COP16 Cancun

Cancún, Wednesday 1 December 2010

One year on from Copenhagen, the UN climate change talks began on Monday, hosted by the Government of Mexico, in Cancún.

The expectations for Copenhagen were high, some believe too high. Many goalposts were moved forward in Copenhagen, but yes, the meeting fell short of concluding on one legally binding agreement. In opening the COP16 meetings, the outgoing president of the Conference of the Parties, Lykke Friis (Danish Minister for Climate Change) stressed the need for a "response to climate change to match reality". She also urged delegates to show the world that climate change was not "put on ice" in Copenhagen and that "Cancún can".

Consequently, expectations for Cancun are significantly lower. Many delegates are keen to agree on a "balanced package" that would include some key aspects of the negotiations, such as a technology mechanisms, a green fund, and REDD+, but issues like mitigation and legal form will probably be left for COP17 in Durban, South Africa, next year. Interestingly, a concept of voting was encouraged by Papua New Guinea in case consensus could not be reached.

Logistics was the main topic of conversation on Monday for those not staying at the main venue, the Moon Palace, as many delegates were stuck in traffic for up to three hours on Monday morning due to severe security checks on the road surrounding the presence of the Mexican president. Whilst most hotels are located about 20-minute drive from the Moon Palace, all of us are forced to drive pass for another 10km to the second venue, the Cancun Messe (newly christened as the Cancun "mess") to go through the security checks, and then to get on another buss to get back to the Moon Palace..... The Government of Mexico is running green busses between the venues, nevertheless many people feel that all this additional travel is making the climate change meetings increasingly onerous and very tiring.

On Monday, the International Council for Sustainable Energy (ICSE) of which the CEC is a founding member, and the convenor of the BINGO group, the International Chamber Commerce, met with the Chairman of SBI (Subsidiary Body for Implementation), Australia's Robert Owen-Jones, to raise the issue of improving access for the private sector in the negotiations, aiming to enhance the engagement with the private sector and possibly formalise it. Whilst the private sector is expected to deliver $100bn of climate finance, this is to ensure that we also have a say in whether, how and when this can be delivered. On Tuesday, the ICSE delivered an official intervention on this topic to SBI. The intervention called for a possible timeline of such a dialogue including a workshop that would feed back to COP17.

Meanwhile, under the Kyoto Protocol Working Group (AWG-KP), the lines in the sand are more clearly drawn. It became apparent that "Japan won’t accept a second Protocol commitment period and many developing countries said that there will be no progress under the long-term cooperative action (AWG-LCA) without concrete progress under the AWG-KP.” In order to facilitate progress, a meeting with the Chairs of the AWG-KP and AWG-LCA together with the troika (outgoing, current and incoming COP Presidents, Denmark, Mexico and South Africa respectively) has been proposed in order to maximise the chances for a successful outcome.

The CEC raised directly with the Australian Government the importance of progress to be made in the area of market mechanisms, particularly should the Kyoto Protocol not be continued beyond 2012, as well as the role of  the private sector within the negotiations.

Minister Combet is expected to arrive on the weekend and PS Dreyfus later in the second week to share the tasks within the High-Level Segment scheduled to commence on Tuesday 7 December 2010. 

Read a day-to-day analysis of COP16 on http://blog.reegle.info/blog/2010/12/page/2.