know that before it starts?

401

Advertisement

~ by seeker401 on November 30, 2010.